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Hypothesis 
Vol. 32 No.1  

Fall/Winter 2020 

Case studies 
 
Nina Exner, PhD, MLS 
Assistant Professor / Research Data Librarian 
Virginia Commonwealth University 
Richmond, VA 
 
OVERVIEW 

Case studies are common, but also commonly misunderstood. So, for this first 
Methods Moment column, let’s take an introductory look at the case study methodology. 
A case study is an approach that takes a wide view of a narrowly-defined circumstance. 
Like all methods, there are many disciplinary variations and complexities to making a 
great case study. To keep an introductory focus, I will discuss three core elements of 
case studies: the case, the situation, and the triangulation of data. Regardless of 
variations in jargon, these concepts are good starting places. 
 
Consider a diagram of how these core elements might look in a research question: 

 
Figure 1: Diagram of the case, situation, and triangulation in a research question 



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The “case” refers to the setting of a case study. A case is usually a single 
environment with clear boundaries where the research topic of interest is happening. It 
defines the people, places, and things that a researcher might consider (or not consider) 
to be part of the case. So, in the example above, we would only consider data to be in 
the case when that data interacts with the librarian/clinic partnership. A community 
member who visited the clinic and used resources recommended by the librarian is 
definitely relevant to the “case.” On the other hand, a peer librarian is probably not part 
of the “case,” because they are not involved with the librarian-clinic partnership. Cases 
are often a specific place or organization. We often think of typical cases being a library 
or health center, but a case could also be a professional association, conference, or 
class.  

The “situation” refers to what is happening at that case. This is what case study 
research question(s) are trying to understand. Research questions for case studies 
usually focus on what and how questions – what actually happened, and/or how it 
occurred. The situation might be a specific event, like a program or change in 
leadership, or ongoing situations. Examples of ongoing situations for a case study might 
be the implementation of a particular team structure or information desk process. Like 
the case, the best situations for a case study are ones that can be clearly defined. 

The “triangulation of data” has two parts: data sources and data analysis. The 
goal is to identify sources which can be combined (triangulated) to understand the 
situation. A rigorous case study requires a systematic approach to comparing multiple 
data sources in the case. We usually use the word triangulation to talk about the 
analysis phase, but it has implications for data collection, too. Data collection and 
analysis must be planned together.  

Data collection in a case study looks at how the situation is experienced from 
multiple perspectives in the case. Because of the experience element, case studies 
predominantly should include qualitative data and may also include quantitative data. 
Case study data sources can be any sources that tell us something about the situation. 
We call it triangulation because we are looking for common directions in perspectives 
on the situation, which is why it is crucial to include/pull from multiple data sources to 
improve perspective on the situation. 

Thus, data analysis for case studies (which I am focusing on as “triangulation,” 
but you might also search for the related term “data integration”) organizes what the 
data sources have to say and then seeks commonalities. While case studies may also 
highlight data that contradict majority perceptions in the case, most of the analysis 
should focus on identifying commonalities or areas of agreement from the multiple data 
sources. Qualitative coding approaches are a common way to do this, which involves 
extracting pieces of text or other data and giving them labels relevant to the research 
question. Tables or spreadsheets are good ways to organize the analysis. Analytical 



METHODS MOMENT 
 

 

 

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Vol. 32 No.1  

Fall/Winter 2020 

approaches should list pieces of text and add labels that can be compared between the 
data sources. 
 
When planning a case study, it is good to think about several issues: 

● What situation does the research question ask about? Research questions 
appropriate to case study methods tend to start with the words how or what, such 
as, “How does an academic library experience adding a community health 
satellite location?” 

● What is the case? The case should have clear boundaries, so that researchers 
can clearly determine participants and documents that are or are not part of the 
case. Examples might be specific locations experiencing the situation (“How do 
Baz University and Quux College libraries experience adding community health 
satellites?”), or a definable event (“How did The Wubble Center’s 2020 Wubble 
Institute experience receiving and addressing Code of Conduct violation 
reports?”). 

● How does the study triangulate meaningful findings? To triangulate, the case will 
need to cross the perspectives of multiple data sources that all have useful but 
different perspectives on the situation.  

 
Keep in mind that case studies as a methodological approach are different from (a) 

clinical case studies, in which clinicians analyze how a patient’s symptoms typify or 
contrast with the textbook expectation of the presentation of symptoms; (b) teaching 
case studies, which are real or mock summaries of a situation written to encourage 
discussion and enable learning; or (c) assessment case reports, which report 
assessment data and lessons learned from a program in order to measure personal 
effectiveness rather than rigorously study the situation or program  (see also Alpi & 
Evans, 2019, in resource articles list, to understand more specifically JMLA’s case 
reports format). If you decide to read further on case studies methodologically, be sure 
to look for the triangulation or integration of data. 
 
EXAMPLE OF (MOCK) APPLICATION 

Reyes wants to understand the effect of a new interprofessional training institute 
at their hospital. They consider personal biases and (being a librarian) decide that 
evaluating impacts of librarian-related interprofessional projects might be a separate 
case report topic. Nevertheless, they are still interested in a more rigorous study of the 
wider effects and experiences happening because of the institute. A case study fits this 
broader interest in studying a range of perspectives on a focused event. Reyes decides 
to scope the case to clinician-trainees in the interprofessional institute who are piloting 
interprofessional teams. They decide that their research question is, “How do clinicians 



METHODS MOMENT 
 

 

 

Hypothesis 
Vol. 32 No.1  

Fall/Winter 2020 

learning to work on interprofessional teams incorporate interprofessional work in patient 
care planning?”  

Reyes then has to look for sources of information. They start with observing the 
institute’s training sessions. To understand the experiences of the interprofessional 
teams, Reyes wants to interview trainees and ask about care planning. They initially try 
to interview everyone who is piloting interprofessional projects. Reyes quickly finds that 
it is too hard to schedule interviews with everyone. They change to a short survey of 
Institute trainees and their teams, plus two coffee-hour focus groups. Reyes wants more 
perspectives in their data, so they decide to incorporate content analyses (looking at 
documents and identifying and categorizing text relevant to the research question, as 
mentioned above) of the project summaries that the trainees submitted to the institute. 
Thus, their data sources are (1) training observation notes; (2) surveys; (3) focus 
groups; and (4) project documents. 

The data is collected into a series of files, and the files are numbered for 
anonymity. A key to the file numbers is stored separately. For analysis, Reyes creates a 
triangulation spreadsheet. In the literature, they find a typology that says 
interprofessional education has outcomes on three levels: the individual’s learning, team 
dynamics, and patient-focused outcomes. Another article suggests common categories 
of outcomes. Therefore, for each datum of interest, Reyes decides to have a space for 
personal, team, and care outcomes. They have a master list of terms from the literature 
to assign (technically, “code”) each event with an outcome category.  
 
The spreadsheet headers look like this: 

 
Figure 2: Headers of Reyes' data triangulation matrix 

When Reyes writes up their article, they decide to take a storytelling approach 
that describes the context of the hospital and the training institute in detail. They decide 
to organize the writing of codes in a story-like flow from personal outcomes to team 
outcomes to patient outcomes, to give the reader a sense of the impacts flowing from 
learning to action. There are many other ways they could choose to write the case 
study; storytelling is simply what comes most comfortably to their personal writing style. 
 
RESOURCES 
Web content 
1. Axman, Linnea. Qualitative Research Methods, Case Study Research. 

https://youtu.be/6Sg0M8Fn99E  

https://youtu.be/6Sg0M8Fn99E


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2. Gibbs, Graham. Types of Case Study. Part 1 of 3 on Case Studies. 
https://youtu.be/gQfoq7c4UE4. In playlist Social Research Methods and Design, 
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLirEzjzoHKvxaX8zZuFUSAi4jdukeexwx  

3. Russell, Pia. Case Study Research, University of Victoria LibGuides. 
https://libguides.uvic.ca/educationresearchmethods/education/researchmethods/boo
ks/casestudy  

4. Van der Ham, Vanessa. Analysing Case Studies | Massey University. 
https://youtu.be/6Sg0M8Fn99E  

5. Whitaker, Evans. Case Studies, UCSF Guides at University of California, San 
Francisco. https://guides.ucsf.edu/c.php?g=100971&p=655222  

 
Articles 
1. Alpi KM, Evans JJ. Distinguishing case study as a research method from case 

reports as a publication type. Journal of the Medical Library Association [Internet]. 
Medical Library Association; 2019; 107:1–5. DOI: 10.5195/jmla.2019.615 
<https://jmla.mlanet.org/ojs/jmla/article/view/615>. 

2. Baxter P, Jack S. Qualitative Case Study Methodology: Study Design and 
Implementation for Novice Researchers. Qual.Rep. [Internet] 13(4):544–59. 
<https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol13/iss4/2> 

3. Crowe S, Cresswell K, Robertson A, Huby G, Avery A, Sheikh A. The case study 
approach. BMC Med.Res.Methodol. [Internet]. 2011;11:100. DOI: 10.1186/1471-
2288-11-100 
<https://bmcmedresmethodol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2288-11-
100> 

4. Flyvbjerg B. Five Misunderstandings About Case-Study Research. Qual Inq [preprint 
version reposited arXiv] [Internet]. 2006;12(2):219–45. 
DOI: 10.1177/1077800405284363 <https://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.1186.pdf> 

5. Gibbert M, Ruigrok W, Wicki B. What passes as a rigorous case study? Strateg. 
Manag. J. [Internet] [Preprint version]. 2008;29(13):1465–74. DOI: 10.1002/smj.722 
<https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/53678/1/Gibbert%2C%20Ruigrok%20%26%20Kae
s%20SMJ%202008%20manuscript.pdf>  

6. Hyett N, Kenny A, Dickson-Swift V. Methodology or method a critical review of 
qualitative case study reports. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health 
and Well-being. Informa Healthcare; 2014; 9. DOI 10.3402/qhw.v9.23606 
<https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24809980/> 

7. Moseholm E, Fetters MD. Conceptual models to guide integration during analysis in 
convergent mixed methods studies. Methodol. Innov. [Internet]. 2017;10(2). 
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<http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2059799117703118> 

https://youtu.be/gQfoq7c4UE4
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLirEzjzoHKvxaX8zZuFUSAi4jdukeexwx
https://libguides.uvic.ca/educationresearchmethods/education/researchmethods/books/casestudy
https://libguides.uvic.ca/educationresearchmethods/education/researchmethods/books/casestudy
https://youtu.be/6Sg0M8Fn99E
https://guides.ucsf.edu/c.php?g=100971&p=655222
https://jmla.mlanet.org/ojs/jmla/article/view/615
https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol13/iss4/2
https://bmcmedresmethodol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2288-11-100
https://bmcmedresmethodol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2288-11-100
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.1186.pdf
https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/53678/1/Gibbert%2C%20Ruigrok%20%26%20Kaes%20SMJ%202008%20manuscript.pdf
https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/53678/1/Gibbert%2C%20Ruigrok%20%26%20Kaes%20SMJ%202008%20manuscript.pdf
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24809980/%3e
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2059799117703118


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8. Oliver-Hoyo M, Allen D. The Use of Triangulation Methods in Qualitative Educational 
Research [Internet]. NSTA News. 2005. 
<https://www.nsta.org/publications/news/story.aspx?id=51319> 

9. Rashid Y, Rashid A, Warraich MA, Sabir SS, Waseem A. Case Study Method: A 
Step-by-Step Guide for Business Researchers. Int J Qual Methods [Internet]. 
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<http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1609406919862424> 

10. Yazan B. Three Approaches to Case Study Methods in Education: Yin, Merriam, 
Stake. Qual Rep [Internet]. 2015;20(2):134–52. 
<https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol20/iss2/12/> 

11. Zucker DM. How to do Case Study Research. In: Teaching Research Methods in the 
Humanities and Social Sciences [Internet]. 
<https://scholarworks.umass.edu/nursing_faculty_pubs/2/> 

 

https://www.nsta.org/publications/news/story.aspx?id=51319
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1609406919862424
https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol20/iss2/12/
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/nursing_faculty_pubs/2/

