During this
week we focused on qualitative research and case studies. I read three texts,
one paper that used qualitative research methods, one case study and Eisenhardt’s
“Process of building theory from case study research”.
Sadly the
lecture got canceled this week but at least the seminar was still held. We
talked a lot about differences between qualitative and quantitative research
methods during the discussion with the whole seminar group. Mostly because
there were a few people believing that quantitative studies are quantitative
because of the amount of people studied. I knew this wasn’t the case but I
couldn’t think of a quantitative study with only one participant, but Illias
gave us an interesting example. His example was that if you found a person with
a rare disease that no one else has, then you can’t study more than one person.
However you can still study this case in a quantitative way by giving this
person medicine for a week, look at his/hers values. Then you stop giving the
person medicine for a week, take the values and keep on doing this for a year
or something. Then you still end up with 26 weeks on medicine, 26 weeks off
medicine and can study this case in a quantitative matter. I found this very
interesting since I’ve never thought about how to do a quantitative study
without a lot of people participating and I feel like this is one of the
biggest things I’ve learned during this week even though the week was actually
about qualitative research methods. But since I’ve personal experience from
qualitative methods like interviews, focus groups and also know a lot about observations
in qualitative research I don’t find it strange that I learned more about
something else than qualitative methods this week.
Qualitative
methods I felt that I already knew a lot about but case studies was (and still
is) something I don’t have personal experience with and therefore don’t know a
lot about. I’ve learnt a lot about case studies and some of the things I didn’t
know about case studies is that they can have several layers of analysis and
that it is preferred to analyze and gather data at the same time (more or less)
during a case study. That case studies are used to validate or generate new
theory isn’t something I’ve explicitly thought about but once I read it I felt
that it was pretty obvious. Although I did find it interesting that Illias said
that he thought about case studies in the way that they are mainly used to
create new theory rather than validate old because that is how I think case
studies are best used as well. The fact that case studies can contain several
methods that are used either together or separately is an example of something
I already knew about case studies.
Hej,
SvaraRaderaan interesting example that even the analysis of one person can be qualitative research. Now I am wondering in terms of given rare disease example, maybe we can say that it is a case study, according to the fact that a particular person was analyzed in certain circumstances and that researcher did not have enough knowledge before starting the study. Would you see Ilias' given example as a case study? Talking about qualitative research I learnt that it is an explanatory research method and therefore it focuses on content, interpretation, observations and summaries of tendencies. Regarding the case studies, I also pointed out that that kind of studies commonly bring new theories since before the research scholars do not have primary knowledge and they have freedom to notice something new and interesting.
Dear Jonathan,
SvaraRaderaI really liked your example that illustrated how a quantitative research method only can contain one person, this is something I hadn't thought of before either. It also made me think that your example could also be seen as a case study, based on what we have discussed during the seminar. With the researcher analyzing he person as time passes and not knowing what the research will end up to. Anyway, I liked your sum-up of what a case is and I think that your explanation is very suitable for a first year student! I wish you all the best with the rest of the course!
Hi! I enjoy reading your reflection. You gave an interesting example that illustrates that amount of participants can be not so important factor in research. I thought that big sample allows to get more data to build or test a theory. But, you are right, it depends on research subject.
SvaraRaderaInformation about several layers of analysis in case study was new for me.
It's seems that you understand this topic very well. Good job!
Hi,
SvaraRaderaSure you can do quantitative methods with only one person - that example you gave shows it's possible. But there's always one important thing to keep in mind. Usually when you have data collected through quantitative methods you have at least more than 30 people participating in the study. This is important to have, since you minimize the risk of missing important groups in your study.
So having a study with only one person is not recommendable, because there's no way of knowing if everyone would respond the same to the treatment you tried on that person. In this case, you cannot generalize the results or make any conclusions, because you didn't have the chance to compare them to other participants.
Interesting question, and great reflection!
A very interesting example of quantitative methods being used on a single person that I would have enjoyed listening to myself. However like the person above me noted, it will be hard getting a high statistical significance on only 1 subject, but what are you supposed to do when no others are available?
SvaraRaderaIt's a shame no lecture was given, would have been nice to get an indepth example of a well performed case study with examples of all the steps being used.
Your post was a very interesting read. We also talked about the example of a man with a rare disease. But we did this in the context of case studies and not within qualitative studies. That made me think about whether a qualitative study with only one person is always a case study. But by going back to the definition of case studies I think that this is not true. Because you can use a qualitative method not only to gain new knowledge but also to try to prove a certain hypothesis. And that would not be a case study. And why would it not be possible to come up with a hypothesis about a rare illness?! So I would say that it is not implied that a study, which has only one participant and uses quantitative methods, is automatically a case study.
SvaraRaderaHey!
SvaraRaderaIt is interesting how in our seminar discussions we often get back to topics from the past weeks and how through this conversations we clear up misunderstandings from the previous weeks and build the new knowledge on the top of it. I really like this kind of process of learning.
I have forgot about the fact that Ilias said about several layers of analyses in case studies and that the gathering of all of the data about the case should be performed at the nearly same time. This totally makes sense because if you are investigating a specific case, it's circumstances will change with the time and you can't assess the situation at a specific time if you have old data.
Hello !
SvaraRaderaVery interesting post, especially with the several layers of analyses. I didn't really understand that point especially in the text we had to read, but after having listened to the explanation I got it straighter, but didn't think about talking about it in my post. I'm glad you did ! It's true that gathering data at the same time is important, because if we take too much time the gathered data might not be relevant anymore as compared to the other things we've found out!
Thanks for this insightful blog post!