Five Misunderstandings About Cases

Flyvbjerg, Five Misunderstandings About Case-study research, 9.1

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Five Misunderstandings About Case-Study Research

Bent Flyvbjerg

Full reference: Bent Flyvbjerg, "Five Misunderstandings About Case-Study Research," Qualitative Inquiry, vol. 12, no. 2, April 2006, pp. 219-245. DOI: 10.1177/1077800405284363 Link to published article: http://qix.sagepub.com/content/12/2/219.abstract

Abstract This article examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research: (1) Theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge; (2) One cannot generalize from a single case, therefore the single case study cannot contribute to scientific development; (3) The case study is most useful for generating hypotheses, while other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building; (4) The case study contains a bias toward verification; and (5) It is often difficult to summarize specific case studies. The article explains and corrects these misunderstandings one by one and concludes with the Kuhnian insight that a scientific discipline without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic production of exemplars, and that a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one. Social science may be strengthened by the execution of more good case studies.

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Introduction When I first became interested in in-depth case-study research, I was trying to understand how power and rationality shape each other and form the urban environments in which we live (Flyvbjerg 1998a). It was clear to me that in order to understand a complex issue like this, in-depth case-study research was necessary. It was equally clear, however, that my teachers and colleagues kept dissuading me from employing this particular research methodology. ‘You cannot generalize from a single case,’ some would say, ‘and social science is about generalizing.’ Others...