Five Misunderstandings About Case-Study Research

Abstract

This article examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research: (a) theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge; (b) one cannot generalize from a single case, therefore, the single-case study cannot contribute to scientific development; (c) the case study is most useful for generating hypotheses, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building; (d) the case study contains a bias toward verification; and (e) it is often difficult to summarize specific case studies. This 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 a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one. Social science may be strengthened by the execution of a greater number of good case studies.

Cite this

Bent Flyvbjerg (2004). Five Misunderstandings About Case-Study Research. Qualitative Inquiry. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800405284363

@article{bent2004five,
  title  = {Five Misunderstandings About Case-Study Research},
  author = {Flyvbjerg, Bent},
  year   = {2004},
  journal = {Qualitative Inquiry},
  doi    = {10.1177/1077800405284363}
}

Citations in this library

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 14,229 citations exist upstream.

References

Cited by