Theme 6: Qualitative Research (After)

In our last seminar we focus on understanding what really is a case study, discussing each the selected papers and trying to identify whether it actually corresponds to a case study. To understand what a case study is, the first thing you have to know is that a case study seeks to answer What ?, How? And why ?, many times when a case study is made, the only thing is known is that there is a problem, however, it is not clear what is going to get as a result.

In a case study vast amounts of data which will be subsequently analysed by different qualitative and quantitative methods are obtained. Many times a case study can be classified as a quantitative method, however, it is important to note that when a case study is performed, you do  not have any assumptions or hypothesis and doesn’t try to prove or disprove any theory, it is simply a deep study of a phenomenon or problem in the environment where it happens from the point of view of the subjects involved in this phenomenon.

After having the case study, it is necessary to collect data and then analyze it, draw conclusions, and to determine how the information obtained is concluded. This type of study has its advantages and disadvantages, the main advantage is that a thorough investigation of a problem is done in a real environment, allowing get lots of relevant data for the study, however, get as much information brings a lot of complexity for the analysis as well as time to get good results. If you want to conduct a study of certain phenomena and do not have much time to do the research, this method is not the most suitable.

  Bearing all this in clear many in the seminar we conclude that a big part of the selected paper were not a case study and is a very common mistake, especially when you have no clear concept of “case study”.

Finally to complete the seminar, we conducted a small discussion about the issues that were most relevant and interesting for everyone all over the course. Most agree that the whole course turned out very interesting and in particular, issues related to the types and methods of research were the most important because of the type of career we have. However, all topics covered helped us see things very differently to how we used to see them, thereby allowing comprehensive professional formation as able to see beyond what we usually see.