Yin states in his article that “Everything is always, in the end, a case study” (673). As fallible as this statement may be at first glance, it is interesting to view the world through this perspective. In a way, are we not always performing our own internal ‘case studies’ as we truck through our lives and encounter our numerous obstacles and speed bumps? For instance, when we argue with our significant others over the phone and hang up on them, do we not often wait for them to call back to test their commitment (ie. to see if they love you enough to look past silly arguments and actions?) and thus the relationship as a whole? Therefore, we perform our own in-depth investigation and the results we obtain we record in our own thoughts for future consideration. As much as this real-life example appears to go off tangent with ‘research methods’ (not providing all the qualitative and quantitative mambo-jumbo that we are encouraged to utilize) it starts to become obvious how many parallels exist with case studies and life. Maybe in reality everything IS ALWAYS a case study?
In addition, something else that really caught my attention in Yin’s article was that the researcher chose, instead of providing just the findings, the reasoning (i.e. the “why” and “how”) behind utilizing a case study. This seems to be an interesting approach that maybe others should also choose to adopt. It is appealing to read a research article with a glimpse into the thought process of the decisions they chose to make. Through this we gain our own insight from the findings they provide and also a different lens to peer through. Therefore, we are provided with two paths; our own understandings and the original thoughts through the ‘eye of the beholder’ (i.e. the researcher).
No comments:
Post a Comment