About Case Study - Librarians Portal

CASE STUDY

“Case study is a complete analysis and report of the status of an individual subject with respect as a rule to specific phases of his total personality.” It is a deep and diagnostic study. Case Studies are indispensable for therapeutic and administrative purpose.  It is followed for comparison, classification, and analysis and for the formulation of hypothesis leading to further research

Characteristics

· Case study is a deep, detailed and intensive study of a social unit;

· It is a method of qualitative analysis;

· It is a comprehensive study;

· In this study all the variables and traits are linked with one another;

· In case study, there are changes for wide variety of units to be selected;

· It preserves wholeness of the units i.e. it is an approach which view any social unit as a whole;

· In case study complex factors are studied; and

· Traits are the subject matter of the study.

Importance of Case Study

· It helps in formulating valid hypothesis

· It is of immense value in forming questionnaires and schedules;

· Discovering deviant units;

· It is intensive in nature; and

· It is very comprehensive.

Advantages

· It helps to probe the entire life span of a social unit intensively and to analyse the complex factors that are influencing the social unit.

· Case data are vivid, absorbing and tend to reproduce a person’s social attitudes and values.

· Case Study facilities to understand everything about a social unit and the variety of habits, traits and qualities combined in a social unit.

· Case Study helps to secure a detailed information about the growth of the unit, group structure, individual life pattern etc.,

Disadvantages

· It is inefficient in situations, which are already structured where the important variables are identified.

· It often assumes that all the past experiences of the individual or past happenings in the situation have contributed to the final result.

· It depends upon the recall of others as to what had happened, thereby giving room for fallibility of memory.

· Usually undesirable traits being over-emphasized where by desirable characteristics given a low priority resulting in typical situation.

· There is possibility of getting disturbed due to incompleteness of data in certain circumstances.

Limitations

· Does not provide universal impersonal and common aspects of a phenomenon

· Tendency for a researcher to draw generalization after studying a few cases, which may not be relevant to all situations

· Tendency to over-emphasize the unique or universal events

· Collected subjective data do not lend themselves to quantitative check

· Time consuming, costly and wasteful in certain cases

· Temptation to ignore the basic principles of research design is often seen