Five Misunderstandings About Case-Study Research

作者：Bent Flyvbjerg · 发表于：Qualitative Inquiry · 年份：2004 · DOI：10.1177/1077800405284363 · 被引用次数：9349 · 研究领域：Forecasting Techniques and Applications、Statistics Education and Methodologies、Qualitative Research Methods and Applications

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.