Case Studies
There is a sense in which virtually every activity that we associate with sociology might be called "case studies." These activities include the generation of samples (which are made up of individual cases) for statistical analysis, the use of empirical examples (or cases) to illustrate aspects of general sociological theories, and comparative analyses of the interconnected events (again cases) that form historical and cultural patterns. Indeed, Charles Ragin and Howard S. Becker (1992) have edited an anthology dedicated to defining case studies, entitled What is a Case? Historically, the answer that sociologists have usually given to this question is that case studies are in-depth analyses of single or a few communities, organizations, or persons' lives. They involve detailed and often subtle understandings of the social organization of everyday life and persons' experiences. Because they focus on naturally occurring events and relationships (not laboratory experiments or survey data), case studies are sometimes described as naturalistic. Case studies usually involve extensive interviews about persons' lives, or direct observation of community or organization members' activities, or both.
The case-study approach is not unique to sociology but is a general approach to social life that is used by social scientists (especially anthropologists and historians), psychotherapists and family therapists, and journalists.
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