2004/01/01 by Bent Flyvbjerg · 1 voice · 4 citations
Decision Sciences · Mathematics · Social Sciences · #Forecasting Techniques and Applications #Qualitative Research Methods and Applications #Statistics Education and Methodologies
paper · doi:10.1177/1077800405284363
openalex publication_date 2004/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
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.