Countersignature Customer Case Study Proposal Template Made Easy

Countersignature customer case study proposal template

hi this is shady at your professor of sustainable architecture and building technology at leas University in Belgium today I am going to talk about case studies as part of the qualitative research methods well this presentation is part of a playlist on qualitative research methods I invite you to watch previous videos on qualitative research methods as preparation for this presentation as you know research can be divided under two methodologies the quantitative approach when we look at modelling empirical and experimental and the qualitative approach where we look at qualitative research methodologies the word case study is a very contradictory word that creates a lot of confusion we can use case studies in the four major research methodology we can use case study in modeling case study and empirical research case study and experimental and case study in qualitative research in itself the word case study it's not a research methodology it's just a frame that can allow us to perform under this context or apply different research methodology so it is not a research methodology however it's important to talk about case study within the context of qualitative research so the presentation is limited to case studies done for quality with qualitative research methods if you want to talk about case studies involving statistical techniques for example then you need to not watch this video because it's not related to case studies and empirical or endo modeling or even the experimental approach another important thing to say here is that some researchers do mixed research approaches so they use mixed methodologies so they can do a case study combining qualitative and empirical research methodologies this is also possible but again I'm not going to talk about the mixed method today I'm only talking about qualitative research one you want to apply qualitative research method within a case study approach so a case study is more an approach well case study is a mix of well it's its approach it's not a research methodology it's not a research method and therefore when you do case studies you will need to define for your case study research methods and since we are here under the qualitative research methodologies and explanation or presentation you can combine for your case study different desc methods or people based methods you can combine for your case study methods related to population like you can see here observation focus group interviews surveys or you can combine it with documents you can combine both together so under the case study when somebody asked me I'm doing a case study research first question I asked them qualitative or quality quantitative if they tell me it's qualitative I ask them what will be the method you will use because a case that is an approach so then I ask them what will be the method so for a case study you can combine literature review with interviews with observations with online but in general case study is considered as a desk top research if you are not going to do any fieldwork okay who is the audience of this presentation mainly the presentation is for researcher who are preparing a research thesis dissertation conference donor per hour journal publication and the goal here is to make you able to understand what is a case study as an approach and what are the different types of case studies and strategies that I can use within my case study approach the content of this presentation is a definition what is the case study what are the approaches what are the methodologies that we can use under how to collect data how to validate data and what are the takeaway messages well the definition of case study a case study research is a investigation and analysis of a single or collective cases intended to capture the complexity of the object of the study so we look here at multiple data collection and analysis analysis methods that are adopted to further develop and understand the case shaped by context and emergent data so this is the definition of a case study now what are the characteristic of a case study the use we look at the use to go in-depth not just use to know the most important factors explaining a situation we look at the objective explore explain describe the units are most of time small so we have one or two or three case studies limited number of units and the variables can be large we look at large variables a lot of variables so if we compare case study to experiment or to survey the case study under the qualitative approach we look at exploring describing and explanation we have a small number of cases to conduct our research and we look a large number to the variables compared to the experiment and the survey experimental survey are considered more like quantitative research methodologies while case study is an approach under the qualitative research now case studies are requiring to have independent variables interaction of variables with the white context and as you can see this can be a case study for a building while we are doing a post occupancy evaluation we are evaluating the comfort and interaction of users with the living environment and in this sense we used a building as a case study and we started to use different methods to test our or to conduct our research we do measurement which is empirical we do profiling which is ethnographic observation we take pictures observation so these are methods that serve the same case study now what are the approaches of case studies first of all we look at a research question directly that reflects a problem so this is simply the beginning we can have a single case or we can have multiple cases when we have multiple cases we can do cross and between these cases now when we do why should we select only one cases one case when we do investigation for a critical case when we want to test a case so we have one single case a unique situation where we want to confirm or refute a theory this is one we do only one case or when we do not have enough information of a new situation or phenomena or a complex situation that is very context specific so we pick up a case that represent this phenomenon and highlight it all so we can look at a single case study when we have a extreme or unique case not a common case and we look at representative or typical cases in a very specific context so here we capture the condition on a daily basis so these are the conditions to do only one single case study now if you are going to select several case studies or multiple ones you have two different types of comparisons because you will follow a comparative approach which depends on the number of different cases you can have two types of situations either you have multiple cases where you do comparison with between different case studies or you can have a simple case where you do comparison of subgroups or subsystems for different case studies so those are the two approaches when you do multiple case studies analysis and for sure this comparison requires to be done over time and it needs to be compared to the original theory that you built up on your search question now what is the methodology I can use to conduct a case study approach research there is a lot of methods that you can use under the qualitative research approach first of all you can do observation interviews on the topic studied perception surveys creating profiles you can do life histories you can do log books you can do pictures you can boost do sketching you can do historical analysis these are all topics and we have a video that we presented before on observation you can watch it if you want to do nation we have a video on interviews we have a video on observation covering most of these we have a video on sketching how to do sketching or use it as a methods so these are all research methods that are qualitative that you will use to perform your case studies for sure in it also take into account the time how much time it will take me to conduct my research how can I collect data for a case study well first of all observation this is the most common way or the most common research method to perform case studies you look at participant observations you can do ethnographic research you can do systematic observation also you do interviews it's part of case studies research you can look at open-ended questions focused or semi-structured interviews for structured interviews it depends on the situation and you do something called documents and records review you start to document the situation or the case if it's people if it's a building is that the object is artifact and stood to look at records Diaries planning sections for example so these are the three major methods that you can use to generate knowledge in relation to your case study approach now what should I do when I start analyzing the data I need to prepare my data start during the data collection meaning that do not wait till the last minute you can already start collecting data on your case study and directly work on analyzing your data how will the data be organized this is a question that you will need to answer what analysis strategy I'm going to use am I going to follow a theoretical proposition am I going to develop a conceptual framework at the end it's up to you how you will formulate the findings and the outcomes of your work now how can I validate my case study and how can validate this approach that is a very subjective approach under the qualitative research context well the problem of validity in order to maintain the creativity and flexibility that is valued in this methodology you need to have clearly description of the parody or the paradigm or the theoretical position and the message should be also provided so that the study findings are not undervalued or under credited we need to find a theory to connect your case study findings and insights to otherwise the case study will vary very much easier undervalued and discredited and I do not advise students to use this approach of case study when they do not have enough experience with other research methods because it's a very yes from one side the rich method or a solid approach the case study is a rich approach however it is very tricky to prove that it is scientific so there is a lot of judgment on case study approaches they are considered as unreliable self-reported data they generally generate unreliable self-reported data they generate unsub stand they're based on substance unsubstantiated observations they are post hoc hoc unsystematic provide a post hoc and systematic summaries and they are based on speculation over generalization so keeping the validity problem in mind from the beginning will make it very important to choose this approach or not it is one of the most difficult approaches that you do case study and you generalize out of it something very difficult we do not we do not use a case study approach if we want to generate knowledge that we want to generalize no in this case we want to investigate a very specific situation or case or condition and this condition is very context specific and we want to understand this condition and therefore we use this case study approach now coming to validity in research by default doing a case study approach under the qualitative research methods makes it by default subjective the findings are subjective now it is up to you to prove that you use methods and you avoided bias to make sure that you have a valid scientific approach now we look mainly when we do case studies to internal validity because it's difficult to address the external validity and in this sense we ask ourselves how to assure the quality of our research and how to make sure that we have a rigorous approach to validate a case study approach need to address external validity and there is a lot of main disadvantages like I said it's difficult everything related to external validity not suitable for generalization so that's difficult but you can look at internal validity like the difficulties how to prove the validity of your work you can use triangulation like making three points or three different methods of testing the quality of your data and your intention and your interpretation and you can investigate the reliability by looking at open design and different methods and you can be transparent with your documentation and describe everything you did in your methodology now when we look at internal validity for case study approaches the context must be described in detail to understand all relevant elements this is one point very important another important point you need to do pattern recognition and matching you try to identify any relevance or any match or any patterns in your case studies and you can even compare it and in this sense I prefer the comparative or the multiple case study approach you know you need to look at citations of similar case studies methodology and approaches so you see other researchers who use the same approach and make sure that you are aligned with this approach and for reliability you can use the case study protocol and describe it how do you do your protocol what is your research design and you need to do create triangulation of your sources the sources of information that you collected to describe and build up your case study need to be triangulated coming from three different places to make sure that there is confidence in your outcomes well the takeaway message for this presentation on case study approach recommendation number one case studies can be qualitative and all quantitative and case studies have been considered as a research strategy or design and an evaluation method and a reporting mode so take into account it's not a research method in itself the case study must be significant when you select the case study the selection criteria must be clear and respected and ninety percent of young researchers when you ask them what was your research criteria that you use to select your case study they fail to answer this question they are unable to think in a methodological and scientific way to say first we will set a criteria and we will test this criteria validate them and then we will conduct our research to identify the case study they come first with a case study and then they try to do it the other way round so this is a very crucial point the selection criteria of your case study must be done beforehand and then you select your case study the case study must be complete you cannot have it uncomplete and you must display sufficient evidence that you try to provide and collect as much as possible evidence when you did your case study and used reliable qualitative or quantitative research method to bring data in your method and we said three major methods that you can use observations interviews documentation finally also the purpose of a case study to bring insights if I go in your results and discussion section and I do not find insights then the whole case study work is not valuable so this is the purpose we get data from a context specific case where we cannot generalize the outcome but we seek insights high deep insights recommendation number two case study methods if qualitative cannot be generalizable and that we said before ensure the bias is not evident through validation address the ethical issues describe the theoretical framework that you used for your research so your conceptual study framework need to be transparent and clear and all your message that you are used seek and follow specialist methodological advice when you develop it do not embark on this approach alone validate and validate and validate with your supervisors with your peers to make sure that this approach will be not undermined it's encouraged and it can be professionally productive and getting insights in relation to the content also the study design should be consistent with the methodology reported unfortunately a large part of people when they conduct this approach of research we found that they are describing a methodology that is not consistent with what they report so what you are doing or what you say that you will do should be matching what you found otherwise there is an inconsistency so the learned lesson here is that in-depth data collection involving multiple sources of information is the aim and the purpose of case study approach case study analysis is time-consuming depending on the case and it can be considered a robust research method particularly when a holistic in-depth investigation is conducted so I had to warm you early on on this approach but in the same time it's a rewarding approach to conduct research under the qualitative research methods finally you must learn from other journal papers look at Journal paper published work that is recent in peer-reviewed publications with a good reputation follow the approach and check how it was done to make sure that you will have a professional and validated methodological approach and that you come up with insight that can bring an added value to your research well that's the end of the presentation don't forget that the case study is an approach and it needs to be based on methods and therefore I invite you to check the previous videos or the whole video set on qualitative research methods under the qualitative methodology playlist and we buy that I would like to thank you for your attention and this was a presentation on the case study approach as a research approach under the qualitative research methodology thank you for your attention