What I learnt during week 42

Theme 6 was dedicated to qualitative researches and case studies. A week before we had already talked about qualitative researches so the main focus was on case studies. Before starting week 42, I did not have any knowledge about case studies. I heart the definition but I was not able to define what the case study is and why or even when the case studies are applied. Therefore, I read about case studies additionally: Winston Tellis, Application of a Case Study Methodology also I had some troubles understanding the sampling methods, therefore I read some explanations about different sampling methods: Snowball Sampling and Purposive Sampling.

Group discussion

After the presentations of our chosen research paper, we found similarities in analyzed papers. In our group all chosen qualitative research papers were based questionnaires and interviews. We summed up, that is one of the common ways to get data in qualitative researches. Besides interviews, qualitative research is based on observations and participatories (when the researcher becomes a part of community and analyzes the phenomena being involved in phenomena). More about participatory research method: Jarg Bergold & Stefan Thomas, Participatory Research Methods: A Methodological Approach in Motion. Another common fact found in all groups’ read research papers that none of research papers formulated hypothesis. As Ilias later explained, it is not usual, but the research can be done and without hypothesis. In the group we emphasized that the authors of chosen research papers did not write anything about piloting of questionnaires, while it is very important task before conducting the research in order to collect significantly valuable data. We ended up our group discussion with the presentations of case studies. We faced the problem defining the case study and trying to understand when it is worth choosing to carry out case studies.

Case studies

Mentioned questions were answered after the group discussion. Case studies are used when researchers do not have knowledge about the analyzing field when the object of analyzes is new for the scholars. Therefore, case studies do not state hypothesis since the researchers do not know what particularly they want to ground. In those circumstances, cases studies give the freedom to explore and raise the questions and turn the investigation in different ways but finally a solid and profound case study will lead to the construction of new theory. Due to the same reason, that scholars do not have enough knowledge about the research field, there is no requirement to define variables, goals and research categories, simply it can be said that a scholar goes to the field without any advanced understanding of research object. Case studies is a way to understand phenomena and get knowledge. It is common that gained background from the case studies is used for further researches which will contain hypothesis since scholars have already gained knowledge in order to go deep and narrow down the research. Before the seminar, I claimed that chosen case study lacked of definitions what particularly was being analyzed, and what hypotheses were formulated. After the seminar it turned out that it is not obligatory to categorize and define objects in the case studies regarding the fact that scholars do not know a lot of about the research field. Also, I learnt that case studies can analyze the unique phenomena, but also the object of research could be a tendency. For instance, in my chosen case study the analyzed circumstances of case study were unique i.e. after Haiti earthquake but the object knowledge management using social media technologies is tendency and common problem not only in one U.S. department during the crisis. All in all, I understand a case study as a very broad way to get into the phenomena and gain knowledge about the problem from direct observations and analysis.