Crucial case study of case studies

Compared to experiments, case studies have a low reputation in social sciences. Having a dual meaning which allows them to be misconceptualized as a type of research strategy that suggests necessarily a logic of qualitative inquiry and/or a sampling technique that assumes the sample equal to one, the case study is widely misunderstood and faces a situation where the research approach as such is undervalued and discredited – symbolizing a research endeavor with low validity and, hence, of little academic merit. To show that this development, although unfortunate, is not totally unfounded, a critical sample of case studies that have been published in the leading social science journals in the past 20 years will be analyzed in detail.  As the argument of the paper develops, it will be demonstrated that despite the methodological solutions that have been proposed, even these authors contribute to the misconceptualization of the approach by disseminating papers in psychology, sociology and political science that lack clarity about what the method stands for, hardly ever refer to any of its methodologists and in few cases that they do, are so unspecific that it is impossible to understand what exactly is implied.  However, contrary to Campbell’s propagated image of case study as having just “one shot” (treatment followed by observation), these publications apply much more complicated research designs (including laboratory, field, natural and thought experiments), use sample sizes much larger than one and make large number of observations which are analyzed with statistical and non-statistical data analysis tools. Altogether, this shows a systematic, yet paradoxical development – ignorance towards methodological developments of the research tradition by scholars publishing case studies in the leading social science journals on the one hand, and use of almost any kind of methodological techniques that the researcher(s) see(s) as applicable, on the other.