A Case for Case Studies in Social Work Research

Case study research is a good fit with many forms of social work practice. Although disparaged as uncontrolled and uninterpretable, the case study has great potential for building social work knowledge for assessment, intervention, and outcome. This article defines case study research, presents guidelines for evaluating case studies, and shows the relevance of case studies to social work research. Guidelines for evaluation also are guidelines for developing and interpreting case studies that will meet the rigorous demands of scientific research and be useful to social work practitioners. Ke.y Words: case study; evaluation; guidelines; practice; research The case study is a neglected and maligned ap-proach to social work research. Rejectedmore for how uninformed researchers have used it and less for flaws intrinsic to its nature, the case study is compatible with many forms of so-cial work practice and policy research. Although case studies are not useful for estimating preva-lence rates or for probabilistic generalization, they are useful to study problems in depth, to under-stand the stages in processes, or to understand situations in context (Greene & David, 1984; Yin, 1989). Other practice professions such as medi-cine, law, and business have long used case studies for research and teaching. Case studies have pro-vided the basis for the development of psycho-therapy (Kazdin, 1981), for the science of cogni-tive development as pioneered by Piaget (1951,