Discussion Post

Yin, R. K. (2018). Case study research and applications: Design and methods (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

· Chapter 4, “Collecting Case Study Evidence: The Principles You Should Follow in Working with Six Sources of Evidence” (pp. 111-164)

Supporting Textbooks

You may find the six sources of evidence all potentially relevant, even in doing the same case study. For this reason, having them reviewed in this chapter, all in one place, may be helpful. For any given source of evidence, extensive further detail is available in numerous methodological textbooks and articles. Therefore, you also may want to check out some of these texts, especially if any single source of evidence is especially important to your case study. However, choosing among the texts and other works will require some searching and careful selection.

First, you can find guidance in books devoted entirely to data collection (e.g., Pole & Hillyard, 2016; Schatzman & Strauss, 1973; Wolcott, 2005). These books usually have “fieldwork” or “field research” as part of their titles and are not oriented toward specific academic disciplines. Besides reviewing basic data collection procedures, the books also offer useful guidance on the logistics of planning and conducting fieldwork. Although the books do not focus directly on case study research, the similarity of the procedures makes the books valuable because they are easy to use.

Second, other textbooks are readily available but make your choices more complicated. These books may cover only limited types of sources or even specialize in only a single one, such as field interviewing (e.g., Rubin & Rubin, 2011; Weiss, 1994), participant-observation (e.g., DeWalt & DeWalt, 2011; Jorgensen, 1989), or documentary evidence (e.g., Barzun & Graff, 2003), thereby losing the benefit of seeing how multiple sources might complement each other. Other works covering a broader variety of sources may nevertheless come with a dominant disciplinary orientation that may not match yours, such as clinical research or research in primary care settings (e.g., Crabtree & Miller, 1999), program evaluations (e.g., Patton, 2015), social work research (e.g., Rubin & Babbie, 2014), or anthropology (e.g., Robben & Sluka, 2012).

Tip: How much time and effort should I devote to collecting the case study data? How do I know whether I’m finished collecting the data?

Unlike other methods, there is no clear cutoff point. You should try to collect enough data so that (a) you have confirmatory evidence (evidence from two or more different sources) for most of your main topics, and (b) your evidence includes attempts to investigate major rival hypotheses or explanations.

What do you think are some of the cutoff points for other methods, and would they work in doing case study research?

Third, books that might at first appear to be comprehensive methodological texts also cover many topics in addition to data collection (e.g., Bryman, 2012). Some devote only a small fraction of their entire text to data collection procedures (e.g., Creswell, 2014, and 1 of 28 chapters in Silverman, 2010). Other books that do have a truly comprehensive range and that do discuss data collection techniques in greater detail are nevertheless designed to serve more as reference works than as textbooks (e.g., Bickman & Rog, 2009).

Given these variations, you must overcome the complex if not fragmented nature of the methodological marketplace represented by these various texts. To do so will make your own data collection procedures even better.

Supporting Principles

In addition to your need to be familiar with the data collection procedures using the six different sources of evidence, you also need to continue addressing the design challenges enumerated in  Chapter 2 : construct validity, internal validity, external validity, and reliability. For this reason, the latter part of this chapter gives much emphasis to its second purpose, the discussion of four principles of data collection.

These principles have received only infrequent attention in the past and are discussed at length: (a) using multiple, not just single, sources of evidence;y (b) creating a case study database; (c) maintaining a chain of evidence; and (d) exercising care in using data from electronic sources of evidence, such as social media. The principles are extremely important for doing high-quality case studies, are relevant to all six types of sources of evidence, and should be followed whenever possible. In particular, these principles will help you deal with the problems of construct validity and reliability, as previously noted in  Chapter 2  (see  Figure 2.3 ).

Exercise 4.1 Identifying Sources of Evidence in Other Case Studies

Select and retrieve one of the case studies cited in the BOXES of this book. Go through the case study and identify five findings important to the case study. For each finding, indicate the source or sources of evidence, if any, used to support the finding. In how many instances was there more than a single source of evidence?

Six Sources Of Evidence

All six sources discussed here are commonly found in case study research: documentation, archival records, interviews, direct observations, participant-observation, and physical artifacts. However, you should be aware that a complete list of sources can be quite extensive—including films, photographs, and videotapes; projective techniques and psychological tests; proxemics; kinesics; “street” ethnography; and life histories (Marshall & Rossman, 2016).

A useful overview of the six major sources considers their comparative strengths and weaknesses (see  Figure 4.1 ). You should immediately note that no single source has a complete advantage over all the others. In fact, the various sources are highly complementary, and a good case study will therefore want to rely on as many sources as possible (see the later discussion in this chapter on “multiple sources of evidence”).

Documentation

Our record-keeping society means that documentary information (whether paper or electronic) is likely to be relevant to every case study topic. 1  This type of information should be the object of explicit data collection plans. For instance, consider the following variety of documentation:

· Emails, memoranda, letters, and other personal documents, such as diaries, calendars, and notes;

· Agendas, announcements and minutes of meetings, and other reports of events;

· Administrative documents, such as proposals, progress reports, and other internal records;

· Formal studies or evaluations related to the case that you are studying; and

· News clippings and other articles appearing in the mass media or in community newspapers.

Figure 4.1 Six Sources of Evidence: Strengths and Weaknesses

These and other types of documentation all are increasingly available through Internet searches.

The documentation is useful even though it is not always accurate and may not be lacking in bias. In fact, documents must be carefully used and should not be accepted as literal recordings of events that have taken place. Few people realize, for instance, that even the “verbatim” transcripts of official U.S. congressional hearings have been deliberately edited—by the congressional staff and those who may have testified—before being printed in final form. In another field, historians working with primary documents also must be concerned with the validity of a document.

For case study research, the most important use of documentation is to corroborate and augment evidence from other sources. First, documents are helpful in verifying the correct spellings and titles or names of people and organizations that might have been mentioned in an interview. Second, documents can provide specific details to corroborate information from other sources. If the documentary evidence is contradictory rather than corroboratory, you need to pursue the problem by inquiring further into the topic. Third, you can make inferences from documents. For example, by observing the distribution list for a specific document, you may find new questions about communications and networking within an organization. However, you should treat any inferences only as clues worthy of further investigation rather than as definitive findings, because the inferences could later turn out to be false leads.

Because of its overall value, documentation can play a prominent role in any data collection in doing case study research. Systematic searches for relevant documents are important in any data collection plan. For example, prior to doing fieldwork, an Internet search can produce invaluable preparatory and orienting information. During fieldwork, you should arrange access to examine the files of any organizations being studied, including a review of documents that may have been put into “cold storage” by an organization. The scheduling of such retrieval activities is usually a flexible matter, independent of other data collection activities, and the search can usually be conducted at your convenience. For this reason, there is little excuse for omitting a thorough review of documentary evidence. Among such evidence, news accounts are excellent sources for covering certain topics, such as the two in  BOXES 17  and  18 .

BOX 17 Combining Personal Participation With Extensive News Articles

Improving educational conditions—especially for urban schools in the United States—has become one of the biggest challenges for the 21st century. How the Houston, Texas, system dealt with constrained fiscal resources, diverse student populations, and local political constituencies is the topic of an exciting and riveting case study by Donald McAdams (2000). McAdams benefited from having been a member of the system’s school board for three elected, 4-year terms. He presents a personal account, not trying to be a social science analyst. At the same time, the book contains numerous references to local news articles to corroborate events. The result is one of the most readable but also well-documented case studies that readers will encounter.

Box 18 Comparing Evidence From Two Archival Sources Covering the Same Community Events

One of the most inflammatory community events in the 1990s came to be known as the “Rodney King crisis.” White police officers were serendipitously videotaped in the act of beating an African American man, but a year later, they all were acquitted of any wrongdoing. The acquittal sparked a major civil disturbance, in which 58 people were killed, 2,000 injured, and 11,000 arrested. (A similar sequence of events has been repeated all too frequently in more contemporary times.)

A case study of this crisis (Jacobs, 1996) deliberately drew from two different newspapers—the major daily for the metropolitan area and the most significant newspaper for the area’s African American community. For the pertinent period surrounding the crisis, the first newspaper produced 357 articles and the second (a weekly, not daily, publication) 137 articles. The case study traces the course of events and shows how the two papers constructed different narratives of the crisis, illustrating the potential biases of documentary evidence and the need to address such biases.

At the same time, many people have been critical of the potential overreliance on documentation in case study research. This is probably because the casual researcher may mistakenly assume that all kinds of documents—including proposals for projects or programs—contain the unmitigated truth. In fact, essential in reviewing any document is to understand that it was written for some specific purpose and some specific audience other than those of the case study being done. In this sense, the case study researcher is a vicarious observer, because the documentary evidence reflects a communication among other parties attempting to achieve some other objectives. By constantly trying to identify these objectives, you are less likely to be misled by documentary evidence and more likely to be correctly critical in interpreting the contents of such evidence. 2

A newer problem has arisen because of the abundance of materials available through Internet searches. You may get lost in reviewing such materials and actually waste a lot of time on them. Note, however, that the problem is not that different from having an overabundance of numeric data about your case, as might be available from sources such as the U.S. census (also see discussion of archival records, next). In both situations, you need to have a strong sense of your case study inquiry and focus on the most pertinent information. One suggestion is to sort or triage the materials (documents or numeric data) by their apparent centrality to your inquiry. Then, spend more time reading or reviewing what appears central, and leave aside other, less important materials for later reading or review. The procedure will not be perfect, but it will permit you to keep moving forward to other case study tasks.

Archival Records

For many case studies, archival records—often taking the form of data files and records as in the U.S. census data just mentioned—also may be relevant. Examples of archival records include

· “Public use files” such as the U.S. census and other statistical data made available by federal, state, and local governments;

· Service records, such as those showing the number of clients served over a given period of time;

· Organizational records, such as budget or personnel records;

· Maps and charts of the geographical characteristics of a place; and

· Survey data produced by others (e.g., about your case study’s employees, residents, or participants).

These and other archival records can be used in conjunction with other sources of information in producing a case study. However, unlike documentary evidence, the usefulness of these archival records will vary from case study to case study. For some studies, the records can be so important that they can become the object of extensive retrieval and quantitative analysis (for example, see the cost data used in Application 10, at the end of  Chapter 6  of this book). In other studies, they may be of only passing relevance.

For relevant archival evidence, you must be careful to ascertain the conditions under which it was produced, as well as its accuracy. Sometimes, the archival records can be highly quantitative, but numbers alone should not automatically be considered a sign of accuracy. Nearly every social scientist, for instance, is aware of the pitfalls of using archival records based on crimes reported by law enforcement agencies, as well as the shortcomings in other social service, business, or public agency records. The same general word of caution made earlier with documentary evidence therefore also applies to archival evidence: Most archival records were produced for a specific purpose and a specific audience other than your case study, and these conditions must be fully appreciated in interpreting the usefulness and accuracy of the records.

Interviews

One of the most important sources of case study evidence is the interview. You may be surprised by this assertion because of the usual association between interviews and surveys. However, interviews are commonly found in case studies. Interviews can especially help by suggesting explanations (i.e., the “hows” and “whys”) of key events, as well as the insights reflecting participants’ relativist perspectives.

Case study interviews will resemble guided conversations rather than structured queries. Although you will be pursuing a consistent line of inquiry, your actual stream of questions in a case study interview is likely to be fluid rather than rigid (Rubin & Rubin, 2011). This type of interview has alternatively been called an “intensive interview,” “in-depth interview,” or “unstructured interview” (Weiss, 1994, pp. 207–208).

Note that this means you have two jobs throughout a case study interview: (a) following your own line of inquiry, as reflected by your case study protocol, and (b) verbalizing your actual (conversational) questions in an unbiased manner that serves the needs of your line of inquiry (see the distinction between “Level 1” and “Level 2” questions in  Chapter 3 ). For instance, you may want (in your line of inquiry) to know “why” a particular process occurred as it did. Becker (1998, pp. 58–60), however, has pointed to the important difference between posing a “why” question to an interviewee (which, in his view, creates defensiveness on the interviewee’s part) and asking a “how” question—the latter therefore being his preferred way of addressing any “why” question in an actual conversation. Thus, case study interviews require you to operate on two levels at the same time: satisfying the needs of your line of inquiry (Level 2 questions) while simultaneously putting forth friendly, nonthreatening, but also relevant questions in your open-ended interviews (Level 1 questions).

A common question about doing case study interviews is whether to record them. Using recording devices is a matter of personal preference. Audio recordings certainly provide a more accurate rendition of any interview than taking your own notes. However, a recording device should not be used when (a) an interviewee refuses permission or appears uncomfortable in its presence, (b) there is no specific plan for transcribing or systematically listening to the contents of the electronic record—a process that takes enormous time and energy, (c) a researcher is clumsy enough with mechanical devices that the recording procedure creates distractions during an interview, or (d) a researcher thinks that the recording device is a substitute for “listening” closely throughout the course of an interview.

Given the preceding points, you may want to appreciate that there can be three types of case study interviews: prolonged interviews, shorter interviews, and survey interviews.

Prolonged case study interviews.

These interviews may take place over 2 or more hours, either in a single sitting or over an extended period of time covering multiple sittings. You can ask interviewees about their interpretations and opinions about people and events or their insights, explanations, and meanings related to certain occurrences. You can then use such propositions as the basis for further inquiry, and the interviewee can suggest other persons for you to interview, as well as other sources of evidence.

The more that an interviewee assists in this manner, the more that the role may be considered one of an “informant” rather than a participant. Key informants are often critical to the success of a case study. Such persons can provide you with insights into a matter and also give you access to other interviewees who may have corroboratory or contrary evidence. Such a person, named “Doc,” played an essential role in the conduct of the famous case study presented in Street Corner Society(Whyte, 1943/1993; see  BOX 2 A,  Chapter 1 ). Similar key informants have been noted in other case studies. Of course, you need to be cautious about becoming overly dependent on a key informant, especially because of the reflexive influence—frequently subtle—that the informant may have over you. A reasonable way of dealing with this pitfall is to rely on other sources of evidence to corroborate any insight by such informants and to search for contrary evidence as diligently as possible.

Shorter case study interviews.

Rather than occurring over an extended period of time or over several sittings, many case study interviews may be more focused and take only about 1 hour or so. In such situations, the interviews may still remain open-ended and assume a conversational manner, but you are likely to be following your case study protocol (or a portion of it) more closely. For an example of fieldwork based on shorter field interviews, see Application 4 at the end of this chapter.

For example, a major purpose of such an interview might simply be to corroborate certain findings that you already think have been established, but not to ask about other topics of a broader, open-ended nature. In this situation, the specific questions must be carefully worded, so that you appear genuinely uninformed about the topic and allow the interviewee to provide a fresh commentary about it; in contrast, if you ask leading questions, the corroboratory purpose of the interview will not have been served. Even so, you need to exercise caution when different interviewees appear to be echoing the same thoughts—corroborating each other but in a possibly conspiratorial way. 3  Further probing is needed. One way is to test the genuineness of the views by deliberately checking with persons known to hold different perspectives. If one of the interviewees fails to comment, even though the others tend to corroborate one another’s versions of what took place, you might even jot this down in your notes, citing the fact that a person was asked but declined to comment, as done in good journalistic accounts.

As an entirely different example, your case study protocol might have called for you to pay close attention to an interviewee’s personal rendition of an event. In this case, the interviewee’s perceptions and own sense of meaning are the material to be understood. This type of single interview has a group counterpart, known as a focus group, first used to study military morale during World War II and later popularized in doing market research, such as obtaining consumer reactions to prospective radio programs (Merton, Fiske, & Kendall, 1990). The focus group procedure calls for you to recruit and convene a small group of persons. You would then moderate a discussion about some aspect of your case study, deliberately trying to surface the views of each person in the group (Krueger & Casey, 2015; Ryan, Gandha, Culbertson, & Carlson, 2014). To obtain the views of a larger group of persons, you would not enlarge the focus group but would instead assign interviewees to several smaller focus groups.

In both of the preceding examples, whether using an interview to corroborate certain findings or using it to capture an interviewee’s own sense of reality and its meaning, you need to minimize a methodological threat created by the conversational nature of the interview. The conversation can lead to a mutual and subtle influence between you and the interviewee—previously referred to as reflexivity: Your perspective unknowingly influences the interviewee’s responses, but those responses also unknowingly influence your line of inquiry. The result is an undesirable coloring of the interview material.

Whereas you are likely to be aware that any prolonged interviews may create a relationship between you and the interviewee—which needs to be monitored—the shorter interviews also pose a reflexive threat. You may not be able to overcome the threat fully, but just being sensitive to its existence should allow you to do better case study interviews.

Survey interviews in a case study.

Yet another type of case study interview is in fact the typical survey interview, using a structured questionnaire. The survey could be designed as part of an embedded case study (see  Chapter 2 ) and produce quantitative data as part of the case study evidence (see  BOX 19 ).

BOX 19 A Case Study Encompassing a Survey

Hanna (2000) used a variety of sources of data, including a survey, to conduct a case study of an urban-rural estuarine setting. In this setting, an integrated resource management program was established to help manage environmental and economic planning issues. The case study focused on the estuarine setting, including its description and the policies and public participation that appeared to affect it. Within the case study, participants in the policy process served as an embedded unit of analysis. Hanna surveyed these individuals, and the survey data were presented with statistical tests, as part of the single-case study.

This situation would be relevant, for instance, if you were doing a case study of an urban design project and surveyed a group of designers about the project (e.g., Crewe, 2001) or if you did a case study of an organization that included a survey of workers and managers. This type of survey would follow both the sampling procedures and the instruments used in conventional surveys, and it would subsequently be analyzed in a similar manner. The difference would be the survey’s role in relation to the other sources of evidence. For example, residents’ perceptions of neighborhood decline or improvement would not necessarily be taken as a measure of actual decline or improvement but would be considered only one component of your overall judgment about the neighborhood’s condition.

Summary.

Interviews are an essential source of case study evidence because most case studies are about human affairs or actions. Well-informed interviewees can provide important insights into such affairs or actions. The interviewees also can provide shortcuts to the history of such situations, helping you to identify other relevant sources of evidence.

At the same time, when your interviews focus on actions because they are a key ingredient in your case study, the interviews should always be considered verbal reports only. As such, even in reporting about such events or explaining how they occurred, the interviewees’ responses are subject to the common problems of bias, poor recall, and poor or inaccurate articulation. Again, a reasonable approach is to corroborate interview data with information from other sources.

Other situations typically follow a more relativist path. In these latter situations, the interviewee’s meanings and verbal reports become the main evidence. You will in fact be directly interested in an interviewee’s personal views (e.g., opinions, attitudes, and meanings), including the interviewee’s perspective in explaining behavioral events. As a result, corroborating these views against other sources would not be relevant. However, you might still want to corroborate an interviewee’s stated views by asking about them in more than one way or on more than a single occasion—and hope to receive a consistent set of responses.

Direct Observations

Because a case study will likely take place in the real-world setting of the case, you are creating the opportunity for direct observations. Assuming that the phenomena of interest have not been purely historical, some relevant social or environmental conditions will be available for observation. Such observations serve as yet another source of evidence in doing case study research (e.g., Morgan, Pullon, MacDonald, McKinlay, & Gray, 2016).

BOX 20 Using Observational Evidence

20A. Reporting Field Observations

“Clean rooms” are a key part of the manufacturing process for producing semiconductor chips. Among other features, employees wear “bunny suits” of lint-free cloth and handle extremely small components in these rooms. In their case study of high-tech working life, Silicon Valley Fever, Rogers and Larsen (1986) used observational evidence to show how employees adapted to the working conditions in these clean rooms, adding that, at the time, most of the employees were women while most of the supervisors were men.

20B. Combining Field Observations With Other Types of Case Study Evidence

Case studies need not be limited to a single source of evidence. In fact, most of the better case studies rely on a variety of sources.

One example of a case study that used such a variety is a book by Gross et al. (1971) covering events in a single school (also see  BOX 8 ,  Chapter 2 ). The case study included an observational protocol for measuring the time that students spent on various tasks but also relied on a structured survey of a larger number of teachers, open-ended interviews with a smaller number of key persons, and a review of organizational documents. Both the observational and survey data led to quantitative information about attitudes and behavior in the school, whereas the open-ended interviews and documentary evidence led to qualitative information.

All sources of evidence were reviewed and analyzed together, so that the case study’s findings were based on the convergence of information from different sources, not quantitative or qualitative data alone.

The observations can range from formal to casual data collection activities. Most formally, you can develop observational instruments as part of the case study protocol, to assess the occurrence of certain types of behaviors during certain periods of time in the field (see the two examples in  BOX 20 ). This can involve observations of meetings, sidewalk activities, factory work, classrooms, and the like. Less formally, direct observations might be made throughout your fieldwork, including those occasions during which other evidence, such as that from interviews, is being collected. For instance, the condition of the immediate environment or of workspaces may suggest something about the culture of an organization; similarly, the location or the furnishings of an interviewee’s office may be one indicator of the status of the interviewee within an organization. 4

Observational evidence is often useful in providing additional information about the topic being studied. If a case study is about a patient care group, for instance, observations about the group in action can yield invaluable data to complement interviews with individual group members (or even an interview of the group as a whole). Similarly, observations can add new dimensions for understanding the actual uses of a new technology or of a new curriculum and any problems being encountered. The observations can be so valuable that you may even consider taking photographs at a fieldwork site. At a minimum, these photographs will help to convey important case characteristics to outside observers (see Dabbs, 1982). Note, however, that in most situations—even in outdoor settings, such as photographing students in a public school playground or people walking on a sidewalk—you will need explicit permission before proceeding.

A common procedure to increase the reliability of observational evidence is to have more than a single observer making an observation—whether of the formal or the casual variety. Thus, when resources permit, case study data collection should allow for the use of multiple field persons, at least in conducting the observational aspect of the fieldwork.

Participant-Observation

Participant-observation is a special mode of observation in which you are not merely a passive observer. Instead, you may assume a variety of roles within a fieldwork situation and may actually participate in the actions being studied (see DeWalt & DeWalt, 2011, chap. 2). In urban neighborhoods, for instance, these roles may range from having casual social interactions with various residents to undertaking specific functional activities within the neighborhood (see Yin, 1982a). The roles for different illustrative studies in neighborhoods and organizations have included

· Being a resident in the neighborhood that is the subject of a case study (see  BOX 21 );

· Taking some other functional role in a neighborhood, such as serving as a store clerk;

· Serving as a staff member in an organizational setting; and

· Being a key decision maker in an organizational setting.

BOX 21 Participant-Observation in a Neighborhood Near “Street Corner Society”

Participant-observation has long been a method used frequently to study urban neighborhoods. One such study of subsequent fame was conducted by Herbert Gans, who wrote The Urban Villagers (1962), a study about “group and class in the life of Italian-Americans.”

Gans’s methodology is documented in a separate chapter of his book, titled “On the Methods Used in This Study.” He notes that his evidence was based on six approaches: the use of the neighborhood’s facilities, attendance at meetings, informal visiting with neighbors and friends, formal and informal interviewing, the use of informants, and direct observation. Of all these sources, the “participation role turned out to be most productive” (pp. 339–340). This role was based on Gans’s being an actual resident, along with his spouse, in the neighborhood he was studying. The result is a classic statement of neighborhood life undergoing urban renewal and change, and a stark contrast to the stability found in a nearby neighborhood, as covered in Whyte’s (1943/1993) Street Corner Society some 20 years earlier (also see  BOX 2 A,  Chapter 1 ).

The participant-observation technique has been most frequently used in anthropological studies of different cultural or social groups. The technique also can be used in a variety of everyday settings, such as in a large organization (see  BOX 22 ) or in informal small groups.

Box 22 A Participant-Observer Study in an “Everyday” Setting

Eric Redman provides an insider’s account of how Congress works in his well-regarded case study, The Dance of Legislation (2001). The case study traces the introduction and passage of the legislation that created the National Health Service Corps.

Redman’s account, from the vantage point of an author who was on the Senate staff of one of the bill’s main supporters, is well written and easy to read. The account also provides the reader with great insight into the daily operations of Congress—from the introduction of a bill to its eventual passage, including the politics of a congressional session under a lame-duck president.

The account is an excellent example of participant-observation in a contemporary setting. It contains information about insiders’ roles that few researchers had been privileged to share. The subtle legislative strategies, the overlooked role of committee clerks and lobbyists, and the interaction between the legislative and executive branches of government all were re-created by the case study, and all add to the reader’s general understanding of the legislative process.

Participant-observation provides certain unusual opportunities for collecting case study data, but it also involves major challenges. The most distinctive opportunity is related to your ability to gain access to events or groups that are otherwise inaccessible to a study. In other words, for some topics, there may be no way of collecting evidence other than through participant-observation. Another distinctive opportunity is the ability to perceive reality from the viewpoint of someone “inside” a case rather than external to it. Many have argued that such a perspective is invaluable in producing an accurate portrayal of a case study phenomenon. Finally, other opportunities arise because you may have the ability to manipulate minor events—such as convening a meeting of a group of persons in the case. Only through participant-observation can such manipulation occur, as the use of documents, archival records, and interviews, for instance, assumes a passive researcher. The manipulations will not be as precise as those in experiments, but they can produce a greater variety of situations for the purposes of collecting data.

The major challenges related to participant-observation have to do with the potential biases produced (see Becker, 1958). First, the researcher has less ability to work as an external observer and may, at times, have to assume positions or advocacy roles contrary to the interests of good social science practice. Second, the participant-observer is likely to follow a commonly known phenomenon and become a supporter of the group or organization being studied, if such support did not previously exist. Third, the participant role may simply require too much attention relative to the observer role. Thus, the participant-observer may not have sufficient time to take notes or to raise questions about events from different perspectives, as a good observer might. Fourth, if the organization or social group being studied is physically dispersed, the participant-observer may find it difficult to be at the right place at the right time, either to participate in or to observe important events.

These trade-offs between the opportunities and the challenges have to be considered seriously in undertaking any participant-observation fieldwork. Under some circumstances, this approach to case study evidence may be just the right approach; under other circumstances, the credibility of a whole case study can be threatened.

Physical Artifacts

A final source of evidence is a physical or cultural artifact—for example, a technological device, a tool or instrument, a work of art, or some other physical evidence. Such artifacts may be collected or observed as part of a case study and have been used extensively in anthropological research, including studies of children.

Physical artifacts may have less potential relevance in the most typical kind of case study. However, when relevant, the artifacts can be an important component in the overall case study. For example, one case study of the use of personal computers in the classroom needed to ascertain the nature of the actual use of the machines. Although use could be directly observed, an artifact—a computer printout—also was available. Students displayed these printouts as the finished product of their work and maintained notebooks of their printouts. Each printout showed the type of schoolwork that had been done as well as the date and amount of computer time used to do the work. By examining the printouts, the case study researchers were able to develop a broader perspective concerning all of the classroom applications over the length of a semester, far beyond that which could be directly observed in the limited time of a classroom visit.

Summary

This section has reviewed six commonly used sources of case study evidence. The procedures for collecting each type of evidence must be developed and mastered independently, to ensure that each source is properly used. Not all sources will be relevant for all case studies. However, you should be acquainted with the procedures associated with using each source of evidence—or have colleagues who have the needed expertise and who can collaborate as part of the case study team.

Exercise 4.2 Identifying Specific Types of Evidence in Your Case Study

Name a case study topic you would like to study. For some aspect of this topic, identify the specific type of evidence that would be relevant—for example, if a document, what kind of document? If interviews, which interviewees and what questions? If an archival record, what records and what details? If wanting to highlight participants’ different perspectives and meanings, what specific participants?

Four Principles Of Data Collection

The benefits from these six sources of evidence can be maximized if you follow four principles of data collection. These principles are relevant to all six sources and, when used properly, can help to deal with the problems of establishing the construct validity and reliability of the evidence. The four are as follows.

Principle 1: Use Multiple Sources of Evidence

Any of the preceding sources of evidence can and have been the sole basis for entire studies. For example, some studies have relied only on participant-observation but have not examined a single document; similarly, numerous studies have relied on archival records but have not involved a single interview.

This isolated use of sources may be a function of the independent way that sources have typically been conceived—as if a researcher should choose the single most appropriate source or the one that bears the greatest familiarity. Thus, on many an occasion, researchers have announced the design of a new study by identifying both the problem to be studied and the prior selection of a single source of evidence—such as “interviews”—as the focus of the data collection effort.

Triangulation: Rationale for using multiple sources of evidence.

The approach to individual sources of evidence as just described, however, is not recommended when doing case study research. On the contrary, a major strength of case study data collection is the opportunity to use many different sources of evidence (see  BOX 23  and—earlier in this chapter— BOX 20 B for examples of such studies). Moreover, one analysis of case study methods found that those case studies using multiple sources of evidence were rated more highly, in terms of their overall quality, than those that relied on only single sources of information (see COSMOS Corporation, 1983; Yin et al., 1985).

Box 23 A Case Study Combining Personal Experience With Extensive Field Research

Many people across the country by now have heard of the federal Head Start program. Its early development and growth into one of the most successful programs is traced by Zigler and Muenchow (1992). Their book is exceptionally insightful, possibly because it is based on Zigler’s personal experiences with the program, beginning with his role as its first director. However, the book also calls on other independent sources of evidence, with the coauthor contributing historical and field research, including interviews of more than 200 persons associated with Head Start. All these multiple sources of evidence are integrated into a coherent if not compelling case study of Head Start. The result is a winning combination: a most readable but also well-documented book.

The need to use multiple sources of evidence far exceeds that in other research methods, such as experiments, surveys, or histories. Experiments, for instance, are largely limited to the measurement and recording of actual behavior in a laboratory and generally do not include the systematic use of survey or verbal information. Surveys tend to be the opposite, emphasizing verbal information but not the measurement or recording of individual behavior. Finally, histories are limited to events in the “dead” past and therefore seldom have any contemporary sources of evidence, such as direct observations of a phenomenon or interviews with key actors.

Of course, each of these strategies can be modified, creating hybrid strategies in which multiple sources of evidence are accessed. An example of this is the evolution of “oral history” studies in the past several decades. Such studies can involve extensive interviews with key political leaders who have retired, on the stipulation that the interview information will not be reported until after their death. Later, the historian will join the interview data with the more conventional array of historical evidence. Nevertheless, such a modification of the traditional methods does not alter the fact that case study research inherently tries to deal with a wide variety of evidence, whereas the other methods do not.

A major rationale for using multiple sources of evidence in case study research relates to the basic motive for doing a case study in the first place: to do an in-depth study of a phenomenon in its real-world context. Being both in-depth and contextual—a context that potentially includes events over a period of time—means collecting a variety of relevant data and hence relying on multiple sources.

Using multiple sources of evidence permits going beyond appreciating the breadth of a case study’s scope. You also will have an opportunity to pursue a critical methodological practice—to develop converging lines of inquiry. The desired triangulation follows from the principle in navigation, whereby the intersection of lines from different reference points is used to calculate the precise location of an object (Yardley, 2009). Thus, any case study finding or conclusion is likely to be more convincing and accurate if it is based on several different sources of information, following a similar convergence (see  BOX 24 ).

Box 24 Triangulating From Multiple Sources of Evidence

Basu, Dirsmith, and Gupta (1999) conducted a case study of the federal government’s audit agency, the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Their case was theory oriented and examined the relationship between an organization’s actual work and the image it presents to external parties (the finding was that the work and image were only loosely coupled). The case study used an impressive array of sources of evidence—an extended period of field observations, with diaries; interviews of 55 persons; and reviews of historical accounts, public records, administrators’ personal files, and news articles—all triangulating on the same set of research questions.

In doing evaluation studies, Patton (2015) discusses four types of triangulation—the triangulation

1. Of data sources (data triangulation),

2. Among different evaluators (investigator triangulation),

3. Of perspectives to the same data set (theory triangulation), and

4. Of methods (methodological triangulation).

The present discussion pertains mainly to the first of these four types (data triangulation), encouraging you to collect information from multiple sources that also can corroborate the same finding. In pursuing such corroboratory strategies,  Figure 4.2  distinguishes between two conditions—when you have really triangulated the data (upper portion of  Figure 4.2 ) and when you have multiple sources as part of the same study but that nevertheless address different findings (lower portion).  Figure 4.2  shows that when you have really triangulated the data, a case study’s findings will have been supported by more than a single source of evidence. In contrast, when you have used multiple sources but analyzed each source of evidence separately, the procedure resembles the comparison of conclusions from separate studies (each based on a different source)—but no data triangulation has taken place.

By developing convergent evidence, data triangulation helps to strengthen the construct validity of your case study. The multiple sources of evidence essentially provide multiple measures of the same phenomenon. The phenomenon of interest may differ in different kinds of case studies. First, in many case studies, the phenomenon of interest may pertain to a behavioral or social event, with the converged finding implicitly assuming a single reality. Use of evidence from multiple sources would then increase confidence that your case study had rendered the event accurately.

Figure 4.2 Convergence and Nonconvergence of Multiple Sources of Evidence

In other kinds of case studies, the phenomenon of interest may be a participant’s distinctive meaning or perspective—because you have adopted a relativist orientation to appreciate the possibility of multiple realities. Triangulation would still be important, to ensure that the case study had rendered the participant’s perspective accurately. If nothing else, you should at a minimum have queried the same participant several times or on several occasions—which would then serve in its own way as a set of “multiple” sources.

Prerequisites for using multiple sources of evidence.

At the same time, the use of multiple sources of evidence imposes a greater burden, hinted at earlier, on yourself or any other case study researcher. First is that the collection of data from multiple sources is more expensive than if data were collected from only a single source (Denzin, 1978, p. 61). Second and more important, you will need to know how to carry out the full variety of data collection techniques. For example, you may have to collect and analyze documentary evidence as in doing history, to retrieve and analyze archival records as in economics, and to design and conduct surveys as in survey research. If any of these techniques is used improperly, the opportunity to address a broader array of issues, or to establish converging lines of inquiry, may be lost. This requirement for mastering multiple data collection techniques therefore raises important questions regarding the training and expertise of a case study researcher.

Unfortunately, many graduate training programs emphasize one type of data collection activity over all others, and the successful student is not likely to have a chance to master the others. To overcome such conditions, you should seek other ways of obtaining the needed training and practice. One such way is to work with a multidisciplinary research team, not necessarily limited to a single academic department. Another way is to analyze the methodological writings of a variety of social scientists (see Hammond, 1968) and to learn of the strengths and weaknesses of different data collection techniques as they have been practiced by experienced scholars. Yet a third way is to design different pilot studies that will provide an opportunity for you to practice the different techniques.

No matter how the experience is gained, every case study researcher should be well versed in a variety of data collection techniques, so that a case study can use multiple sources of evidence. Without such multiple sources, an invaluable advantage of case study research will have been lost. Worse, what started out as a case study may turn into something else.

For example, you might overly rely on open-ended interviews for your data and give insufficient attention to documentary or other evidence to corroborate the interviews. If you then complete your analysis and study, you probably will have done an “interview” study, similar to surveys that are entirely based on verbal reports that come from open-ended interviews—but you would not have done a case study. In this interview study, your text would constantly have to point out the self-reported nature of your data, using such phrases as “as reported by the interviewees,” “as stated in the interviews,” or “she/he reported that . . .” and the like.

Exercise 4.3 Seeking Converging Evidence

Name a particular incident that occurred recently in your everyday life. How would you go about establishing some facet of this incident, if you wanted now (in retrospect) to demonstrate what had happened? Would you interview any important persons (including yourself)? Would there have been any artifacts or documentation to rely on? Could multiple perspectives be relevant in recalling and defining this facet of the incident?

Principle 2: Create a Case Study Database

A second principle has to do with organizing and documenting the data collected for case studies. Here, case study research has much to borrow from the practices followed by the other research methods defined in  Chapter 1 . Their documentation commonly consists of two separate collections:

1. The data or evidentiary base and

2. The researcher’s report, whether in article, report, book, oral, or visual form.

The use of computer files makes the distinction between these two collections even clearer. For example, investigators doing psychological, survey, or economic research may exchange data files and other electronic documentation that contain only the actual database, such as the behavioral responses or test scores in psychology, the itemized responses to various survey questions, or the indicator data in economics. The database then can be the subject of separate, secondary analysis, independent of any reports by the original researcher.

With case study research, the distinction between a separate database and the case study report has only slowly become an everyday but not yet universal practice. Too often in the past, the case study data—mainly taking a narrative form—were embedded in the text presented in a case study report. This left a critical reader no recourse for inspecting the raw data that had led to a case study’s conclusions, because the narrative in the case study report was commingled with the author’s interpretations of the data.

The needed case study database will be a separate and orderly compilation of all the data from a case study. The data—in both narrative and numeric form—will represent all your sources of evidence. You may use some computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) or more routine word-processing tools (e.g., Word or Excel files) to arrange the narrative and numeric data. Other persons can then inspect the entire database (electronic files and portfolio) apart from reading your later case study report. In this manner, the creation of a case study database markedly increases the reliability of your entire case study.

At the same time, the existence of an adequate database does not preclude the need to present sufficient evidence within the case study report itself (to be discussed further in  Chapter 6 ). Every report should still extract enough data from the database that a reader can second-guess the interpretations and conclusions in the case study report, as in reading any other research report. Highly motivated readers can then take the further step of inspecting the database, because it contains the full array of data, not just the evidence that was extracted for the report.

Your case study database should be orderly but need not be highly polished. The database’s main function is to preserve your collected data in a retrievable form. A well-organized database not only will serve external readers but also will make your own later analysis easier, too.

Unfortunately, the problem of establishing a case study database has not been recognized by most of the books on field methods. Thus, the subsections below represent an extension of a continually evolving state of the art. The challenge in developing the database is described in terms of four components: notes, documents, tabular materials, and narratives.

Notes.

For case studies, your own notes are likely to be the most common component of a database. These notes take a variety of forms. The notes may be a result of your interviews, observations, or document analysis. The notes may be handwritten, audio- or videotaped, or in word-processing or other electronic files. They may have first appeared as jottings in a field diary or recorded in some less organized fashion.

Regardless of their form or content, these notes must be stored in such a manner that other persons, yourself included, can retrieve them efficiently at some later date. Most commonly, the notes can be organized according to the major topics—as outlined in the case study protocol—covered by a case study; however, any classificatory system will do, as long as the system is usable by an outside party. Only in this manner will the notes be available as part of the case study database.

This identification of your notes as part of the case study database does not mean, however, that you need to spend excessive amounts of time in rewriting interviews or making extensive editorial changes to polish the notes. Building such a formal case record, by editing and rewriting the notes, may be a misplaced priority. Any such editing should be directed at the case study report itself, not at the notes. The only essential characteristics of the notes are that they be organized, categorized, complete, and available for later access (see  BOX 25 ).

Box 25 Varieties of Field Notes

Jottings created during actual fieldwork should be converted into more formal field notes on a daily or nightly basis. Both the jottings and formal notes would then become part of a case study database. Four examples follow.

The notes in the first example cover an initial day spent in an urban neighborhood with a community relations officer from the local firehouse. To show how these notes were rendered, see Application 5 at the end of this chapter. The notes focus on the physical condition of the neighborhood during an initial day in the field. Similar notes were then compiled about subsequent days spent in the same neighborhood.

The other three examples come from a single book (DeWalt & DeWalt, 2011, Appendix). Each example happens to cover a different study: a study of women’s social power and economic strategies in Manabi, Ecuador; a study of the nutritional strategies of older adults in rural Kentucky; and an evaluation of a community forestry project in Mexico. All the examples show a high level of detail, reflecting a lot of hard fieldwork.

Documents.

Many documents relevant to a case study will be collected during the course of a study.  Chapter 3  indicated that the disposition of these documents should be covered in the case study protocol and suggested that one helpful way is to have an annotated bibliography of these documents. Besides providing a compact overview of these documents, an annotated bibliography also can serve as an index, facilitating the documents’ storage and retrieval, so that later investigators can inspect or share the database and so that you can readily find your own documents. (Storage and retrieval will be more efficient if you use a consistent citation format, such as the format to be used later in the formal bibliography of your case study—thereby saving you a copyediting headache when you are composing your report.)

Tabular materials.

The database may consist of tabular materials, either extracted directly (and cited properly) from a particular source of evidence or created by the research team. Such materials also need to be organized and stored to allow for later retrieval.

The materials may include survey and other quantitative data. For example, a survey may have been conducted at a fieldwork site as part of an embedded case study. In such situations, the tabular materials may be stored in computer files. As another example, in dealing with archival or observational evidence, a case study may have called for “counts” of various observed phenomena, commonly known as a windshield survey (see Miles & Huberman, 1994). The documentation of these counts, done by the case study team, also should be organized and stored as part of the database.

New narrative compilations.

Finally, you may compile your own new narrative material as part of your database. The material can take several forms. The first, already mentioned, would consist of annotated bibliographies, cross-references, or other classifications that help to organize the other materials in the database so you can retrieve them more easily.

A second type of narrative material would compile the evidence dealing with particular themes or ideas that might have caught your attention during or just after data collection. The compilations would help you to sort your evidence more methodically to determine the strength of the empirical support for these themes and ideas. This entire activity may resemble the memo writing promoted by researchers practicing grounded theory (e.g., Corbin & Strauss, 2015). Although the themes and ideas in these narratives or memos might at first appear to be somewhat isolated from each other, the compilation can provide suggestive first steps for later analyzing your data more fully.

Also potentially moving you toward analysis would be a third type of narrative, which calls for you to compose your own open-ended answers to the questions in the case study protocol. Each answer represents your attempt to compile the evidence related to the particular findings in response to one of the protocol’s questions. Depending on the nature of any given question, a compilation may either converge on the facts of the matter or strive to appreciate your interviewees’ multiple realities and their tentative interpretations. The process is actually an analytic one and is the start of the case study analysis.

The format for the answers may be considered analogous to that of a comprehensive “take-home” exam, used in academic courses. You the researcher are the respondent, and your goal is to cite the relevant evidence—whether from interviews, documents, observations, or archival evidence—in composing an adequate response.

The main purpose of the open-ended response is to document the connection between specific pieces of evidence and the various issues in the case study, generously using footnotes and citations.

The entire set of responses can be considered part of the case study database and can even become the start of the actual case study report (for a single case). However, until the responses actually become part of the case study report, they remain part of the case study database, and you should not spend much time trying to polish them. In other words, you need not perform the standard editing and copyediting chores. The most important attribute of good responses is that they indeed connect the pertinent information to the original questions in the case study protocol. For an example of a question-and-answer database, see Application 6 at the end of this chapter.

Exercise 4.4 Practicing the Development of a Database

For the topic you covered in Exercise 4.3 (covering some facet of an everyday incident), write a short report (no more than two double-spaced pages) that adheres to the following outline: Start the report by stating a research question that you were attempting to address (about the facet). Now provide your response, citing the evidence you had used (your format should include formal citations and footnotes). Repeat the procedure for a second research question. Envisage how this question-and-response sequence might be one of many in your total case study database.

Principle 3: Maintain a Chain of Evidence

A third principle to be followed, to increase the construct validity of the information in a case study, is to maintain a chain of evidence. Such a principle is based on a notion similar to that used in forensic investigations.

The principle is to allow the reader of the case study to follow the derivation of any evidence from initial research questions to ultimate case study findings (see  Figure 4.3 ). Moreover, the reader should be able to trace the steps in either direction (from findings back to initial research questions or from questions to findings). As with forensics evidence, the process should be tight enough that evidence presented in “court”— the findings in your case study report—is assuredly based on the same evidence that was collected from the case study site during the data collection process. Conversely, no original evidence should have been lost, through carelessness or bias, and therefore fail to receive appropriate attention in considering the findings in a case study. Equally important, the evidence at the earlier stages (e.g., research questions) should reflect the concepts at the later stage (e.g., findings). If these objectives are achieved, a case study’s evidence also should exhibit heightened construct validity, thereby increasing the overall quality of the case study.

Imagine the following scenario. You have read the findings in a case study report and want to know more about the basis for the findings. You therefore want to trace the evidentiary process backward.

First, the findings themselves should have tabular or narrative materials extracted from the case study database, in turn referring to specific documents, interviews, or observations. Second, these specific sources, upon inspection, should contain the actual evidence, as you might have highlighted the key phrases or words in the documents by marking them with a yellow pen. The database also should have indicated the circumstances under which the evidence had been collected—for example, the time and place of an interview. Third, these circumstances should be consistent with the specific procedures and questions contained in the case study protocol, to show that the data collection had followed the procedures stipulated by the protocol. Finally, a quick review of the protocol should indicate the link between the protocol questions and the original study questions.

Figure 4.3 Maintaining a Chain of Evidence

In the aggregate, you have therefore been able to move from one part of the case study process to another, with clear cross-referencing to methodological procedures and to the resulting evidence. This is the ultimate “chain of evidence” that is desired.

Exercise 4.5 Establishing a Chain of Evidence

State a hypothetical finding that might emerge from a case study you are going to do. Now work backward and identify the specific data or evidence that would have supported such a finding. Similarly, work backward and define the protocol question that would have led to the collection of this evidence and then the study question that in turn would have led to the design of the protocol question. Do you understand how this chain of evidence has been formed and how one can move forward or backward in tracing the chain?

Principle 4: Exercise Care When Using Data From Social Media Sources

A broad array of social media.

Most of the six sources of evidence described at the outset of this chapter can be represented by social media. For instance, you can conduct interviews electronically just by conducting an online chat with another person. Similarly, you can simulate observations by asking a cooperative colleague who might be at an important scene to take live photographs and videos of a worldly event. Engaging in chat rooms and other online group dialogues offers a kind of participant-observation, and relevant physical artifacts can be depicted in online photographs and videos, such as recorded on YouTube. In other words, contemporary social media open a whole vista of sources of evidence, including access to previous studies and research.

For some case studies, a social media source may be your actual subject of study (e.g., when you are studying the dialogue and interpersonal interactions taking place over a Skype connection). Under that circumstance, you will be sure to take great care in doing your research. However, when you are using social media not as its own subject of study but as a secondary source for collecting any of the six types of evidence discussed at the outset of this chapter—such as retrieving a document, conducting an online interview, or observing an event remotely—you need to exercise great caution.

Cautions.

The social media information can overwhelm you, so the first caution is to set some limits. Deciding how much time to spend, setting priorities for navigating and drilling into various websites, and having some idea of the centrality of the information to your research all feed into these limits. Of course, your commitment can expand or contract as you gather new information, but try hard not to let matters get out of hand.

A second caution deals with your willingness to cross-check the sources you use and the information you derive from them. For instance, Wikipedia can be an easy starting point for gaining an understanding of a new concept or topic. However, although the website makes every effort to check the accuracy of the information in its postings, specific authors may nevertheless dominate the contributions to any particular concept or topic. As a result, the material is likely to have an interpretive slant, potentially revealed when (and if) you check these authors’ other works. Cross-checking online material with other sources would be an important way of understanding a potential slant, incompleteness, or interpretive bias.

A third caution deals with your use of such sites as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and individual blogs. You should use the information from such sites with a highly skeptical view—for example, whether the person you are remotely chatting with is actually doing the chatting or in fact is being coached by someone else in the room. Similarly, be aware that claims about the authorship, places, or times attributable to some social media material may not be fully accurate. A final reminder is to inquire about the permission needed to use the materials from these sites, especially audio or video recordings, in your case study.

Summary

This chapter has reviewed six sources of case study evidence, how evidence can be collected from these sources, and four important principles regarding the data collection process.

The data collection process for case studies is more complex than that used in other research methods. You are likely to need a methodological versatility not necessarily required for using other methods and must follow certain formal procedures to ensure quality control during data collections. The four principles described in this chapter are steps in this direction. They are not intended to straitjacket the inventive and insightful researcher. They are intended to make the process as transparent as possible, so that the final results—the data that have been collected—reflect a concern for construct validity and for reliability, thereby becoming worthy of further analysis. How such analysis can be carried out is the topic of the  next chapter .

Notes to Chapter 4

1. The limited availability of print materials in low-income communities in the United States—even including signage in public places and materials in schools and public libraries—has been the subject of study (Neuman & Celano, 2001). To the extent of such impoverishment, researchers studying such neighborhoods and their community organizations (or schools) may find the use of documentary sources of evidence also limited.

2. Excellent suggestions regarding the ways of verifying documentary evidence, including the nontrivial problem of determining the actual author of a document, are offered by Barzun and Graff (2003). An exemplary quantitative study of the authorship problem in relation to the Federalist Papers is found in Mosteller and Wallace (1984).

3. Such consistent responses are likely to occur when interviewing members of a “closed” institution, such as the residents of a community drug treatment program or the teachers in a closely knit school. The apparent conspiracy arises because those being interviewed all have previously agreed to the “socially desirable” responses and appear to be providing corroboratory evidence when in fact they are merely repeating their agreed-upon mantra.

4. A serendipitous field observation occurred during fieldwork at a state university, involving the chancellor’s formal conference room. The walls of the room had 11 large pictures, depicting the 11 campuses of the state university. Only when asked why pictures of the state’s community colleges were not included was it revealed that the state university and community colleges were two entirely separate systems within the same state. Because the case study was about the attainment of advanced degrees in science in that state, the field team had not previously appreciated such separation but now understood the reasons for the lack of coordination over credits and curricula, in turn leading to a highly inefficient (and more expensive) pathway for students wanting to pursue advanced degrees by first attending one of the state’s community colleges.

Body Exercise icon by Gan Khoon Lay ( https://thenounproject.com/icon/637461/ ) licensed under CC BY 3.0 ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/ ) is used in the Exercise boxes throughout the chapter.

APPLICATION #4: Doing Interviews in the Field: Citizens on Patrol

Case study fieldwork can consist of short interviews with a variety of participants. Application 4 presents a case study whose data mainly came from interviews with the persons responsible for organizing a residential activity.

As a crime prevention activity, the residents in many neighborhoods may organize some type of patrol, either by foot or in cars. Participation is entirely voluntary, and the activity is intended to complement the surveillance offered by the local police. These citizen patrols raise new issues worthy of field-based research. Questions include “How does a patrol operate?” “What connection does it have with the local police?” and “Under what circumstances might a patrol slide from acceptable vigilant behavior to less acceptable vigilante behavior?” Application 4examined these and other related questions. 1

1.  This application originally appeared in  Chapter 5  in Yin (2012a), Applications of Case Study Research.

The Rangefield urban citizens patrol.

The Rangefield Patrol operates in a four-block area in the middle of a multiethnic community. The four blocks are dominated by renovated townhouses and their resident owners. The surrounding area, including adjacent neighborhoods, has faced constant threats from drug dealing, muggings, burglaries, and car thefts.

J. B. Compton, an artist and graphic designer, has lived in the neighborhood for 9 years and is a patrol member. He has had several personal experiences with crime since moving to Rangefield. First, he was a victim of what he described as “a spectacular burglary” in which his house was “virtually cleaned out.” Second, his car was vandalized several times, and third, tools were stolen from his backyard on three separate occasions.

Compton’s experiences are not unique. Two years earlier, there was a rash of housebreaks and muggings, and the residents in the four-block section met to discuss ways of stemming the crime wave. The area already was highly organized by neighbors who had banded together around environmental and political issues affecting them, and people already had experience working together. David High, a recognized community leader who later initiated the Rangefield Patrol, noted that “it’s a neighborhood where everyone knows each other and a spirit of unity exists.”

As an initial response to the crime wave, High said, the community at first requested additional surveillance by the local police. The community also discussed ways of increasing the residents’ “security consciousness,” resulting in many homeowners purchasing lights for the front and rear of their houses and installing burglar alarms. Although the local police promised increased protection, the residents felt no such increase, with several of them watching the streets and counting the presence of patrol officers and patrol cars.

“When we saw that we were getting no response from the police, we decided to see if we could stop crime in the streets ourselves,” High recalled. Four residents volunteered to plan a citizen patrol. When they presented the plan at a neighborhood meeting, 15 to 20 persons immediately volunteered to participate. Soon, the volunteers numbered around 60. “It was not without some difficulty that we ultimately gained support from the broader community,” High also noted. “Initially, we were charged with being vigilantes and as people with guns trying to preserve our homes.”

The original and continuing goal of the Rangefield Patrol has been to make the four-block area safer. An independent organization, the patrol performs only crime prevention activities, although many of the members also belong to the larger Rangefield Neighborhood Association that sponsors many social, political, and service-oriented activities. All members of the patrol are adult males.

Patrol operations.

At the time of the case study fieldwork, the Rangefield Patrol worked from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. every night but Friday (the local police have an augmented patrol on Friday nights). The 4-hour shift is manned by two volunteers on a rotating basis.

The most important instruction to all patrol members is to remain visible. “Visibility,” explained High, “makes residents feel secure and also deters potential criminals.” The main activities of the patrol include walking and standing around the four-block area, talking to and greeting residents as they approach their homes, escorting people into their homes or around the block if requested, and periodically checking the back alleys of the blocks. Compton said he did not feel that his patrol activities were dangerous. “You have to be careful because you don’t know if a passerby is armed or not,” he said, “but a little common sense eliminates most of the danger in this work.”

If a patrol member witnesses a crime, his instructions are to call the police, blow his whistle, but, if at all possible, not become involved in any confrontation. “We will confront a criminal if we have to,” High said, “but so far, we haven’t had to do that because our whistle campaign has been so successful. Our neighborhood’s show of force has successfully intervened in several incidents.” All residents, whether on patrol or not, carry tin whistles, and upon hearing the sound of a whistle, all neighbors are instructed to call the police immediately and then to go outside and lend assistance to the patrol and any victims. According to High, at least five or six muggings and several auto thefts have been broken up by residents responding to the call of a whistle. “Response to whistle calls has been fantastic, even late at night,” High said.

The inexpensive whistles are essentially the only equipment used by patrol members. They wear no special uniforms or badges and do not carry weapons.

Patrol organization.

The patrol’s current membership hovers around 60 adult males. A woman, however, serves as a patrol coordinator, and several other female residents assist in distributing flyers or doing other chores. The coordinator is responsible for shift scheduling, finding substitutes for absentees, keeping written records of patrol-related incidents, and convening the occasional meetings of the patrol members. In addition, she maintains close communication with the police and, as a representative of the neighborhood, frequently presents the local police with security-related requests and demands.

According to High, the patrol has no specific leadership positions or administrative infrastructure except for the coordinator’s position. “Several of the more active volunteers have emerged, through their involvement, as patrol spokespersons,” High explained, “but none have titles of any sort.” Decisions, he added, usually are made by the coordinator or at meetings of the entire patrol. Likewise, Compton emphatically asserted that all patrol volunteers can have a voice in running the operation. “There are no real patrol leaders,” he said, “and we usually have group meetings where people can criticize, make suggestions, or just talk out their problems.”

During the past 2 years, the need for patrol recruitment has been minimal. The 60-person membership has remained constant. According to Compton, to join the patrol, all one must do is express an interest in getting involved. He himself joined the patrol a little over a year ago, hearing about it through the neighborhood grapevine. Most patrol members have joined because they are committed to making the area a safe, enjoyable place to live, he said, although some residents have not participated because they feel that the job is dangerous or because they are in poor health. “Others, especially renters, just aren’t interested.” When asked what members gain from being part of the patrol, Compton replied that more acquaintances are made with neighbors, fostering a heightened sense of community spirit. The greatest rewards, however, are passive ones, he noted, “such as everyone in my family simply being safe. When things are quiet, when nothing is happening, that’s our best reward.”

The only “dues” for patrol members are the hours pledged to patrol. High estimated that he spends about 12 hours per month on patrol efforts. Compton said that he usually patrols twice each month for a total of about 8 hours. “The patrol certainly can be a burden,” he remarked, “but I try to work out my schedule accordingly.”

Each patrol member is expected to be level-headed and willing to participate. Each novice is trained by a veteran volunteer who accompanies the novice on his first few patrol shifts. No written rules or behavioral guidelines exist. “The general tone for our patrol activities was set in our planning discussions,” said High, “and we all have a sense of what we should or should not do. Foremost is an understanding of being careful for our personal self and of only getting involved in absolute emergencies.” Since the patrol has been in existence, no members have been disciplined or discharged for acting with poor judgment.

Incipient attendance problems may be starting to arise, however. High said that “people are getting bored because things are so quiet.” When the patrol first began, patrol members intervened in several muggings and attempted auto burglaries and turned away countless suspicious-looking loiterers. Now, people are beginning to lose interest because there is very little activity on the streets.

In general, the patrol seems to be widely supported by residents. “We get tons of feedback from neighbors who personally thank us for making the area safer,” High said. Compton said he also feels that most residents have a positive opinion of the patrol, but he added, “I have no idea” what the local police think about the group. “Because our direct contact is so minimal, I sometimes get the feeling that they don’t care that we exist.”

Relationships with the local police.

The Rangefield Patrol sees itself as an organization that supplements the local police and that affords its neighborhood extra protection. Although there is no routine contact with the police, the coordinator keeps the police informed of all patrol activities. The police, in turn, try to provide the area with additional patrols on Friday nights. High rated the police as “fairly good” in responding to patrol calls and said that the quality of police protection probably has improved since the Rangefield Patrol began. “That may be, though, because our neighborhood has proven to be particularly vocal,” High speculated. He added that overall police protection still is not adequate, “or we wouldn’t be out there.”

Officer Jon Lindh, the director of community relations at the local police station, said that the Rangefield Patrol has had no effect on the deployment of the local police in the area. Police officers are allocated according to crime levels in a neighborhood or in relation to police workload, he explained.

Officer Lindh said he has been in contact several times with members of the Rangefield Patrol. “As far as citizen patrols go, they behave themselves pretty well,” he said, adding that he is unaware of any police complaints regarding the patrol’s behavior or activities. However, contact between the local police and the patrol members is minimal. Officer Lindh said that the beat patrolmen stop occasionally to chat briefly with a patrol member, but that is the exception rather than the rule. He did mention, however, that patrol members have come to the station several times to talk with the captain or “to present a list of grievances about things happening in their neighborhood.”

In discussing the patrol’s accomplishments, Officer Lindh said that they primarily have been twofold: The patrol has fostered a sense of community awareness and concern and also has kept the police informed of neighborhood happenings. In general, however, he does not think the concept of citizen patrols should be supported because “these people can’t take the place of the police. They usually don’t know what to look for or how to handle a serious problem.” Basic crime reporting, he added, is a good thing. “We encourage people to do that.” He said the police also have praised other citizen patrols’ efforts at various crime prevention seminars throughout the city.

Compton said that the success of the patrol has far exceeded his original expectations. There has been a visible reduction in the neighborhood’s crime rate, and increased community cohesion has accompanied the concern about security. In discerning the effect that the patrol has had on crime in the neighborhood, High asserted that “boredom is success.” “There have been no housebreaks, muggings, or other criminal activity in the last 8 or 9 months,” he said, “and there is no telling how many potential criminals we have deterred.” Regarding crime displacement, Officer Lindh said that, although no figures exist to verify his statement, he feels that because of the Rangefield Patrol’s activities, some criminals might have avoided the Rangefield neighborhood and victimized other neighborhoods instead.

FOR CLASS DISCUSSION OR WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT

Personal Security When Doing Fieldwork

Studying citizen patrols, much less accompanying residents while on a citizen patrol, poses a potential threat to your own security. Although you will not be able to avoid unexpected events and will have to exert extreme caution and care if such events occur, some preparatory steps still can be helpful.

Two steps can be extremely important. First, you should have received appropriate clearance to do the study and to carry out your specific field routines. For citizen patrols, the providers of such clearance will be persons of authority, such as the main persons responsible for organizing the citizen patrol and also local police officials. The least desired situation would be if you had obtained clearance only from the member of the patrol whom you were accompanying. (Such need for the higher clearance has counterparts in doing other kinds of fieldwork; for instance, you would want to obtain clearance from the principal of a school even if you were going to study only a single classroom and that classroom’s teacher already had agreed to your presence in it.)

Second, you would want to let a trusted colleague (or two) know about the exact time of your planned fieldwork but request that they not call you during that period of time. As part of this procedure, you also would want your patrol companion to know that you had alerted your colleague(s), to deal with any unanticipated communication need.

Discuss other precautionary steps that might be taken when doing fieldwork in different settings. Speculate how fieldworkers should respond when an untoward event occurs (e.g., when a patrol member encounters a problem and confronts someone in some threatening manner). Should the fieldworker assist? Observe? Depart?

APPLICATION #5: Making Field Observations: First Day in an Urban Neighborhood

Taking field notes of some sort will be common to virtually every case study. The initial notes may take the form of “jottings” and not involve complete sentences. Regardless of the condition of the jottings, you should render them into more formal writing as soon as possible. Application 5 exemplifies the reworking of earlier jottings, based on the fieldwork during the early stages of a new case study.

Inner-city neighborhoods have commonly been the scene of stressful relationships between residents and first responders, in this case fire department personnel. Application 5 comes from the overnight rewriting of the field jottings made during an initial visit to one such neighborhood. The present author accompanied a fire officer who was assigned to a firehouse in the neighborhood. 1  The text is largely descriptive, but in a few places my personal commentary appears in brackets (all names in the application are fictitious, and many details, such as the names of streets or additional persons, have been deleted in this version).

1.  This application, with minor edits, originally appeared as  Chapter 2  in Yin (2012a), Applications of Case Study Research.

Lt. Harry Erroll.

Harry Erroll has been with the city’s fire department for about 25 years—the first 20 on fire duty [mostly in high-alarm neighborhoods] and the last four or five in community relations [limited-duty status due to injury]. He is one of the more unusual persons one will meet in the department, having (a) grown long hair [which he readily admits he combs back any time he is to meet with his fellow firefighters], (b) accepted a Taoist-like philosophy of life [the only button he wears is one with the yin-yang symbol], and (c) otherwise accepted the ways of the people [he also writes poetry]. A personal change seems to have occurred gradually over the past 10 years and is not based on any revelatory incident [as far as I can tell] but reflects the same interests in serving the community as those that led him to join the fire department in the first place.

In his role as community relations officer, Erroll serves one of the larger regions in the city, with three men working with him. Together, they attend community meetings, give lectures to schoolchildren and adults, and otherwise keep in touch with neighborhood events. Apparently, the four determine their own schedules, filing activity reports before and after any given period of time. The three other men cover designated subregional areas; Lt. Erroll freelances.

Firehouse No. 10.

Erroll has a desk here, which is also regional headquarters and hence has many men on limited duty on the top floor of the firehouse. I spent the first hour of my fieldwork here, with Erroll showing me samples of the routine reports, materials, and pictures that he uses.

Some of the topics we covered briefly included the following: (1) harassment [the kids tell Harry that it’s fun and, when told that they endanger other people’s lives at fires, say they now throw rocks at the firefighters only when they are clearly returning to the firehouse], (2) the slight delay in response time caused by a new need to lock the firehouse because of the union requirement that all persons be on fire duty, and (3) some paperwork in which Erroll has been trying to encourage more neighborhood kids to think about job opportunities with city agencies and to encourage the agencies to develop adequate training programs.

Neighborhood streets.

The main feature of the streets around the firehouse and in the whole neighborhood is the garbage. I saw enough garbage to last for a long while. Most of it is not in garbage cans or bags and appears to come from a number of conditions. First, there are too many cars [including abandoned ones] blocking any garbage truck’s routine access for collecting the garbage on the sidewalks. Second, the stores dump as much garbage as do the residents [evident from the number of crates and boxes among the garbage]. Third, not being in garbage cans or bags, the garbage is even more difficult to pick up. Fourth, the neighborhood’s empty lots attract dumpers.

The parking problem is a source of aggravation between the firefighters and the community because the firefighters drive to work and like to park close to the firehouse. According to Harry, they consider their own violations of the parking regulations as part of their work, and there has been at least one fight between a firefighter and a local resident over a parking space. One outcome of the parking problem around the firehouse is that the firehouse’s street is one of the dirtiest in the area.

Three community organizations [a study in contrasts?].

We visited three different community organizations: the Youth and Community Center, the Gotham Boys Club, and the Urban Task Force. The first is run by an active group of African Americans, is well furnished [carpet, desktop computers, modern furniture, sizable office copy machine] despite having a “poor” storefront, and has a good deal of business, with a staff of about four or five persons. The office is about 20 months old, active in developing neighborhood programs, supported by some sort of private foundation fund, and has been seeking further support.

The second is run by an old man, Mr. Mantos, and has a gym and other recreational facilities within the same building. The club is sponsored mostly by people with Italian names and includes summer camp programs. It is about 11 years old, and Mr. Mantos said that the first few years were the hardest because the staff had to overcome the hostility of the local gangs. The club discontinued dances about 5 years ago, but except for this change, I got the impression that things have improved, especially in comparison with the first few years. The fire department has recently started a “class” in the club, conducted every 2 weeks, in which the kids are taught about fire hazards and fire prevention. Harry characterized the club’s staff as relatively strict and old-fashioned, and he said that he and the other firefighters running the classes make sure that the staff is not part of the classes.

The third organization is run by Al Ball of the city’s youth agency and a secretary. Ball is a very “bourgeois” [Harry’s word] African American and the office is very poorly furnished. Ball had a great deal of difficulty trying to relate the fire problem to other community problems. The minutes of one of the task force meetings [I have the minutes from the past five meetings] give some idea of the routine work of the task force [it does not appear to work closely with the Youth and Community Center]. Both the task force and Mr. Ball seem to be unsettled in their roles and not really involved in the community.

Around the neighborhood.

We drove and walked around many of the worst-appearing parts of the area. Harry showed me a vacant lot that he had asked to be tarred over because it provides rocks that the kids throw at nearby buildings and firefighters, but with no result. We ran into one of Harry’s street friends, about 17 years old, who was on his way to court to bail someone out. He was not very talkative, but he was extremely friendly [he had once helped Harry in avoiding a confrontation between the firefighters and neighborhood residents]. He thought things had gotten much worse in the 7 years he had lived in the area but could point only to garbage as a concrete example of the deterioration [our conversation took place next to a pile of burnt rubbish and beer cans about 4 feet high, which he said had been there for about a month].

We drove by one of the better parts of the area, which has many frame houses and thus presumed homeowners. The street has a block association that is apparently highly active. In addition, we called on one of the schools where Harry had given a talk in the past week. During our visit, Harry gave pictures of the earlier occasion to a teacher and in return was given a copy of a news clipping from the past Sunday’s Dispatch about one of the fire dogs.

Fire hazards.

Most people mentioned poor electrical wiring as the main cause of fires. The old apartment houses were not built to accommodate irons, toasters, air conditioners, or other common electrical appliances. Mr. Ball of the Urban Task Force, being more knowledgeable about the housing situation, also said that there was little that a landlord stood to gain by improving his or her buildings, because the rent could be increased only by small amounts.

On the prevention side, Harry mentioned that there had been a well-staffed fire department program that addressed individual classrooms at various schools. As a result of union pressures, this program had been reduced. Now, Harry and the other community relations officers are usually in a school’s auditorium with a large audience, and Harry feels there is less communication with the kids than when he used to visit individual classes. He also tries to distinguish between the roles of the fire and police departments, and he finds the firefighter’s uniform to be a hindrance, because it is much like that of the police. However, Harry admits that the other firefighters probably prefer not to be dissociated from the police; many of the firefighters simply do not understand the need for communicating with the people or the kids in the neighborhoods.

Concluding remarks.

There are several things left to be said about Harry Erroll. His views, as I have indicated, are much closer to those of the community than to those of the firefighters, and he has been trying to educate both.

Harry is not highly opinionated, complains little about the services provided by other city agencies despite several frustrating experiences, and, though observant, does not stereotype his observations. I felt that I was able to see things for myself, and Harry did not in any way offer any running commentary. At the same time, he does have a few ideas, which he did try to promote.

The first is that better community relations would have to depend on more staff and money [but he doesn’t belabor the point]. The second is that the city’s employment must be opened much more to the city’s residents, especially low-income residents, and that too many of the current employees do not live in the city or in the neighborhood they serve, and hence they are parasites of a sort. Third, he feels that landlords are obsolete and that perhaps the only way of getting people involved in their neighborhood is to have condominium or cooperative arrangements, without any kind of absentee ownership or management. This is probably not a new idea, but I found the thought intriguing in light of a recent, well-publicized report calling for greater financial returns for landlords.

Harry’s involvement in his job is entirely on a personal basis. He can retire any time but enjoys his activities. His work can be understood only by observing his daily routine, as he is not prone to verbalizing it.

On the next fieldwork opportunity, I have asked him to show me around other neighborhoods that have not yet deteriorated as much as the one we saw today. We also will try to visit some of the block association leaders [there is at least one highly active group, composed of tenants, which came up in our discussions with Ball].

FOR CLASS DISCUSSION OR WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT

Developing the Research Questions for a New Study

The field notes in Application 5 came from the outset of a new study of street life in an urban neighborhood. You may have observed that the notes do not contain any research questions. Nor do the notes appear to have much substantive direction, other than the visits to the community organizations. In fact, only known at that early juncture was that the study was to be about the relationships between firefighting officers and the communities they serve—because such relationships had declined to an unacceptably low point: Residents had been harassing the fire officers (e.g., throwing objects at the officers when they were fighting a fire), sending many false alarms that caused fire trucks to respond unnecessarily, and causing other forms of minor havoc. However, at the time of the field visit captured by the field notes, no one knew how the study was to be designed or conducted or even what types of data would be collected.

Given this circumstance, tentatively define two alternative studies, one based on the case study method and the other based on a survey method. In particular, identify some candidate research questions to be addressed by each of the two studies. Would the differences between the two methods lead to different types of questions being appropriate? Conversely, if the studies were to address the exact same questions, how might the methods differ in their comparative advantages in addressing those questions?

APPLICATION #6: Assembling a Question-and-Answer Database: A Case Study of a Community Organization

A case study database organizes the data that have been collected for a case study. The database should use a format that helps the data to be easily perused and retrieved. A question-and-answer format, based on the questions that were part of the original case study protocol, serves as one way of organizing a database. Application 6 shows how this format works, although, to conserve space, much of the application has been abbreviated.

Community organizations have long been important partners in revitalization, development, and service efforts. The organizations, usually drawing heavily on residents’ voluntarism, may be found in all kinds of neighborhoods and can improve both the physical and social aspects of neighborhood life. As one result, case studies of such organizations—whether they are faith based, development oriented, or service organizations—frequently appear in the literature.

Although the community organization in Application 6 is from an earlier era that might now be considered ancient by younger scholars, the data collected at that time demonstrate the continuing relevance of community organizations. The organization was known as Jeff-Vander-Lou, Inc. (JVL) (the name was derived from the three principal streets that bounded the area: Jeff from Jefferson Avenue, Vander from Vandeventer Avenue, and Lou from St. Louis Avenue). Its work, dealing with neighborhood housing, strongly resembles the activities of counterpart organizations today.

The question-and-answer format in Application 6 shows one way of organizing a case study database. 1  In this application, the full set of questions reflected the topics of interest by the sponsors of a multiple-case study done at the time, covering 40 community organizations. The question-and-answer format also produced a major benefit: Because each database followed the same set of questions, a reader could conduct a personalized and targeted cross-case synthesis by examining the responses to, say, Question 10 in each database (because it was the same question).

1.  Omitted from the original version are numerous footnotes, citing both the 25 persons who were interviewed and the 34 documents, reports, and printed materials that together comprised the sources of evidence for the case study.

The text in Application 6 presents the full array of 49 questions from the original study that were then posed in each case study. By seeing all the questions, you can appreciate the full scope of the original databases. However, for illustrative purposes, the text in Application 6 only contains a subset of the original responses, 2  starting with the response to Question 8.

2.  Kenneth Snipes conducted the original JVL case study, under the direction of the present author, who designed and directed the original multiple-case study. This application, which originally appeared as  Chapter 6  in Yin (2012a), Applications of Case Study Research, has been edited by the present author to conserve space. The entire application originally appeared in a government publication (U.S. National Commission on Neighborhoods, 1979).

INITIATION AND STRUCTURE OF THE ORGANIZATION

Organizational Origins

1. In what year did the organization come into being?

2. What caused its creation, and who or what was the main source of support in the creation?

3. What was the original source of funding?

4. Was either mandated citizen participation or formal, legal grants of authority involved in initiating the target organization?

5. What was the early orientation of the organization?

6. What was the organization’s main leadership structure?

7. What was the organization’s membership and structure?

Organizational Evolution

· 8.  How has the organization changed since the early days?  Jeff-Vander-Lou, Inc. (JVL) has changed in terms of the size of its staff, intensity, and greater organizational structure, stemming from a general increase in the number of activities, programs, and projects. In its fourth year, the intensity of JVL’s housing development activities led to the creation of a separately incorporated entity called JVL Housing Corporation, exempted under IRS Section 501(c)(3). The organization has received tax-deductible contributions that have boosted its housing efforts. Businesses and foundations have given extensive support following the establishment of JVL Housing. . . .

Outside the housing field, important transitions by JVL have been as follows:

· In 1969, JVL set up an employment screening and referral office for the Brown Shoe Company, which had built a new factory in the JVL area.

· Early in the 1970s, JVL made public improvements through the Model Cities program, working with the Franklin Avenue Businessmen’s Association.

· Also in 1970, JVL established a housing management program.

· In 1973, day-care activities were formalized.

· Later in 1973, the JVL Senior Citizens’ Center was started.

· In the spring of 1974, JVL published its first paper, called the Jeff-Vander-Look [Look Magazine was a prominent national magazine in the United States at that time]. In November 1975, the paper was reorganized and renamed JVL News.

· In 1976, JVL began its Summer Youth Program, funded by the U.S. Department of Labor. An economic development staff was added that same year.

· In 1977, the JVL Communications Center, an outgrowth of the summer program, received funding.

Each of these activities, along with many issue-oriented tasks, caused changes in the organization, in turn helping ensure both supervision and continuity by adding professional staff and appropriate facilities. Throughout, JVL’s geographic boundaries have remained the same, and housing development continues to be a high priority.

· 9.  What were the events that led to these changes?

· 10.  Overall, has the organization become more independent or dependent?

REVITALIZATION ACTIVITIES AND THEIR SUPPORT

· 11.  What activities have been completed or are currently under way?  JVL has had many accomplishments, especially in housing development:

· 1968: Renovated first building, a 12-room house; completed five housing units repaid through a HUD [U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development] mortgage insurance program; brought 10 private insurance companies together, agreeing to spread the risk of loss among themselves through a rotation process, to meet JVL’s insurance needs to cover 88 units until the Missouri Fair Plan was created in 1969–1970.

· 1969: Rehabilitated “Opportunity House,” a complex consisting of six apartments completed at a cost of $85,000; renovated the Sheridan Medical Building, which was then operated by doctors for the benefit of the JVL area; and convinced the Brown Group, Inc., to build a shoe factory in the JVL neighborhood and began handling employment screening and referral for a peak employment level of 450 workers.

· 1967–1970: Completed a total of 81 units under a HUD program; units were sold to families in the community with interest subsidy ranging from 1% to 3%.

· 1970: Set up a housing management component with a grant from the national Self-Development of People Committee of the Presbyterian Church, allowing for the payment of salaries for the manager of the Spotts Apartments as well as a chief executive and an administrative assistant.

· 1971: Completed construction of the Aritha Spotts Apartments, a 74-unit new construction project costing $1.5 million, including a two-story office and community building (the project was JVL’s first development using a HUD rental housing program); also completed seven units of homebuyers’ housing under a related HUD program.

· 1976: Began rehabilitating 98 units (completed in mid-1978) of scattered-site housing under a HUD program in conjunction with the National Housing Partnership.

· 1978: Currently, JVL is exploring tax-sheltered syndications for further developments in the community, and three more housing packages are in various stages of processing: package #16, 88 units of scattered-site infill new construction, already under way; package #17, a 100-unit HUD-supported elderly and handicapped project; and packages #18 and #19, 114 units of rehabilitated and newly constructed units.

· 12.  How did the organization become involved in these activities?

· 13.  How were these activities planned?

· 14.  How were these activities implemented?

· 15.  Have there been difficulties with continued or new funding for these activities?

· 16.  Were different leaders/staff involved in the process of program planning and implementation as contrasted with the founding of the organization?

· 17.  What choices were required, if any, among the various activities?

· 18.  What problems has the organization chosen not to confront?

· 19.  What has been the effect of activities on the organization’s basic character over time?

RELATIONSHIP TO VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS AND NETWORKS

· 20.  Make a list of other organizations or individuals who have voluntarily assisted the organization in a major way.

· 21.  Name three major occasions on which the target organization has voluntarily assisted other groups.

· 22.  Has the organization ever worked in collaboration with other organizations in the same neighborhood? JVL is especially neighborhood bound. Housing rehabilitation, child care, and programs for the elderly all have involved joint planning and implementation with the Bethesda Mennonite Church. Mennonite labor and funds went into the earliest housing projects, and one of the JVL child-care centers is located in the church.

In other collaborative efforts, JVL’s “meals on wheels” program for the elderly was created through the joint efforts of JVL and the Yeatman Corporation. This project was first conducted with resources from the Model Cities program and later received St. Louis Area Agency on Aging funding. Similarly, the JVL Communications Center, funded in part by the U.S. Department of Labor and the Mott Foundation, is being developed as a neighborhood resource and learning center in collaboration with the St. Louis public school system. Students in the program will spend part of their regular school day at the JVL Communications Center, with 64 youngsters studying such curriculum areas as television, radio, photography, and motion pictures. . . .

· 23.  Is the organization part of a large umbrella organization?  None of the respondents or any of the written material indicated that JVL is formally associated with a large umbrella organization. Through its principal leader, Macler Shepard, JVL is, however, included on many boards and councils. For instance, Shepard is a commissioner on the Bi-State Development Agency and a board member of the Mennonite Mutual Aid, the North Side Team Ministry, and the United Way, to mention a few such appointments.

· 24.  Is the organization part of a larger citywide, regional, or national network?

· 25.  Describe the relationship between the target organization and other local organizations. JVL has the respect and admiration of other local organizations in terms of its accomplishments in housing development and other projects aimed at bettering the JVL area. However, a leader of the Lucas Heights Village housing development summarized the sentiments expressed by other respondents who are associated with the Yeatman Corporation and the Ward 19 alderman. Basically, areas of conflict and competition seemed to surface when discussing what can be accomplished as compared with what can be only dreamed about. Specifically, JVL is thought to be creating an island without adequate ties to other projects such as Lucas Heights, located within JVL’s boundaries. Also, JVL depends heavily on HUD funds. These community leaders stated that JVL is very “turf” oriented and is unwilling to change the direction of its development plans to tie into the Lucas Heights project. A political leader expressed what might be considered jealousy among several strong-minded groups. Most respondents thought that the city should assume the role of developing cooperative planning among the several groups. . . .

· 26.  Overall, have outside organizations played an important role in the target organization’s life history?

RELATIONSHIP TO CITY GOVERNMENT

· 27.  Does the target organization have any relationship with specific officials or offices in city government?

· 28.  Is the relationship formal or informal?

· 29.  Has this relationship been productive? Mayor Conway indicated that JVL has been able to persuade both federal and private sources to be supportive. He said that the city recognizes JVL’s positive contribution and that the city has no quarrels with JVL, generally. However, actions by JVL that have generated conflict were its opposition to both the north-south distributor highway and the rehabilitation of the Cochran Gardens public housing project. With the latter, JVL questioned the St. Louis Housing Authority’s plans to rehabilitate one Cochran building at a cost of $3 million, after the authority had opposed a JVL plan to use similar financing mechanisms for four buildings in Pruitt-Igoe at a cost of $5.5 million. The mayor suggested that JVL’s actions may have been to gain leverage. However, the mayor noted that the problem has been resolved to some extent, and JVL presently has a cooperative relationship with the Housing Authority.

An assistant to Mayor Conway said that the city’s relationship with JVL has declined because JVL goes to the media in the middle of negotiations or discussions. He said he thinks that JVL becomes antagonistic rather than seeking accommodation. Further, he went on to describe political alliances that have been in opposition to the 19th Ward alderman, creating other sources of conflicts.

Despite the tensions and pressures that characterize the relationship between the city and JVL, the respondent said that JVL housing packages #16 and #18 had recently been placed at the top of the review list, indicating the city’s desire to work with JVL. Despite such tensions, there are signs of a functional and productive relationship. A reporter for the Globe Democrat said that Macler Shepard has the respect of city officials.

· 30.  Are there any examples of city government having thwarted the emergence of community organizations?

· 31.  Has the city made any structural changes in its own organization to be more supportive and competent with respect to neighborhood preservation and revitalization goals generally?

· 32.  What are the target organization’s main relationships outside the city?

· 33.  Overall, has the city government played an important role in the target organization’s life history?

OUTCOMES

Condition of the Neighborhood

· 34.  During the lifetime of the organization, has there been any tangible evidence of neighborhood improvement?  Neighborhood improvement in the JVL area surveyed over its lifetime is significant, visible, and dramatic. Even those respondents whose views were critical of JVL’s methods and plans clearly acknowledged its accomplishments. Housing development, both new and rehabilitated, is the foremost achievement of JVL. Housing units are developed in what is referred to as a “package” assembled by technical experts, including architects, general contractors, lending institution executives, insurance agents, and others, under the guidance of the JVL staff and board of directors. To date, 18 packages have been developed, containing a total of 623 units of new or rehabilitated housing. The packages have ranged in size from 4 to 100 units. Months of detailed work and negotiations are devoted to the creation and development of these packages. This writer observed many of the housing improvements during several field visits to the JVL neighborhood.

Capital improvements, with the exception of dwelling units, were not as evident. In the early 1970s, JVL advocated the use of Model Cities funds to improve the Martin Luther King shopping district. Capital improvements such as street paving, new sidewalks, tree planting, bus stops, and off-street parking were undertaken at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars, according to a JVL report. In 1976, the JVL News reported that the area suffered from neglect and poor maintenance. The plaza still lacks proper upkeep. JVL has included further development in the area as part of its economic reinvestment plan. According to the JVL News, the target organization has been responsible for getting the Metropolitan Sewer District to provide more and better service to the area.

This writer also observed that sidewalks and curbs are greatly deteriorated throughout the area. Vacant lots are trash-ridden and overgrown with high weeds. JVL puts continuous pressure on city departments to combat such problems. The JVL News is used effectively to criticize when nothing is done and to announce results as they occur. Currently, much of JVL’s effort is focused on sidewalk improvements and construction of infill housing—new housing units on vacant lots.

In 1968, JVL influenced the Brown Shoe Company to build a shoe factory in the neighborhood. The factory provides 300 to 450 jobs. In the November 1976 edition of JVL News, the plant supervisor reported a 97% attendance record. Brown Shoe also has a training program for both foremen and supervisors. JVL maintains a personnel office to screen and test applicants for jobs. In terms of law enforcement, JVL summarizes resident complaints and periodically has identified the current “hot spot”—a corner or street that is then highlighted in the JVL News and reported to the police. Any subsequent improvements also are reported.

· 35.  Has there been any evidence of the organization having blocked or prevented some change in the physical condition of the neighborhood?

Residents’ Perceptions

· 36.  What do residents feel about the target organization?  Many respondents noted that the activities and accomplishments of JVL have contributed to a significant decrease in every category of crime between 1970 and 1976. The decrease is evidenced by police statistics contained in a 1977 market study.

According to a reporter from the Globe Democrat, the JVL neighborhood lacks stores, shops, and cultural events and institutions of the type that would attract young, middle-income persons into the neighborhood, with the exception of those committed to repopulating the North Side and those believing in self-help in the Black community. He said that such persons also would be willing to take more risks—referring to a widespread belief that the JVL area is unsafe, despite the reported decrease in crime. The reporter does not live in the JVL area, but his reporting assignments include JVL.

A resident whose comments summarized the sentiments of a number of persons living in the JVL neighborhood said that, to him, the neighborhood is like a frontier. He noted that the people who own their homes take better care of them. He indicated that the basics for power (unity of the people in an organized effort) are in the JVL neighborhood. Residents said they felt positive about JVL, most often citing the physical improvements in housing and the continuous advocacy role played by JVL on behalf of the area. Several respondents described easy access to participation and involvement. For example, one resident went to a monthly meeting to hear about plans to improve vacant lots. He presented an idea, and city bulldozers arrived within 10 days. The resident now keeps the lot clean.

· 37.  Do residents feel that the target organization has addressed the neighborhood’s problems?  All the residents interviewed said they felt that JVL has addressed the most significant area problems. Commercial development as well as general maintenance and cleanup are problems that were most often mentioned. Commercial reinvestment is anticipated based on the completion of the Martin Luther King Business District market study. Most respondents said they believe that JVL is presently working near its capacity, so commercial ventures must be delayed until new funding sources and other resources are obtained. Problems of inadequate city services have been attributed to the belief that the city has attempted to eliminate sections of the North Side community to allow for the development of an industrial park and a new highway.

· 38.  Have the activities of the target organization resulted in increased residential activity?  JVL activities for older adults have generated new and varied services for many elderly people. Films, speakers, transportation and escort services, shopping assistance, and welfare problem assistance bring together hundreds of elderly persons weekly. Teens and young adults have greater access to both recreational and educational activities as a result of the Summer Youth Program. The summer activities of the young people focused on the neighborhood. For instance, a visual arts project on display showed their concepts for a new recreational facility. Also, a film produced by the youth featured familiar locations in the area. The awards ceremony was filled to capacity with persons of all ages from the JVL neighborhood.

JVL holds monthly community meetings at the Mennonite Church. Respondents stated that the attendance fluctuates, based on the interest in the topics being discussed. The topics have included tax increases (with top city officials present), vacant lot programs, health issues such as alcoholism and sales tax on medicines, the election of JVL’s board of trustees, and JVL’s program plans. JVL residents contact city officials through formal meetings, telephone, and other direct interaction in part because JVL discloses the identities of the city officials directly responsible for various services. JVL publishes a telephone guide in the JVL News that gets heavy use, according to respondents. The guide includes many city hall telephone numbers. . . .

· 39.  Are there any specific instances of a resident having become more influential outside the neighborhood because of the target organization?

· 40.  Has there been increased unity or fragmentation in the neighborhood since the founding of the organization?  JVL’s contribution to neighborhood unity seems to border on the spiritual. Macler Shepard at times appears to be a preacher and the neighborhood his congregation. The respect that he appears to enjoy is reinforced by a warm admiration felt for him by persons throughout the neighborhood. Shepard himself is certainly among the unifying factors in the JVL neighborhood. JVL has a reputation for being, in one word, “tenacious,” according to respondents (including Mayor Conway and other city officials).

Race and Social Justice

· 41.  How has the organization dealt with neighborhood problems of race and poverty?  JVL’s entire roster of activities has related to the plight of poor and Black people. Its record of accomplishments deals with the problems of being poor and Black in a large and older American city. This whole case study is a response to the issues of race and poverty.

· 42.  How has the target organization responded to patterns of neighborhood transition—that is, displacement, integration, and resegregation?  JVL has attempted to retain older residents through the development of newly subsidized housing for the elderly. In other cases, JVL has sold property back to renters under highly favorable terms, after renovation. JVL has sought to rehabilitate older, but sound, structures for habitation by persons in the middle- and upper-income levels. There is a clear pattern of economic integration under way in the JVL housing development program.

According to respondents who are White, there is no racial integration occurring in the JVL neighborhood. Although they live and work at a church in the area, they have broad contacts through the neighborhood. Prospects of racial integration may be related only to a school desegregation case that has been in the courts for several years. No other prospects seem imminent. The business community in the JVL area is integrated and works cooperatively with the organization. The JVL workforce also is integrated.

· 43.  Have problems of race or ethnic division arisen in the target organization?  Leaders and other respondents indicated that such divisions have not arisen. The unique team that provided the initial leadership for JVL was composed of Black and White as well as female and male persons. Leadership and support workforce members share similar diversity today. Problems that were mentioned related to personality differences.

· 44.  Over time, have there been any changes in the organization’s policies or activities with regard to any of the issues in the preceding four questions?

· 45.  How do the organization’s leaders or members describe the accomplishments and disappointments from JVL’s activities?  [A list of 22 principal accomplishments appeared in the original case study, most of them already covered in earlier responses.]

The following are the principal disappointments:

· Demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex and, in particular, the four buildings in the complex that JVL had proposed to rehabilitate and manage

· Demolition of other landmarks, such as the Divoll School, built in 1872

· Rejection of the Opportunity House funding request by the United Way of Greater St. Louis

· Failure to cause the city to take action against illegal junkyards and other blight scattered throughout the JVL area

· Failure to win local government support for large-scale funding of public improvements to enhance housing developments

· 46.  How has the organization enhanced community leadership or increased the involvement of residents?

· 47.  Does the organization have a capability of dealing with multiple issues simultaneously?

· 48.  During the lifetime of the organization, what situations, if any, threatened the survival of the organization?  The principal threat to JVL’s survival over its lifetime has been the need to raise money to survive, according to its leaders. JVL has dealt with that threat by continuously developing new funding sources and structuring the organization’s fiscal practices along the lines of business and industry, striving for increased levels of self-generated or self-controlled revenues for a $200,000 core budget.

Other threats have come from the constant battle with local government. JVL has a history of confronting local political issues directly and mobilizing its base of support and respect in the JVL neighborhood, according to both JVL writings and respondents.

· 49.  Are there any specific incidents that best characterize the work of the organization?  Macler Shepard claims that “we dedicated ourselves to the community,” and words such as “inspiration” and “dedication” characterize much of the JVL spirit. One young adult respondent who plans to reside in the JVL area said that she wants “to build equity in the neighborhood and realize a return from it—not money, but the sense of satisfaction that comes when you go home in the evening and say, ‘I’ve accomplished something’—whether it’s picking up trash or responding to the questions of young people who involve themselves at the [Communications Resources] Center.”

FOR CLASS DISCUSSION OR WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT

Presenting an Entire Case Study in a Question-and-Answer Format

Application 6 illustrates one way of structuring your database. The format calls for organizing all the information you might have collected according to the sequence of questions in your original case study protocol. The resulting compilation represents your “responses” to the protocol’s questions, and you can now proceed to compose your case study.

Normally, you would compose your final case study by creating an alluring and more focused perspective, trying to make the findings and your methods appealing to your main presumed audience. However, there is another possibility: the organization of the case study database in Application 6 also might be presented as the final case study. Although the structure of the database may not follow any creative path, the reader—by using the sequence of questions as a guide—can nevertheless locate specific findings readily. Discuss the pros and cons of presenting your final case study by using some sort of question-and-answer format instead of the more conventional narrative. Note that even if you don’t follow the exact same sequence of questions or repeat all the questions that appeared in your database version, you will still have completed your case study.