The Case Study Method in Social Inquiry 1 B1

It is widely believed that case studies are useful in the study of human affairs because they are down-to-earth and attention holding but that they are not a suitable basis for generalization. In this paper, I claim that case studies will often be the preferred method of research because they may be epistemologically in harmony with the reader's experience and thus to that person a natural basis for generalization. Experience. We expect an inquiry to be carried out so that certain audiences will benefit- not just to swell the archives, but to help persons toward further understandings. If the readers of our reports are the persons who populate our houses, schools, governments, and industries; and if we are to help them understand social problems and social programs, we must perceive and communicate (see Bohm, 1974; Schön, 1977) in a way that accommodates their present understandings. 2 Those people have arrived at their understandings mostly through direct and vicarious experience. And those readers who are most learned and specialized in their disciplines are little different. Though they write and talk with special languages, their own understandings of human affairs are for the most part attained and amended through personal experience. I believe that it is reasonabl