Generating knowledge from case studies: presentation of the Case Study Evaluation tool (CaSE) and a worked example

Aim: The aim of this presentation is to discuss the potential and the limitations of qualitative meta-analysis as a method to synthesize knowledge from published case studies. Case studies contain rich, contextualized knowledge about therapy processes. Synthesizing this knowledge through qualitative meta-analysis holds the promise of developing generalisable knowledge from case studies. However, one of the challenges of this approach is the varying evidential quality of case studies. Method: The Case Study Evaluation-tool (CaSE) is developed on the basis of existing tools for the assessment of primary qualitative research in the context of a qualitative meta-analysis. The tool is applied to published psychotherapy cases from the Single Case Archive. Results: A first version of the CaSE-tool will be presented, as well as its application in a qualitative meta-analysis of published case studies on therapist interventions and therapeutic alliance building in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The first results of this study will be presented as a means to demonstrate the utility of the tool. Discussion: The CaSE-tool fills a gap in the field of psychotherapy case study research by providing a framework and method to evaluate the evidential quality of a single (clinical or systematic) case study in relation to a specific research question. Qualitative meta-analysis of case studies can provide practice-level theories that are both evidence-based and close to clinical practice