Three Types of Case Studies and Their Usefulness

This article discusses the three types of case studies - exploratory, descriptive, and explanatory - and their usefulness in research. It explains the benefits and limitations of each type and provides examples of when to use them.

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Three types of case studies (Exploratory, Descriptive, Explanatory) and the usefulness of each
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Topic: Three types of case studies (Exploratory, Descriptive, Explanatory) and the
usefulness of each
Exploratory case study
Case studies are useful research methods that are used to analyze the specific research
issues or problems with the boundaries of a particular environment, organization or situation
(Yin, 2011). There are two types of research methods, qualitative and quantitative. Exploratory
case study is most commonly used under qualitative research methods. As the name suggests,
this type of case studies are chosen for exploring the research phenomenon in a new angle or to
get a new aspect. Exploratory case studies have the purpose of finding out the answers of the
questions, such as, ‘who’ and ‘what’ (Baskarada, 2014). Qualitative methods are usually
followed for exploratory case studies and hence, the data collection methods include interviews,
experiments etc., which can be explored for the findings. The interpretations of the findings are
based on the interpretation skills and judgment of the researchers.
This type of case study is mostly beneficial to investigate distinct research phenomena,
which is characterized by lack of in-depth preliminary or groundwork research (Verner &
Abdullah, 2012). According to Newcomer, Hatry & Wholey (2015), when the formulated
research hypotheses cannot be tested due to limitations of groundwork or any specific situation,
then exploratory case studies are useful to adopt. On the other hand, as stated by Yin (2011),
these case studies are useful for gathering preliminary and qualitative information for defining
the research problems and formulate the relevant hypotheses that can be tested further.
Moreover, this type of study does not need propositions unlike the descriptive and explanatory

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case study designs. Sometimes, the exploratory case studies are useful in designing the research
questions as per the need of the situation.
Descriptive case study
Descriptive case studies are more focused and have detailed information about the
research phenomenon and its methods of research. These case studies have propositions and
research questions about the problem, which are carefully scrutinized and expressed at the outset
(Yin, 2011). Descriptive case studies are often focused on the in-depth study of individual or
groups. These types of case studies aim to investigate the sequence of the interpersonal events
after sometime from the beginning of the observation have passed. These are mostly used to
describe the aspects of the research topic and its methods of study, which often include the
characteristics of the culture or the subculture (Newcomer, Hatry & Wholey, 2015). Descriptive
case studies present the information on the topic either through quantitative or qualitative or
through mixed methodology (Wildemuth, 2016).
The benefits of descriptive case studies are that these focus on illustrating a research
through in-depth study of particular individual or group of individuals but these are not limited n
their scopes, that is, they do not need to be a part of bigger research methods. It is also not
mandatory to have research hypotheses required for quantitative study and these can address the
research questions by applying qualitative research methods (Burns, Bush & Sinha, 2014).
However, the descriptive case studies do not attempt to address any specific research questions,
rather, as the name suggests, these aim to provide a description of the information or
characteristics, that can be used as a foundation for interpreting the findings (Qi & Chau, 2012).

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Explanatory case study
Explanatory case study, as the name suggests, focus on explaining the research
phenomenon or topic based on the preliminary information. These case studies aim to provide
answers to the questions ‘why’ or ‘how’ regarding the research phenomenon, in which the
researchers do not have much control on the occurrence of the events (Blatter & Haverland,
2012). These studies emphasize on the research subjects within the contexts of the real life
situations. In other words, explanatory case studies are mostly used to describe the real world
events based on the facts and figures (Yin, 2013). This is mostly used under quantitative research
studies. This allows the researchers to examine the research hypotheses based on the data or
numbers available regarding a real world scenario and explain the research issue.
The usefulness of explanatory case study is that it also allows the researchers to apply
both the qualitative and quantities research methods, however, in addition, it is also beneficial in
explaining the causal relationships between the variables and develop a theory (Thomas, 2015).
Since, this type of research mostly focuses on quantitative study; hence, it is useful for
examining the research hypotheses by using statistical methods. The causal relationship between
the variables can be most appropriately presented by the explanatory case studies. This type of
case studies is more relevant for examining the real world business or public administration
research as these deals with the real world facts and figures (Crowe et al., 2011).

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References
Baskarada, S. (2014). Qualitative case study guidelines.
Blatter, J., & Haverland, M. (2012). Designing case studies: Explanatory approaches in small-N
research. Palgrave Macmillan.
Burns, A. C., Bush, R. F., & Sinha, N. (2014). Marketing research (Vol. 7). Harlow: Pearson.
Crowe, S., Cresswell, K., Robertson, A., Huby, G., Avery, A., & Sheikh, A. (2011). The case
study approach. BMC medical research methodology, 11(1), 100.
Newcomer, K. E., Hatry, H. P., & Wholey, J. S. (2015). Handbook of practical program
evaluation. John Wiley & Sons.
Qi, C., & Chau, P. Y. (2012). Relationship, contract and IT outsourcing success: Evidence from
two descriptive case studies. Decision Support Systems, 53(4), 859-869.
Thomas, G. (2015). How to do your case study. Sage.
Verner, J. M., & Abdullah, L. M. (2012). Exploratory case study research: Outsourced project
failure. Information and Software Technology, 54(8), 866-886.
Wildemuth, B. M. (Ed.). (2016). Applications of social research methods to questions in
information and library science. ABC-CLIO.
Yin, R. K. (2011). Applications of case study research. Sage.
Yin, R. K. (2013). Validity and generalization in future case study
evaluations. Evaluation, 19(3), 321-332.