Case Study Research, Analytic Induction, and Theory Development
Case study research and analytic induction are natural partners. Decades ago, the combination yielded theory and concepts that continue to enliven family scholarship to this day. Yet, both methods have long been disparaged and stigmatized. Case…
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Case study research and analytic induction are natural partners. Decades ago, the combination yielded theory and concepts that continue to enliven family scholarship to this day. Yet, both methods have long been disparaged and stigmatized. Case studies were dismissed as ungeneralizable and uninterpretable. Analytic induction was passed over for its links to causal, universal theory.
In this paper, I show that these criticisms are based on the philosophies of science current at the time and not on the inherent worth of the procedures of analytic induction or of the case as a unit of analysis. Without perhaps realizing it, many researchers have conducted studies based on analytic induction. Many of the procedures of grounded theory, which was developed many decades after analytic induction, originated with analytic induction.
Case-based analytic induction is a proven, generative strategy for theory-building. It's time to re-examine the past so that future research and theory-building will benefit.
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