CHOOSING A SUITABLE CASE STUDY FOR YOUR RESEARCH

Choosing a suitable case study for a research is an essential part of the process of carrying out a research or study. A case study simply put is that geographical location or kind of data that would make your research to be judged powerful. A research is said to be powerful if the case study of that research reflects the hypothesis for the topic under study. In choosing a suitable case study for your research or study, one has to consider:

The topic of the study/research.
In choosing a case study, a lot has to depend on the topic under study. A case study that is not in tandem to the topic may lead to an experiment whose conclusions and recommendation aren’t precise enough to be powerful and thus may lead to accepting a false null or alternative hypothesis. The topic of a study gives or shades light on the type of case study to employ in carrying out a research. 

A good example is a topic that has to do with school performance or school environment, employing a case study that falls outside a school environment may actually lead to responses from people who aren’t experienced in academic matters, the consequence of this would simply be that generalizations reached  when the data is analysed may lead to rejection of an alternative hypothesis that should be accepted or acceptance of an alternative hypothesis that should be rejected thus affecting the power or precision of the  research.  So for selecting a suitable case study, a lot has to depend on the topic of the study.

The topic of a research also tells us if a primary data or secondary data will be required for precision of the research. Certain topics especially in econometrics or economics discipline would require secondary method of collecting data e.g. published data instead of the primary means of collecting data like the interview or questionnaire method.

In other disciplines especially social sciences, the topic of a study simply put determines the case study that best fits it. For instance:
For a topic that centers on performance of firms or employees, a suitable case study should or must be an organization and the best form of data collection is through the primary means like the interview method or questionnaire distribution.
In conclusion, the topic of the research best tells us the nature of our case study and the best way to generate the data required for a powerful or précised research.

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