Concatenated Theory

Conceptual Overview and Discussion

An enduring criticism of the case study as a social scientific method is its limited capacity for generalizing findings. It is argued that, in a single case, insufficient variety exists from which to form valid generalizations. True, some case studies are not intended to be generalized. An analysis of an important author, politician, community, environmental disaster, or scientific advance, for example, could be mounted for no other reason than to understand the subject of investigation. Here, generalizing beyond the case is of little interest.

Meanwhile, other case studies are conceived of as vehicles for generalization. A main goal of these studies is, through well-designed, in-depth analysis, either to discover a set of tentative generalizations about heretofore unstudied phenomena or to help validate tentative generalizations established in earlier exploratory research. Whichever goal, the problem remains the same: Concatenated research is required to fully validate emergent generalizations and their coalescence into grounded theory.

Where this metaphor of a chain of studies becomes inadequate is in its failure to suggest the accretive nature of properly executed, concatenated exploration. In the metaphor of the chain, each link is equally important. Whereas in scientific concatenation the studies in the chain are not only linked, they are also predicated on one another. That is, later studies are guided, in significant measure, by what was found in earlier research in the same area as well as by the methods used and the samples examined there. Thus each link plays a somewhat different part in the growing body of research and in the emerging grounded theory. Furthermore, the earlier studies only guide later [Page 195]exploration; they do not control it to the point where discovery is constrained by preconceptions.

A long-standing problem in case study research, which it shares with other exploratory methods designed to beget generalizations, is that concatenation only rarely occurs, or if it occurs, the process stops long before completion. There are several reasons for this failure, one of the most important being that neither the idea of concatenation nor its necessity is well understood among exploratory researchers. The term itself, by which awareness of the process and its importance might be raised, is of relatively recent origin, dating to a 1992 paper by Robert A. Stebbins.

It may be said for case studies, as well as other discovery methodologies, that enthusiasm among social scientists for concatenated exploration remains as weak today as it was in 1976 when John Lofland wrote that qualitative researchers have published relatively little about how their inquiries might cumulate or be consolidated into larger wholes. Instead, each of their studies tends to be an individual picture standing more or less alone. He noted that each is informed by a shared perspective, but not by any strict sense of specific contribution to a developing, clearly articulated theory. Part of the problem, Lofland concluded, was a dearth of studies that could be consolidated in this manner. Over 30 years later this lack is still evident.

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