Practice-Oriented Research

Conceptual Overview and Discussion

The primary goal of case study research is to generate knowledge of the particular rather than the general. This is consistent with the day-to-day realities of practitioners in a wide variety of fields who work in particular ways with particular individuals, groups of individuals, projects, or programs. Their major interest is being able to meet the needs of the clientele they serve. Practice-oriented case study information can be readily applied or adapted to fit their particular settings.

Practice-oriented case studies are popular in fields such as anthropology, medicine, psychology, political science, sociology, management, coaching, education, public administration, and human services. Indeed, the advent of case study research has been attributed to medical practitioners who wished to understand particular individuals (“cases”) more thoroughly. Action research models and methods have been aligned with practice in social work and human service since the 1940s but have typically been marginalized or ignored in academic research methodology texts. Recently, there have been calls for more practice-based or evidence-based research, in part because of concern that the results derived from academic research have had little impact on policy or practice. This has been characterized as a problem of knowledge transfer or knowledge uptake—translating traditional research results into activities that can be recognized and adopted by practitioners.

Nick Fox outlines three propositions for practice-oriented research: (1) the pursuit of knowledge is a local and contingent process (i.e., generalization is limited), (2) research should be constitutive of difference rather than similarity, and (3) theory-building should be accompanied by practical applications. He also contends that research and theory must be committed to a political and ethical engagement with practice, what some scholars term praxis. Research cannot be understood without being situated in an “out there” reality. Postmodern and poststructuralist theories have challenged the detached-observer role in research, thus opening doors for practitioner studies that involve real-life problems and relationships.

There is some debate over whether practice-oriented case studies can contribute to theoretical understanding. Although some positivist researchers claim that only studies with sample sizes large enough to be generalized to a population can test theory, there is general agreement that a single case can generate, or sometimes disprove, a theory. Michael Bassey argues that educational case studies can be (re)constructed to focus on theory-seeking and theory-testing through the process of fuzzy generalization (a more qualitative understanding) in contrast to statistical generalization.

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Ethical questions arise constantly in practice, although there is very little written on the topic of practice-oriented research in existing professional codes of ethics. Institutional ethics review boards continue to wrestle with practitioner research proposals: issues of confidentiality, anonymity, and “power over” predominate. Through discussion with researchers, practitioners, participants, and others, innovative and flexible solutions are being developed that make excellent topics for practice-oriented case study reports.

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