Within-Case Analysis

Conceptual Overview and Discussion

Individual cases are of interest to case study researchers for both their uniqueness and their commonality with other cases. A central component of the analysis process in case study research is within-case analysis. The aim of within-case analysis is in-depth understanding and description of the phenomenon under study. Within-case analysis enables researchers to be thoroughly immersed in the data within a single case. This fosters the emergence of the case's unique attributes and patterns, before the researcher attempts to locate general patterns and themes that exist across all cases. In a multiple case study, each case is considered a single case. Each case's findings can then be used as information contributing to the entire study, but each case remains a stand-alone entity. This allows the researcher to understand the intrinsic aspects of a case study that are representative of other cases or because it is unique in its attributes.

Within-case analysis can result in classification (typology development), hypothesis generation, and theory development. The in-depth understanding that is generated in the analysis of a single case can suggest a preliminary theory or theoretical propositions, such as a typology of the focus of the study (e.g., types of immigrant experience). This, in turn, can provoke the researcher to conduct with-in-case analysis in other cases (single cases studied individually), or between individual cases (cross-case analysis) to further develop, validate, or refute the findings of the first within-case analysis.

Within-case analysis is both structured and focused. The focus can be on particular elements of the story that are revealed in the data, such as the context or the outcomes, or the processes that are revealed within the data, such as how decision making and sensemaking occurs in regard to a particular phenomenon. This focus is typically derived from one or more theories or hypotheses about the phenomenon under study. However, within-case analysis may also be used to develop preliminary theory that can be validated in other cases.

Within-case analysis can be used initially to develop a stand-alone description of each case and then to conduct a cross-case comparison to identify what each case has in common, as well as what attributes about each case are unique. It can also be used to develop an initial coding tree. As other cases are analyzed, the initial coding tree is used as a means to identify what codes are shared with each new case and what data in the new cases cannot be encapsulated by the coding tree. It can also shape the selection of further cases to be analyzed. Within-case analysis can also occur after cross-case comparison, as a means of identifying typographical linkages or theoretical propositions that have been suggested in the comparative analysis. For example, cross-case comparison of several cases of parent–adolescent conflict might reveal that parents of more than one child were more likely to experience conflict with their adolescent child than parents of a single child. However, the cross-case comparison might not bring to light why this is so or how this occurs. Within-case analysis would permit the researcher to examine each case for evidence to support the reasons for such a linkage.

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