Case Study Guidelines
From COST Action FP0804: FORSYS
Revision as of 07:23, 4 October 2011 by SeanGordon (Talk | contribs)
Contents
Purpose(s) of Case Studies
- (Forsys general) Produce decision support guidelines
- Specific purposes determined by each country (like country reports) or do we decide on a common set of goals?
- Possible audiences: academic, DSS developers, managers, funders
- How could we build on other Forsys work?
- Country reports (continue to implement individual country purposes chosen)
- Use some common methodological structures for comparability (like problem types)
- General types of case studies: exploratory, descriptive, explanatory
Methods - Theory development
- One or more existing theories vs. grounded theory
- If purposes are different, relevant theories will be too
Methods - Case definition options
- A particular DSS
- The application of a single DSS to a particular problem
- The application of DSS (possibly multiple) in a problem domain (eg fire)
Methods - Selecting studies
- How many are feasible?
- Replication strategy
- same DSS & same context, same DSS & different contexts, different DSS & same context, etc
Methods – Data sources & collection methods
- Six general sources: documents, archival records, interviews, direct observation, participant observation, physical artifacts
Reporting results
- Format depends somewhat on target audiences: academic, DSS developers, managers, funders
- Formats: wiki, country reports/book, other?
Other issues
- Role of other WGs
- How to collaborate across countries during development
