2011-11 Leuven Case Study Agenda

Desired result of Nov 2011 case study activities

• Agreement on the outline of a common plan for conducting the case studies, including decisions on purposes, methods (case definition, sampling, analysis), and reporting results
• Time available: 3 hours

Case study time at meeting

How to maneuver the November meeting discussions/work if we are something like 35 persons with 2 rather big rooms at our disposal (and perhaps smaller groups can find some space in the surroundings as well)? Having a common discussion all along might be difficult (or not so productive). Depending on how we divide the sessions, one may start thinking about how to compose the guidelines out of your material.

• [30-60 minutes] begin with a brief common presentation and discussion on progress to date. Outline tasks for meeting subgroups (overall task is to build more details on framework for conducting case studies). Answer any general questions.
• [60-90 minutes] Break into ~4 subgroups with ~8 people each, trying to get even representation from each WG in each, including one of us in each (because it looks like case studies have already been discussed by each WG in Greece, now we could try to synthesize across WGs). All groups would have the same assignment: to review the current state of the case study framework, provide feedback, and develop more detail.
• [30 min] Groups would report a summary of their suggestions back to whole group
• [30 min] Synthesis discussion

Topics for Discussion

* Question: What topics to cover as whole group and which as subgroups?

Purpose(s) of Case Studies

• (Forsys general) Collect empirical evidence about best ways to design and use forest decision support systems
• 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? (brief comments by...)
  • Jose (country reports)
  • Christian (wiki material)
  • STC (material requested from members of the WGs or countries)

Methods - Theory development

• General types of case studies: exploratory, descriptive, explanatory
• One or more existing theories vs. grounded theory
• If purposes are different, relevant theories will be too
  • Use some common methodological structures for comparability between countries and for links to other Forsys products (like problem types)

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?

Back in plenum

• Group reporting results
• Synthesis discussion
  • Role of other WGs
  • How to collaborate across countries and WGs during development
  • STC and others responsibility
  • Time line/deadlines/milestones (which we might have to make a draft of before the meeting)