Case Study Guidelines

DRAFT ideas for discussion at Leuven meeting.

Purpose(s) of Case Studies

• (Forsys general) Produce guidelines for the development and use of forest decision support systems
• Possible audiences: academic, DSS developers, forest managers, DSS funders
• types of case studies: exploratory, descriptive, explanatory

Methods - Theory development

General

• One or more existing theories vs. grounded theory
• If purposes are different, relevant theories will be too

Specific

• Does the adoption and use of DSS vary by problem type?

Methods - Case definition options

• A particular DSS over its lifetime
• 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

General

• Representative sample of problem types
• Replication strategy: same DSS & same context OR same DSS & different contexts OR different DSS & same context, etc
• How many cases do we undertake?
  • Depends on the detail needed (cases could be short or long, depending on purposes)

Specific

• asking other FORSYS members preferences; looking at country reports; looking at wiki contents; …lottery

Methods – Data sources & collection methods

• six general sources for case studies: documents, archival records, interviews, direct observation, participant observation, physical artifacts

Methods - maintaining objectivity

• How to guarantee the “fairness” in evaluating case studies?
  • Each of us works only on CS in which is not directly involved; widening the group; …; the problem does not exist

Reporting results

• Add to wiki
• Publish most developed case studies as journal articles (seek special issue?)

Other issues