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

Methods - Selecting studies

How to select the case studies (million dollar question)? (asking other FORSYS members preferences; looking at country reports; looking at wiki contents; …lottery… an so on)

• Representative sample of problem types

Methods – Data sources & collection methods

Reporting results

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

Other issues