Author Archives: Andrew Gutierrez

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About Andrew Gutierrez

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The Case Study

Case Study research focuses on the events surrounding one case in a contemporary context or setting. Creswell describes the qualitative approach to a case study with the investigator focusing on one or more cases over time through detailed, in-depth data collection involving multiple sources of information (Creswell 2013). These multiple sources of data come in the form of textual, visual, and audio files regarding the case or cases. The use of multiple sources of information results in triangulation which contributes to the validity of an investigators research.

The intent of the case study is to provide in-depth understanding through data analysis of multiple sources of information describing all details of the case where themes or issues are identified by the researcher (Creswell 2013). The types of case studies are as follows:

  • Intrinsic: a unique case that has unusual interest in and of itself and needs to be described and detailed.
  • Instrumental: a study on a selected case that aims to understand a specific issue, problem or concern
  • Collective: multiple cases selected to illustrate an issue, problem or concern.

Case studies are relevant in conduction social research because they recount the experience surrounding a particular event bound by time and place to inform others about it.  Stake writes, “case studies will often be the preferred method of research because they may be epistemologically in harmony with the reader’s experience and thus to that person a natural basis for generalization” (Stake 2009). While case studies may be specific to one case or select cases readers are able to understand issues or problems vicariously.  Case studies feature descriptions in an often narrative format featuring personal observations from the researcher and verbatim quotation with comparisons that are implicit rather than explicit.

 

Creswell, J.W. (2013). Qualitative Inquiry & Research Design: Choosing Among The Five Approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

Stake, R. (2009).  The Case Study Methong in Social Inquiry. In R. Gomm, M. Hammersley, & P. Foster (Eds.), Case Study Method. (pp. 18-27). SAGE Publications Ltd. doi: 10.4135/9780857024367.d5

A Phenomenological Study on Gay Latinos and how they perceive gay-friendly advertising

My choice to study Gay Latinos’ perception on gay-friendly advertising came after reading an article about the gay community as a niche market that companies are attempting to reach.  Most gay-friendly advertisements are directed at gay men but  that doesn’t necessarily reach the lesbian community. Aside from that, most advertisements directed at gay men feature mostly white men.  I know how I felt as a gay Latino about gay advertisements, but I wanted to find out the perception other gay Latinos had and how they experienced it.

The Latino community in the US is racially diverse, but has a collective culture where language, customs, and perceptions are the same. Therefore, racial categorization can be difficult because it’s possible for a Latin person to identify as White because of their race, but they may not feel White. So,  with this in mind I wanted to see how some gay Latinos felt about gay-friendly advertisements, whether they identified with them, and see if they identified more as a Latino consumer or a gay consumer.

I held a focus group with 2 participants (it was supposed to be 3 but the third person was sick) where we spoke for approx. 1 hr to discuss being a gay Latino and gay-friendly advertising.  During the focus group I showed the participants 2 advertisements to get their commentary. One was an ad from Miller Lite  which was a direct  advertisement to the gay community. The second was an “in-group” advertisement, which is an ad that features language or imagery that is unique to the market it’s aimed at but can go unnoticed by other consumers.

The focus group went really well and I found out that the participants were unaffected by gay-friendly advertisements if it was something they would buy anyway. One of my participants said  “Seeing a Latino in a gay-friendly advertisement would be nice but it  wouldn’t change my mind about buying something because Latinos aren’t featured in most advertising anyway”. It wasn’t what I thought I would get but interesting nonetheless.

Below you’ll see the advertisements I used

Courtesy of Miller LIte

Courtesy of Miller LIte

Courtesy of Travelocity

Courtesy of Travelocity

 

Chapter 11: “Turning the Story” and Conclusion

 

This chapter focuses on “turning the story” from studies and using a different approach to conduct a qualitative study. The author describes Figure 11.1 (p. 270) as encompassing the three main factors of a qualitative study.  The combination of  the following are components of a qualitative study and can be changed to turn the story: Approach to Inquiry, Research Design, and  Assumptions, Worldviews, & Theories .

The author uses the gunman case study in Appendix F as reviewed in Chapter 5  to show us how researchers can turn a study from one type to another type and perform completely different studies.  Essentially, the main way for researches to approach telling different stories from one study is by reverting back to the general problem or issue that the study addresses.  Refining and revision of the main issue or problem leads to a new study with a different approach.

 

A Case Study

The initial case study is about campus reaction to a gunman incident  where a student  tried to shoot a gun at his classmates.   After discussing the initial problem of campus violence and explaining the events that happened during the attempted attack,  the researchers gathered data with interviews, observations, documents, and audiovisual materials.  The layering of themes that came up during the study  (ex: denial, fear, safety, campus planning)  boiled down to a psychological theme and organizational theme which were addressed in  the study.

A Narrative Study

The narrative study that  could emerge from the initial case study focuses on the teacher who was present at the time of the attempted attack. He and the student were both African American and the author proposes how the story could be turned into a narrative of the professor.  If the researcher wanted to do this, the approach would have been to restory the stories into an account of the gunman that followed a chronology of events.   The researcher would have examined life events, or epiphanies, picked out from storied told to him by the professor.  The story would have different themes from the original study (ex: race, discrimination, marginality).  The study could have taken a plethora of routes depending on which story the researcher wanted to get.

A Phenomenology Study

Narrative study involves studying a single individual as in a biography but on the other hand a phenomenology study involves studying several individual students and examines a psychological phenomenology. The phenomenon that you are study could involve studying human experiences and feelings such as fear. One can engage in extensive interviews and use the steps described in Moustakes (1994) to analyze them. While writing the results you can include a description of your own experiences and then proceed to describe the significant statements of the people that you interviewed. These statements can then be clustered into broader themes and finally ending with a long paragraph combining both textual (what they experienced) and structural descriptions (how they experienced).

A Grounded Theory Study

Grounded Theoretical study involves developing a theory around a process. The researcher’s intent would be to develop or generate a theory. The results section can be presented as a visual model which includes casual conditions that influenced the central category, intervening factors and strategies surrounding it.  One can validate their hypothesis by judging the thoroughness of the research. For an example refer the gunman example listed in the chapter.

An Ethnography Study

Ethnography involves creating a description and understanding the workings of a ‘culture sharing group’. It involves looking at a particular incident and how it triggered responses from the members of the community.  By doing this one can study micro cultures in the group and observe shared patterns of behavior.  This data collection would depend heavily on interviews and observations.

 

The focus of the study helps shape its design. The differences between the five approaches to inquiry, in terms of foci, are clearly outlined in Table 4.1 of this book.  For example, a single case study of an individual can be studied either as a biography or a case study. A small bounded system such as an event, a program, or an activity can be approached as a case study whereas a cultural system, including cultural behavior, language and artifacts, should be studied as ethnography.

Qualitative research has a predominant interpretative element because what we write or produce in the research comes from our personal experiences and our role in the research process. The findings of the research are as interpreted by us and the participants, readers and others reading our writing will have their own interpretations. The language used in the research design procedure of a study depends on the approach to inquiry. The appropriate terms to be used in various phases of qualitative research are discussed in chapters 6 and 9. Appendix A in this book also illustrates a list of words that researchers might use for their research design.

The participants who are studied reflect the approach to research. This is explained in Chapter 7 which also highlights the differences between various approaches depending on the extent of data collection. The approaches to inquiry vary greatly in the data analysis phase, ranging from unstructured (ethnography, narrative, interpretative) to structured approaches (grounded theory, phenomenology, case study). These procedures define the overall structure of data analysis and the extent to which the data would be described during analysis (Chapter 8). The final written research and the rhetorical structures used in the narrative also depend on the approach to inquiry (Chapter 9). The kind of approach adopted also defines the criteria to judge the quality of the study (Chapter 10).

Creswell recommends designing one’s study based on one of the approaches described in this book. He also suggests that even though one might choose to mix together different approaches, but it is important that those approaches be sorted out first before combining. According to Creswell, a study designed using one on the approaches enhances the sophistication of the project and conveys a standard of methodological expertise.

 

Andrew

I am currently a student in the Corporate Communications MA program at Baruch College.  In addition to being a graduate student I also work for Allstate Insurance Company, and live in Harlem.

harlem

 

 



Comments:

"This chapter summary definitely helped me understand the process of analyzing data. The process of gathering the data is a lot of work, but what to do with that data really affects your research. At first reading about the software programs used for qualitative data threw me off because I would normally link computers and software with quantitative measures, but when I read that they're more useful for categorizing and storing data it made more sense. In my research I'll definitely take into consideration the advice from this chapter."
posted on Jun 12, 2013, on the post Chapter 8

"This chapter definitely got me thinking about what I'd like to accomplish with my mini-study and later on my thesis. What I've been exposed to the most in the corporate communications program are case studies because they're part of learning. Logically it seems that Phenomenology or Ethnographic research is where my research idea will lead me, but I'm still in the phase of getting a refined research question of out my bigger ideas. At least now I know the routes I can go."
posted on Jun 12, 2013, on the post CHAPTER 4: Five Qualitative Approaches to Inquiry