Cross-case analysis

Abstract

Prior to the development of low-cost computing and the ease of completing statistical analysis, case studies played a significant role in the development of the social sciences. However, since the mid-1990s statistical modelling and empirically driven work has come to dominate academic literature; yet there remain epistemological similarities between some forms of case study work and statistical modelling. Nonetheless, issues of the qualitative versus quantitative divide and the purported role of value judgments made by the researchers have in part muddied the waters until quite recently, when the researchers using statistical methods started to adopt the use of the first person in their writing and began to recognise that the choice of a given statistical technique is just as surely a value judgment or exercise of experience and expertise as is any interpretation of text by a qualitative researcher. Similarly, qualitative researchers have become increasingly familiar with textual analysis using software programmes based on neural network theory, and a new generation of researchers have become comfortable with a mixed method mode of analysis.