Theme 6 - Post reflection

This week we had our last lecture and final seminar in the course, where we discussed both qualitative methods and case studies. At the seminar, we also talked about our reflections of the course overall and what improvements that could be applied for next years students. However, most of the time at the seminar we tried to define what a case study was and how it can be applied in the real life, which would turn out being quite difficult.

Even though i thought I understood the concept of a case study before the seminar, what i learned during it changed my interpretation a bit. As i understand the meaning of a case study research now afterwards, is that you want to combine different methods in order to investigate what happened in a specific field or situation. The field that you want to do the research on can either be created yourself, or found in the real life. Leif talked about the custom service at the airport as an example of finding a field for a case study research, where the researchers defines a scene and what’s happening there. I also learned about some advantages as well as disadvantages with case studies. One positive thing is that you’ll never be short of data, since you are combining information from several different methods into one. On the other hand, this could lead to a point where you have too much information, and considering the amount of work you’re doing, is it necessary to put that much effort into it? It was also exciting to clarify why the number of 4-10 case studies is the optimal. The group had some different aspects, but it turned out to be as basic as we’re considering 4 as “many”, and therefore it’s good to do “many” case studies in order to get the best result as possible.

Finally, I really think this was a good theme of the last week, where we actually could get usage of our earlier experiences and knowledge from the course.