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Hi Teena and all, Seems to be people often either overegg or over restrict the idea of a case study and this applies to both teaching or research case study. From experience, it doesn't need a book. Case study of both types can be described in a short sentence. 'The purpose of a case study is to identify the relations between causes and behaviours in a bounded instance.' Of course there are a few riders. An instance can be an instance of anything. For example, one might well have a case study on the arithmetic operation of addition, as an instance of mathematical operators. From experience, under inspection the root of all types of a case study (including apparently non-causal case studies involving taxonomy and classification) eventually emerges as 'identifying causes of behaviours' - though sometimes you have to dig hard. The centrality of causality in case studies means time is an implied or explicit aspect of any case study (all causes take time to act). Instances are sub-systems, this implies there is a boundary: some things are in the case and other things are outside. Its useful if the relevant issues are inside and the non-relevant ones are outside the case boundary. Because a case is an instance, you can choose the boundaries. Because a case is a sub-system, case study analysis can be enhanced with the methods of systems analysis. The idea of 'unit of analysis' does not directly define the instance/case boundary. They are ontologically different. I'd be interested if anyone has found exceptions. Best wishes , Terry --- Dr Terence Love PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM, MISI Honorary Fellow IEED, Management School Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK ORCID 0000-0002-2436-7566 Director, Love Services Pty Ltd PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks Western Australia 6030 Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848 Fax:+61 (0)8 9305 7629 <mailto:[log in to unmask]> [log in to unmask] -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design -----------------------------------------------------------------