"I have just begun conducting research on cultural adaptation. I have reviewed the literature on this topic and examined the research methodologies employed. Some studies have utilized questionnaires and interviews, while others have employed questionnaires and case studies. Are case studies and interviews considered distinct research methods? I am feeling confused."
A Case Study is a research method which examines and analyses data in depth from a small number of instances; outcomes are generalised to other instances in which the same theoretical assumptions apply. This is in contrast to Survey method, in which generalisation is made by treating the instances, (usually more than with a Case Study), as a sample of a population. See R.K. Yin Case Study Research London: Sage 5th edn. p68.
An interview is completely different: it is not a research method but a research technique, i.e., a procedure for gathering data in the first place. There are different forms of interview (different such techniques)– semi-structured, fully structured, depth, face-to-face versus distance and so on. Different procedures for obtaining data in a verbal interaction.
The confusion may arise because the terms 'method' and 'technique' are often used as synonyms. But you may find it useful to preserve a distinction, using the term 'technique' to stand for any procedure for collecting data, in which a set of steps will arrive at material suitable for analysis if the procedure is followed correctly; but reserving the term 'method' for an approach to the analysis of data, with different methods having their own, quite distinct, epistemological assumptions about how rigour is achieved in the analysis.
So Experimental Method achieves rigour by generalising to situations describable by the sane kind of variables, having partitioned variance between variables using a specific research design applied to a sample; Survey Method by generalising from a sample to a population; Case method by generalising to instances where the same theoretical assumptions apply; and so on.
'Any interview is always a case study...'
Not at all. 'Interview' is a generic term for a technique that can take many different forms. The form taken (structured, semi-structured, face-to face, electronic, experiential, depth, etc etc etc) will involve distinct procedural rules to support the reliability on which the validity of the reported responses depends.
BUT more importantly, the interpretation of those responses in order to determine the eventual findings follows very different assumptions depending on which research method is used. Thus the assumptions that ensure the rigour of findings obtained from interviews used in case study method are different from those that pertain for interviews used with survey method, and different again when interviews are used to provide results as influenced by the different variables involved when a controlled experiment is the method used.
See my article saved in ResearchGate, 'Construing the doctoral examiner: what the doctoral student should know', Personal Construct Theory & Practice, 14, 2017, 99-105, esp. Table 1.
- Badges
- Science topic