Cinco malentendidos acerca de la investigación mediante los estudios de caso

Abstract

This article examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research:
(1) Theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge; (2) One cannot generalize
from a single case, therefore the single case study cannot contribute to scientific development;
(3) The case study is most useful for generating hypotheses, while other methods are more suitable
for hypotheses testing and theory building; (4) The case study contains a bias toward verification;
and (5) It is often difficult to summarize specific case studies. The article explains and corrects these
misunderstandings one by one and concludes with the Kuhnian insight that a scientific discipline
without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic
production of exemplars, and that a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one. Social
science may be strengthened by the execution of more good case studies.