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CASE STUDY RESEARCH: DESIGNS AND METHODS (3RD ED.) by Robert K. Yin. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003. 181 pp. $26.95.
This third edition of Robert Yin's Case Study Research: Designs and Methods updates and slightly expands earlier editions of the book. The new edition retains much of what made the first two best-selling research methods books, includes new analytic strategies, and explains in greater detail the strengths of different types of case study research. This book also contains what many methods books lack: numerous specific examples of case study data collection, analysis, and interpretation on a wide variety of topics.
Those who have used earlier editions of Yin's book will find the third edition comfortably familiar. As in earlier editions, each chapter opens with an introduction of questions and topics that will be explored, and ends with exercises that are useful guides for reviewing information in the chapter. Readers will be glad to know that the book's straightforward, clearly written style has not been altered.
Chapter one specifies that case study research is most appropriate when researchers are interested in learning how or why something occurs, when the research focuses on contemporary events, and when no controls of behavioral events are necessary. Yin readily acknowledges that the results of case studies are not generalizeable to populations, and that their purpose is to "expand and generalize theories" (p. 10). He makes clear that the case study is "an all-encompassing method" (p. 14), including design, data collection,...