Case Survey

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Policy study assessments have grown in interest due to the increased importance over the last several decades of public service program expansion and the resultant research of the associated policies. Yin and Heald offer three different approaches to “review this research and evaluate the more significant findings” (1975, p. 371) through the propositional method, the cluster method, and the case survey method. Yin and Heald propose that the most appropriate of these three for policy studies is the case survey method (1975, p. 371). Therefore, it is important to learn how the case survey method is used, how policy study knowledge can be expanded through this method, and its applicability to other public policy topics beyond Yin and Heald’s application on their decentralization study.
The case survey method requires trained observers, reader-analysts, to answer close-ended questions regarding the case study. This allows for “aggregate reviews of individual case studies to be undertaken with scientific rigor” (Yin & Heald, 1975, p. 372). By utilizing trained reader-analysts, the case survey method also addresses three major issues of research review: reliability, variances in weak and strong responses, and explicit criteria for case study exclusion. The reliability is determined by comparing the responses to the close ended questions of more than one analyst to ascertain the level of reliability of the question. Variances in weak and strong responses are addressed by providing the reader-analyst the opportunity to indicate, for each question, their confidence in their response. Exclusion of case studies is addressed by including specific close ended questions that “serve as exclusion criteria” (p. 373). This allows for specific revi...

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...of this method as the “results of the surveys are of no better quality than the quality of the original cases” (p. 380), the potential inability to address “unique factors of an individual case” (p. 380), and the lack of “discovery of process” due to the attention to assessment (p. 380). However, regardless of these limitations, the applicability of this approach towards public policy literature can be invaluable as policies continues to evolve and the public requires more services. Researchers’ abilities to consider a broad spectrum of case studies in a scientific manner will continue to provide increasing amounts of knowledge regarding policy impacts and effectiveness.

Works Cited

Yin, R.K., & Heald, K.A. (1975). Using the case survey method to analyze policy studies. Administrative
Science Quarterly, 20 (3), pp. 371-381. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2391997

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