Case study research is special in that: One case, an object of some kind, is chosen which greatly determines the boundary and thrust of what will be studied. Any case study might also turn out to be:

... naturalistic, i.e., attending to ordinary events in a natural setting; non-interventionist; described in ordinary language;

... qualitative, i.e., experiential; attending to the impressions made on the observer, with lesser attentions to standardized measures and statistical aggregation;

... participant observer, i.e., drawn from observational date gathered while the researcher holds or assumes at least some partial membership in the group; '

... phenomenological, i.e., seeking clarification of meanings; attending to the particular experiences people have, especially to particular (local) meanings people give to key events, concepts or issues;

... constructivist, i.e., emphasizing the distinction between nature as a reality and nature as an idea created by humans;

... hermeneutic, i.e., seeking understanding of human expression within its intensionality and contextuality; attending to the relationship of original speaker to present interpeter; empathic;

... grounded theory, i.e., seeking emergent (emic) issues; generating categories of action and explanations of relationship from field experience rather than adhering only to pre-determined (etic) issues and categories;

... fieldwork, i.e., devoting extra effort to getting data from out where the action is, with less reliance on documentary or other secondary sources; or

... interpretive, i.e., placing special burden on the researcher for discerning and explicating what is meaningful, sometimes denying the possibility of-objectivity.

Bob Stake, Feb 1986

Fred Erickson used the labels once this way:

This chapter reviews basic issues of theory and method in approaches to research on teaching that are alternatively called ethnographic, qualitative, participant observational, case study, symbolic interactionist, phenomenological, constructivist or interpretive. These approaches are all slightly different, but each bears strong family resemblance to the others.

From this point on I will use the term interpretive to rerer to the whole family of approaches to participant observational research. I adopt this term for three reasons: (a) It is more inclusive than many of the others (e.g., ethnography, case study); (b) it avoids the connotation of defining these approaches as essentially nonquantitative (a connotation that is carried by the term qualitative), since quantification of particular sorts can often be employed in the work; and (c) it points to the key feature of family resemblance among the various approaches--central research interest in human meaning in social life and in its elucidation and exposition by the researcher.