00 Plan your case study
A case study examines one person, organization, event, or place in depth. It trades breadth for detail, and it works best when you have unusual access — a local business, a family archive, a program at your school.
What it looks like
- Shape: why this case → background → evidence gathered → analysis → what it does and doesn't generalize to
- Paper structure: abstract → introduction → literature review → case background → methods → findings → discussion → limitations → conclusion → references
- Common mistake: claiming a single case proves a general rule. It illustrates, suggests, and complicates — that's enough.
Choose your case
The best case is one you can study deeply and one that teaches something beyond itself. Ask two questions: can I get the evidence, and why is this case worth studying?
| Kind of case | Why it's useful | Student-sized example |
|---|---|---|
| Typical | Shows how something usually works | A typical neighborhood library adapting to digital lending |
| Unusual | Reveals what happens at the edges, or what's possible | A small-town restaurant that survived when most nearby closed |
| Turning point | Captures a change as it happens | Your school's first year with a phone-free policy |
| Comparative | Two or three cases side by side show what differs and why | Two community gardens, one thriving and one abandoned |
Access is everything. Before you commit, confirm you can actually talk to the people involved or see the documents you need. A fascinating case with no evidence becomes a summary of news articles.
Ask a “how” or “why” question
Case studies are strongest at explaining how something happened or why it turned out the way it did.
Are school phone bans a good idea?
How did teachers and students at one high school adapt during the first year of its phone-free policy, and why did some classes adjust more easily than others?
Exercise: fill in the blanks
- My case is
- It's worth studying because
- I want to understand how or why
Gather more than one kind of evidence
A case study's strength comes from looking at the same case from several angles. When different sources point the same way — called triangulation — your conclusions are much more convincing.
- Interviews with people involved, using the same core questions for each
- Documents — policies, emails, meeting minutes, newsletters, records
- Observation of the setting, with careful field notes
- Numbers — attendance, sales, grades, or other data the organization already keeps
- Artifacts — photos, products, posters, websites
Aim for at least three types of evidence.
Get ethics and permission right
- Get permission from the organization before you start, in writing if possible
- Get informed consent from everyone you interview, and parental consent for anyone under 18
- Decide whether to anonymize the case — a small organization can be identified from details alone
- Ask your teacher whether your school requires approval before you begin
- Record anyone without their permission
- Publish private documents or personal details you were trusted with
- Promise an organization a positive write-up in exchange for access
Build a timeline
Weeks 1–2 · Choose and read
- Pick your case, secure access, read background and theory
Week 3 · Prepare
- Research question, interview guide, consent forms, approval
Weeks 4–6 · Gather evidence
- Interviews, documents, observation — write up notes the same day
Weeks 7–8 · Analyze and write
- Code your evidence for themes, draft every section, then revise
01 Title page
APA 7 puts a running head at the top of every page, in capitals, with the page number.
RUNNING HEAD: SHORTENED TITLE OF CASE STUDY 1
- Title of the case study
- Your name
Phones at School
Adapting to a Phone-Free Classroom: A Case Study of One High School's First Year
Many case study titles follow a pattern: the topic, a colon, then “A Case Study of” and the case.
02 Abstract
A one-paragraph summary of the whole study: the case, the question, the evidence, and what you found.
The formula
- The topic and why it matters
- The case and why you chose it
- Your research question
- Your evidence — what kinds, and how much
- Your main findings and what they suggest
Schools across the country are restricting student phone use, but little is known about how these policies play out inside individual classrooms. This case study examines the first year of a phone-free policy at one public high school. Drawing on interviews with eight teachers and twelve students, school policy documents, and classroom observations, it explores how teachers and students adapted. Findings suggest that classes with consistent enforcement and planned replacement activities adjusted most smoothly, while inconsistent enforcement created frustration. The case highlights implementation, not just policy design, as central to a policy's success.
Keywords: phone policy, classroom engagement, policy implementation, case study
- Describing the case without saying what you found
- Citing sources or quoting interviews in the abstract
- Writing more than one paragraph, or more than 150–250 words
- Claiming the findings apply to every school, business, or person
Write your abstract last. Once every other section is finished, you can summarize your own study accurately in one paragraph.
03 Introduction
Move from the broad issue to your specific case. By the end, the reader should know why this case, why now, and what you want to find out.
Funnel structure
1. The big picture
- Introduce the broader issue and why it matters
- Name the real-world problem your case speaks to
2. What we already know
- Summarize the key research on this issue, organized by theme
3. The gap
- What hasn't been studied closely, or what large studies can't show
- How an in-depth look at one case can help
4. This case
- The case, why you chose it, and your research question
- Any limits on scope — what you deliberately did not study
5. Roadmap
- One or two sentences on how the rest of the paper is organized
Four questions your introduction must answer
A case study introduction does one extra job: it links the research problem to the case, and explains why the case is the right way to study it. Give each question a paragraph or two.
- Who or what is being studied? Describe the research problem and the case you chose, and how they connect. Which parts of the case will shed light on the problem?
- Why does it matter? Explain why the problem is significant, and why a case study — and this case in particular — is a good way to investigate it.
- What did we already know? Briefly summarize prior research, including other case studies on the problem and where they fall short. If no one has used a case study for this problem, explain why you chose yours.
- What will this study add? Explain what new knowledge or understanding your case can offer.
National surveys show that most teachers support limiting phones in class (Smith et al., 2023), but they say little about how such policies work day to day. Northfield High School offers a useful case: it introduced a strict phone-free policy in 2024 after years of informal rules, making the shift unusually clear to observe.
Theoretical framework
Give the reader the concepts they need to make sense of your case. A theory gives your analysis a lens — and turns a story into research.
- Definitions — define each key term exactly as you use it, citing a source
- Key theories — name the theory or model that helps explain your case
- Previous research — save the detailed review for the next section
This study uses the idea of policy implementation — the gap between what a policy says and how it is carried out by the people responsible for it. Research on implementation suggests that teachers act as interpreters of school rules, which may explain why the same policy plays out differently from one classroom to the next.
Use APA 7 for references and in-text citations, and cite every piece of information you take from a source.
04 Literature review
Structured like any literature review — organized by theme, comparing studies — but with one focus: showing where your case fits in the research on your problem, and why it's worth studying.
Use the literature to
- Place similar studies in context — summarize research that used a similar case to study the same problem. If someone has studied the same or a very similar case, explain why it's worth revisiting (conditions have changed, the earlier study is old, and so on).
- Justify your case — describe any work that supports using this kind of case to investigate your question.
- Offer a new angle — if others studied the problem with surveys or experiments, explain what an in-depth case can reveal that they couldn't.
- Resolve contradictions — where earlier studies disagree, show how your case might help explain why.
- Expose the gap — show what previous research has missed and how your case helps fill it.
- Locate your own study — most important of all, end by placing your case clearly within the larger body of research.
- Study A found…
- Study B found…
- Study C found…
Group findings under thematic subheadings, compare studies inside each one, and keep tying them back to your case.
Surveys of teachers show broad support for phone restrictions (Smith et al., 2023), while classroom studies report mixed effects on engagement (Lee, 2022). These studies rarely examine how a policy is carried out day to day. A single-school case can trace that process directly, helping to explain why similar policies produce different results.
05 Case background
Describe the case so a reader who's never heard of it can follow your analysis. Stick to facts here — analysis comes later.
Cover
- Setting — where and when, and what the place or organization is like
- Key people or groups — who's involved and what roles they play
- History — what led up to the moment you're studying
- Key events — a short timeline of what happened
Northfield High School is a public school of about 1,200 students. Before 2024, phone rules were left to individual teachers. In June 2024, the school board approved a policy requiring students to store phones in lockers during class. The policy took effect that September, with detention as the consequence for repeated violations.
A simple timeline table or diagram makes a complicated case much easier to follow.
06 Methods
Explain how you studied the case, in the past tense, so a reader can judge how trustworthy your evidence is.
Approach and case selection
Say that you used a case study design, why it's the best fit for your question, and why you chose this particular case over others.
A single-case design was chosen because the research question asks how a policy was experienced in practice, which requires detailed evidence from one setting. Northfield High School was selected because its policy change was recent, clearly dated, and accessible to the researcher.
What to explain depends on your kind of case
| If your case is… | Explain |
|---|---|
| An event | When it happened, the circumstances that led up to it, and its consequences for your research problem. Say whether it's rare or typical — both can be useful. |
| A person or group | Why this person or group, what experiences make them worth studying, their relationships to other people, institutions, or events, and what sets them apart from others who could have been chosen. |
| A place | Its relevant features — physical, social, historical, cultural, economic, political — and why you chose it over similar places. |
| A phenomenon | What you observed, why its cause or explanation is still in question, and the system of people and surroundings it happens within. |
Show how you identified your case and why it fits your research problem, link that choice to your literature review, and cite any studies that helped you decide.
Sources of evidence
List every source, how much of it you gathered, and how you chose it. Explain who you interviewed and why, and what you included or left out.
Evidence included semi-structured interviews with eight teachers from four departments and twelve students across grades 9–12, the school's written policy and two parent newsletters, and observation of six class periods. Teachers were chosen to include both supporters and critics of the policy.
Collection
How, when, and where you gathered evidence — including how you recorded interviews and took notes, and how you protected participants' identities.
Analysis
How you made sense of the evidence. Most student case studies use thematic coding: reading through transcripts and notes, labeling recurring ideas, and grouping them into themes.
Keep a simple spreadsheet with one row per quote or observation and a column for its theme. When it's time to write, each theme already has its evidence lined up.
07 Findings
Present what you found, organized by theme. Every claim should rest on specific evidence from your case.
For each theme
- State the theme as a clear claim
- Support it with evidence — quotes, documents, observations, numbers
- Show where sources agree or disagree
- Say what it means for your research question
Teachers had mixed feelings about the policy.
Teachers who planned replacement activities reported an easier transition. Six of the eight teachers described the first month as “rocky,” but the two who introduced short discussion warm-ups said students “stopped reaching for their pockets” within two weeks — a pattern also visible in classroom observations.
- Retelling interviews one person at a time instead of by theme
- Relying on a single quote to support a whole theme
- Leaving out evidence that doesn't fit your story
- Identifying anyone you promised to keep anonymous
Many case studies combine findings and discussion into a single section, presenting each finding and its meaning together. Either structure is fine — pick one and use it consistently.
08 Discussion
Step back from the details. What does this case teach us, and how far can that lesson travel?
Answer these, in order
- Restate the problem and your major findings. Briefly remind the reader of the research problem and why you chose this case, then state your findings directly. Highlight anything unexpected.
- Explain what the findings mean. Start with your most important or surprising finding, then work through the rest. Say what the case suggests about situations beyond it — carefully.
- Connect to theory and previous research. Does the case support, challenge, or extend your theoretical framework and the studies in your literature review?
- Consider alternative explanations. Research aims to discover, not prove. Weigh every explanation your evidence allows, not just the one you expected — even if it contradicts earlier research.
- Acknowledge limitations and open questions. Note what the case couldn't address, and why the limitations don't undermine your main findings.
- Why does it matter, and what's next? Practical recommendations for people in similar situations, and future research linked directly to your research problem.
What a single case can and can't show
- Show how something works in real life
- Suggest explanations worth testing more widely
- Complicate a theory or a common assumption
- Prove a general rule
- Tell you how common something is
- Show that one factor caused an outcome everywhere
The Northfield case suggests that a phone policy's success depends less on the rule itself than on how teachers put it into practice. This supports implementation research describing teachers as interpreters of policy. Schools introducing similar rules might pair them with training and shared classroom strategies, though studies of more schools would be needed to confirm this pattern.
09 Limitations
Every case study has weaknesses. Naming yours honestly makes your paper more credible, not less.
Consider
- Generalizability — how your case might differ from others like it
- Access — who you couldn't reach, and what documents you couldn't see
- Your role — whether being an insider (a student at the school, a relative of the owner) shaped what people told you
- Time — whether a longer view would change the picture
This is only one school.
As a student at Northfield, the researcher may have received more candid answers from peers than from teachers. Interviews were also limited to the policy's first year, so longer-term effects remain unknown.
10 Conclusion
Bring the paper full circle. Remind the reader what you set out to do, then show that you did it.
Four steps
- Restate your aim and research question. Remind the reader what you set out to understand.
- Answer it. Summarize your main findings about the case.
- State your contribution. What the case adds to the field, including any solutions or recommendations.
- Point forward. Which questions future research should test across more cases.
A strong conclusion should
- Synthesize your key findings to show how they come together to address the research problem — not repeat the discussion
- Say clearly how your findings support or differ from prior research, and why
- Remind the reader why a case study was the right approach for this problem
- Move from the details of your case back to the broader context you set up in the introduction
- Mention limitations and further research, if you haven't already in the discussion
- Introducing new evidence or sources
- Repeating the introduction or abstract word for word
- Claiming your case proves something about every similar case
11 Pitfalls to avoid
Three mistakes that weaken case studies more than any others.
Overgeneralizing
A case can point toward broader patterns, but every conclusion must rest on evidence from your case. Anything else is speculation. If you notice an interesting pattern you didn't set out to study, present it as a question for future research, not a finding.
Phone bans improve student focus in all schools.
At Northfield, teachers who planned replacement activities reported better focus. Whether this holds in other schools is a question for future research.
Not documenting limitations
No case reveals everything about a problem. Be specific about how your case's setting, culture, or circumstances might limit how far your findings apply.
A study of water conservation in a village where water is scarce may not apply in places where fresh water is plentiful, where conservation is more about managing access than protecting a scarce resource.
Missing obvious implications
Just as you shouldn't say too much, you shouldn't leave out what your evidence clearly suggests. Consider every reasonable outcome and recommendation, or readers will question your analysis.
A case study of a railroad-crossing accident that recommends new warning signals but ignores the speed limit leaves an obvious gap in the analysis.
12 References
Always APA 7.
- Only include sources you actually cited
- Cite published documents from your case, such as policies, reports, and newsletters
- Interviews you conducted yourself are usually cited in the text only, not in the reference list
Keegan, J. (1999). The First World War. Alfred A. Knopf.
13 Checklist
Run through this before you gather evidence, and again before you submit. Your ticks are saved in this browser.
Before you start
The paper
The document