Case study methods

My research on this topic has tried to develop alternative ways of thinking about generalizability in case studies, such as ethnographies of a single neighborhood or historical studies of one organization. This issue is especially important for ethnographers in fields such as urban sociology, immigration, and education, whose work is often evaluated from the perspective of standard social science statistics: How, if at all, are case studies "generalizable? Are they "representative"? Are they wrong to "select on the dependent variable"? I have argued that some of the proposed answers to these questions have made the problem worse.

• 2009. Small, Mario Luis. "Chapter 8: Extensions and Implications," "Appendix A: The Process," and "Appendix C: Qualitative Data," in Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everday Life. New York: Oxford University Press.
• 2009. Small, Mario Luis. "'How Many Cases Do I Need?':On Science and the Logic of Case Selection in Fieldbased Research." Ethnography. 10(1): 5-38.
• 2008. Small, Mario Luis. "Lost in Translation: How Not to Make Qualitative Research More Scientific." National Science Foundation. Pp. 165-71 in Michèle Lamont and Patricia White (eds.), Workshop on Interdisciplinary Standards for Systematic Qualitative Research. Washington, DC: National Science Foundation.
• 2004. Small, Mario Luis. "Chapter 1: How Does Neighborhood Poverty Affect Social Capital?" and "Chapter 8: Social Capital in Poor Neighborhoods," in Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• 1999. Small, Mario Luis. "Departmental Conditions and the Emergence of New Disciplines: Two Cases in the Legitimation of African-American Studies." Theory and Society. 28:659-707.