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1 results

  • 6 - Descriptive Accuracy in Interview-Based Case Studies

  • from Part II - Ensuring High-Quality Case Studies
  • Edited by Jennifer Widner, Princeton University, New Jersey, Michael Woolcock, Daniel Ortega Nieto
  • Book:
    The Case for Case Studies
    Published online:
    05 May 2022
    Print publication:
    26 May 2022, pp 119-141
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  • Summary

    Widner reflects on what she and others have learned about gathering reliable information from interviews. Case study researchers usually draw on many types of evidence, some qualitative and some quantitative. For understanding motivation/interest, anticipated challenges, strategic choices, steps taken, unexpected obstacles encountered, and other elements of implementation, interviews with people who were “in the room where it happens” are usually essential. Subject matter, proximity to elections or other sensitive events, interviewer self-presentation, question sequence, probes, and ethics safeguards are among the factors that shape the reliability of information offered in an interview. Widner sketches ways to improve the accuracy of recall and level of detail, and to guard against “spin,” drawing on her program’s experience as well as the work of survey researchers and anthropologists.