'How many cases do I need?

' On science and the logic of case selection in field-based

research
Author(s): Mario Luis Small
Source: Ethnography , March 2009, Vol. 10, No. 1 (March 2009), pp. 5-38
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.

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 ARTICLE

Etlino Igraphy
Copyright © The Author(s), 2009. Reprints and permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
http://eth.sagepub.com Vol 10(1): 5-38[DOI: 10.1177/1466138108099586]

'How many cases do I need?'

On science and the logic of case selection in
field-based research

Mario Luis Small

University of Chicago, USA

ABSTRACT ■ Today, ethnographers and qualitative researchers in

fields such as urban poverty, immigration, and social inequality face an
environment in which their work will be read, cited, and assessed by
demographers, quantitative sociologists, and even economists. They also
face a demand for case studies of poor, minority, or immigrant groups and
neighborhoods that not only generate theory but also somehow speak to
empirical conditions in other cases (not observed). Many have responded
by incorporating elements of quantitative methods into their designs, such
as selecting respondents 'at random' for small, in-depth interview projects
or identifying 'representative' neighborhoods for ethnographic case
studies, aiming to increase generalizability. This article assesses these
strategies and argues that they fall short of their objectives. Recognizing
the importance of the predicament underlying the strategies - to
determine how case studies can speak empirically to other cases - it
presents two alternatives to current practices, and calls for greater clarity
in the logic of design when producing ethnographic research in a multi
method intellectual environment.

KEY WORDS ■ ethnographic methods, generalizability,

representativeness, validity, case study, sequential interviewing, extended
case method, science

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Ethnography 10(1)

Probably the most memorable of the lectures of Nobel-prize winning

cist Richard Feynman was his 1974 commencement address at Calte
where he described what he calls 'cargo cult science'. Feynman, wor
about the preponderance of what he believes are pseudo-sciences, com
these practices to the cargo cults of the South Pacific:

In the South Seas there is a Cargo Cult of people. During the war they
airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thi
happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put f
along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit
[the controller] - and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing
thing right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked be
But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things Cargo
Science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of
tific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the
don't land. (Feynman, 1999: 208-9)

Feynman's lecture was devoted largely to practices such as ESP, but the h
about social science were difficult to miss. (In fact, he criticized a ps
ogist's advice to his student not to replicate the studies of others.) P
scientists were expert imitators but terrible practitioners, adopting the f
of science but nothing else. In this respect, his analogy might have
stronger had he noted that some New Guinean cargo cultists had fash
their own airplanes out of logs, sticks, and leaves, remarkably accu
replicas that, lacking engines and a foundation in aerodynamics, wo
never fly (Harris, 1974; Worsley, 1968).
While Feynman probably underestimated the successes of social sc
his observations are worth noting by at least one major segment of co
porary ethnographers, for whom the temptations of imitation have n
been stronger. The problem of imitation is not new to social scientists, w
from the start have argued heatedly (and repeatedly) over the mer
emulating the natural sciences in pursuit of social scientific me
(Dilthey, 1988; Lieberson and Lynn, 2002; Saiedi, 1993). But toda
important subset of ethnographic researchers - and of qualita
researchers more generally - faces its own version of that dilemma: whet
to emulate basic principles in quantitative social sciences in establish
standards of evidence for qualitative work. Some background is neces

The predicament of ethnographic work in multi-method contex

The predicament arises from what might seem to be an unqualified a

plishment, the simmering of the counterproductive debates, which re
a boiling point during the 1980s, over the relative merits of quantita

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 Small m Case selection in field-based research

versus qualitative research. Today's calmer waters have been especially

regenerative for the fields of urban poverty, social inequality, and immi
gration, where both quantitative and qualitative works flourish, and where
experts in one methodological tradition frequently cite those in others. In
fact, several major studies in these fields have employed, with varying
degrees of integration, both quantitative and qualitative data, the latter
being at times interview-based and at times ethnographic. Examples are
Portes and Rumbaut's recent studies of the children of US immigrants
(Portes and Rumbaut, 2001; Rumbaut and Portes, 2001), Wilson and his
colleagues' studies of urban conditions in Chicago (Wilson, 1996; Wilson
et al., 1987), and England and Edin and their colleagues' studies of urban
single mothers in the US (see England and Edin, 2007). These fields stand
in contrast to others where, for epistemological, political, or historical
reasons, most practitioners work within a single method or set of methods,
as in symbolic interactionism or the interpretive work on culture.
But the more cooperative spirit in urban poverty, social inequality, and
immigration has only spread so far. Despite the more methodologically open
environment, research in these fields remains dominated by quantitative
sociologists, demographers, and even economists (Wacquant, 1997; see also
Burawoy, 2005). While important ethnographies in these fields continue to
be published and highly cited (e.g. Duneier, 1999; Levitt, 2001; Pattillo,
1999; see Newman and Massengill, 2006), most articles in these fields
published in the top generalist journals, such as American Journal of
Sociology, the American Sociological Review, and Social Forces, remain
quantitative in nature.2 The preponderance of statistical research stems in
part from the steady and continuous supply of easily accessible quantita
tive data, such as the decennial US Census, the Current Population Survey,
the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, and the National Longitudinal Survey
of Youth, all of which contain many variables related to poverty, immi
gration, urban conditions, neighborhoods, and socio-economic status. In
addition, urban poverty, social inequality, and immigration (along with
criminology, education, and public health) remain among the most highly
funded fields in US social science, and the largest funders in these fields -
nonprofit organizations and government agencies such as the Russell Sage
Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the US
Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the National Insti
tutes of Health - have exhibited a greater inclination to fund quantitative
projects. The edited volumes generated by these funding streams bear
evidence to this claim. Consider a few highly cited collections: Goering and
Feins' (2003) recent volume on the effects of neighborhood poverty, funded
by HUD; Neckerman's (2004) volume on social inequality, funded by
Russell Sage; and O'Connor et al.'s (2001) study of urban inequality in
multiple cities, funded by both Russell Sage and the Ford Foundation. Each

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Ethnography 10(1)

of these volumes, while demonstrating deference to ethnographic res

overwhelmingly reports quantitative findings.3
These circumstances have produced at least two consequences. Fir
contrast to other fields where ethnographers work, ethnographic studies
urban poverty, inequality, and immigration are often evaluated - e
on methodological grounds - by quantitative researchers. Thus,
ethnographers doing work on, for example, narrative and culture can
dently expect their work to be reviewed primarily, if not exclusivel
other qualitative researchers, those in the aforementioned fields must cou
among the potential reviewers of their work, demographers, quantit
sociologists, and even economists - scholars who are experts on the s
matter without necessarily being experts on the method. Inevitably
reviews will cover issues not traditionally addressed in closed ethnogr
intellectual communities. For example, my Villa Victoria, an ethnogr
study of a predominantly Puerto Rican housing complex in Boston,
reviewed in Contemporary Sociology by a demographer, who, in a g
ally balanced article, covered both theoretical and methodological is
Yet the methodological discussion did not center on the extent to wh
attained an empathetic understanding of my informants, on the le
reflexivity in the work, or on the extent to which the history of the ne
borhood informed the analysis; instead, it focused on one of demogra
central concerns, whether the neighborhood was representative:

While the conditional approach is an asset from a theoretical stand poin

is a limitation from a methodological perspective. The generalizability of
findings is a concern. Since theories are based on generalizations, focusi
on exceptions as advocated by the conditional approach makes us que
the applicability of these findings to other neighborhoods. (Morales, 20
284)

Consider another example. Fordham and Ogbu's (1986) highly cited s

of 'acting white' among black students in a Washington, DC middle s
has been rediscovered over the last 10 years by sociologists and econom
interested in culture and urban inequality, a rediscovery oriented tow
methodological and empirical issues. But this attention centered on no
the core issues identified in Burawoy's (2003) recent review of type
ethnographic 'revisits', such as reconstructing the theory after returning
the school or assessing the structural forces at play in US cities durin
late 1980s. Instead, the new critiques focused on whether the few d
students interviewed by Fordham and Ogbu were statistically repre
tive of black students in US society (Ainsworth-Darnell and Downey,
Cook and Ludwig, 1997). Consider a third example, from the literat
on transnationalism, where ethnographies, such as Levitt's (2001) st
among Domincan migrants to the US, have confirmed the prevalenc

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 Small m Case selection in field-based research

transnational practices among immigrants in all continents. In an import

ant recent study evaluating these works, quantitative researchers critiqued
the latter on methodological terms - but not by focusing on the authors'
ability to conduct multi-site ethnography, or on the challenges of establish
ing rapport quickly and effectively in different countries. Instead, the
critiques focused on the questions that worry demographers, even employ
ing explicitly the language of variable selection:

This emerging literature on immigrant transnationalism is characterized by

an empirical base consisting exclusively of case studies. Qualitative case
studies consistently sample on the dependent variable, that is, they document
in detail the characteristics of immigrants involved in transnational activi
ties but say little about those who are not. (Portes et al., 2002: 279; italics
added)

We may set aside for the moment whether any of these critiques is valid in
order to highlight the larger predicament: ethnographers in these fields can
expect to be assessed on their methods by quantitative researchers.
Second, ethnographic studies in urban poverty, social inequality, and
immigration operate in an environment at once thirsty for in-depth case
studies that describe conditions in poor, minority, immigrant, or otherwise
non-mainstream groups, neighborhoods and communities, and either skep
tical or uncertain about the relationship between these 'small-«' studies and
the larger population of groups, neighborhoods, and communities that the
case studies are expected to represent (Lieberson, 1991). Consider a
contrast. When Geertz (1973) wrote on the cockfights in a small Balinese
village, many expected his theoretical model (of how games can embody
societal power relations) to be applicable to other sites, but few expected
the empirical findings to be so applicable - that is, for cockfights to look
similar or to follow the same rules in other villages throughout or outside
of Indonesia. The latter would be wholly beside the point.4 But ethnogra
phers in the aforementioned fields work in a professional, intellectual, and
policy environment that demands empirical findings applicable to other
cases. When ethnographers today describe conditions in, for example, one
poor black neighborhood in St Louis, MO, many of their readers in the
urban poverty literature expect to be learning about the conditions in poor
black neighborhoods in general - in Boston, Los Angeles, New York, and
perhaps even London and Rio de Janeiro - not merely that neighborhood
in St Louis. In fact, ethnographies of single neighborhoods are often cited
to argue that conditions in 'the ghetto', 'the underclass', 'the immigrant
enclave', or other similar categories exhibit some set of empirical charac
teristics, such as desolation, graffiti, street disorder, gang presence, street
entrepreneurship, etc. (on the perils of this practice, see Small, 2007, forth
coming b). Similar expectations surround the interpretation of in-depth

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10 Ethnography 10(1)

interview studies with small numbers of respondents. When

study of, for example, 40 immigrant low-income women in
researchers expect to learn something empirical about the
low-income immigrants in other cities and regions, not mer
40 women. In sum, in fields such as urban poverty and imm
US, ethnographic case studies are often explicitly expected
larger entities. Nevertheless - and this is key - the precis
between such cases and the larger populations they a
represent remains unclear.
It is in this context that imitation, as described earlier, a
predicament that many ethnographers face is deceptively s
how to produce ethnographic work that keeps at bay the cr
from quantitative researchers while also addressing the thir
studies that somehow or other 'speak' to empirical condition
(not observed). How to select studies such that these types of in
valid?
As I discuss below, for all too many in recent years, the a
to emulate the practices of quantitative researchers, espec
dation in classical or frequentist statistics - that is, to matc
either possible or practical, standard survey practices desi
representativeness, and thus generalizability (e.g. Klinenbe
result has been a form of imitation grounded in language, or, m
the adoption of words with only a superficial (and at times
cation of their meaning. Today, many researchers in these f
their students doing ethnographic work to ensure that thei
are 'unbiased' or that their single-case studies are 'represe
selected on the dependent variable'. As we shall see, the
expression of this perspective is represented in King et
informal versions of this approach abound. The basic critiqu
is that these practices constitute little more than applying
adopting their meaning, constructing sticks-and-leaves airp
never fly.
The problems faced by ethnographers working in interdisciplinary fields
today are both substantively and publicly important, creating a need for
programmatic clarity about these questions. That clarity, however, has been
missing, and, in fact, many of the most commonly employed fieldwork
manuals hardly address the topic (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995;
Lofland and Lofland, 1995).5 Methods of scientific inquiry are languages
to the extent that they constitute systems of thought, with terms and ways
of framing problems that are specific to their systems. I will argue that
solutions should involve developing alternative languages and clarifying
their separate objectives, rather than imitating the language of classical
statistics for problems to which it is not suited. What I have described is a

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 Small m Case selection in field-based research 11

large and complex problem that I cannot hope to cover entirely in one
article. Instead, I will examine one issue, that of 'generalizability', one of
the most central concerns that quantitative researchers raise about ethno
graphic research in the aforementioned fields. To make the problem clear,
I will discuss two common scenarios, one from in-depth interview work
and one from participant observation, under which ethnographers
concerned about science attempt to make their work 'generalizable'. After
critiquing these forms of thinking about generalizability, I discuss two major
alternatives.6

First scenario: the 'representative' small-n interview-based study

One of the most common practices in qualitative sociology today is to

conduct in-depth, open-ended interviews. Sometimes, these are fielded on
hundreds of respondents (Lamont, 1992; Newman, 1999); more typically,
they involve a small number of interviewees (30 or 40). It is in this latter
case that the problems are more salient, since the questions of generaliz
ability are more obvious and the answers to these less clear. Consider the
following scenario.

The most common question

Jane, for her second-year paper, would like to study the attitudes toward
immigration of working-class African Americans. To capture the depth and
nuance of these attitudes, she wishes to conduct lengthy open-ended inter
views, and she is planning to interview 35 respondents. Having taken
courses in basic statistics and research design, Jane worries that, by doing
'qualitative work', she is not conducting truly scientific research. She sits
before her adviser, and asks one of the most common questions posed by
beginning students doing in-depth interview work in these fields: 'How do
I ensure my findings will be generalizable?'
Her adviser recommends finding a city with a large working-class African
American population, obtaining a telephone directory, and randomly
sampling people from it. He knows to expect, at best, a 50 percent response
rate, so he recommends contacting 100 people selected at random. Jane
follows the plan, and miraculously all phone numbers are valid and
everyone answers the phone. Of the 100 respondents, 60 hang up on her,
40 agree to an interview, and 35 follow through with it. (Experienced inter
viewers know these figures to be highly optimistic.) The city is so segre
gated that all of them happen to be African American. She conducts 35
high-quality two-hour interviews that delve deeply into attitudes about
immigration, uncovering subtle relationships among attitudes, experience

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12 Ethnography 10(1)

with discrimination, gender, and Southern origins, an

completes her paper. Since (she believes) her method m
Lamont's (1992) well-regarded Money, Morals, & Manner
dent in the 'generalizability' of her findings about the black w
Jane's predicament is standard; her solution, rather
Hermanowicz, 1998; Walzer, 1997; to a lesser extent, Ar
2005). There is, however, an important problem: under no
nition of 'generalizability' could the responses of those 35
considered to reflect reliably the conditions of the Afr
working class. From the perspective of statistical generali
research suffers from two problems.
First, the sample has an inbuilt and unaccounted for bia
interviewed the 35 percent of respondents who were polite
to her, friendly enough to make an appointment based on a
call, and extroverted enough to share their feelings with th
two hours. These people may have systematically different
others, including immigrants, than non-respondents. Sinc
nothing about those who did not respond (they hung up), s
of adjusting the inferences she obtained from the 35 r
addition, since she knows nothing about working-class bla
cities, she still does not know if, had she attained 100 per
rates, the respondents in her city would be typical or atypi
working class.
Second, regardless of how it was selected, the sample is too sm
confident predictions about complex relationships in the p
working-class blacks at large. Among my graduate students
depth interview study designs, perhaps the single most com
hear is, 'How many people do I need to interview (for my
generalizable)?' The answer depends on the distribution of t
interest, whether the students want to describe distributions (
Democrat) or present causal relationships (e.g. whether Re
have stronger anti-immigrant attitudes than Democrats),
variables are involved, among other factors (King et al. (1
formula, based on standard statistical assumptions). The sh
however, is that rarely will students have enough well-sel
interview respondents that their findings about subtle caus
involving multiple variables will be statistically generaliza
national population. For that, one needs a survey.
Suppose Jane only wanted to discover how many workin
are pro-immigration reform (one 'yes or no' question); and t
to be confident at a 95 percent level that the average in her sam
the average in the population at large within +/- five per
and that the population of working-class blacks in the US

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 Small m Case selection in field-based research 13

people (for large populations, the exact size does not matter very much
In this case, she would need 385 respondents.10 If Jane narrowed her focus,
and only wanted to be confident about the 1000 working-class blacks
one city, she would need 278.
In fact, nothing Jane could do with her three dozèn people would ens
that they matched, with high certainty, the characteristics of the U
working-class black population. Some interview-based researchers prefer
ignore these two problems and refer to studies such as Jane's as 'repre
tative' because they were based on a 'random' sample. In doing so, they
simply adopting words without adopting their meaning, referring
wooden tubes as airplanes. If Jane sought a representative study, she should
have conducted a survey (and assumed all of its limitations, such as hav
to construct a formal questionnaire and reducing its length to maintain hig
response rates).

Better than nothing?

The natural question is whether, having acknowledged these difficult

Jane is still not better served by selecting her respondents 'at random'
quotation marks because her final sample is not statistically random du
the large proportion of people who did not respond) than to have adop
some other non-random selection strategy. Not always. Consider
standard alternatives in light of these questions.
One is sampling for range, a longstanding technique which might yi
better and more reliable data depending on her interests (Weiss, 1994).
this technique, the analyst identifies sub-categories of the group und
study and ensures to interview a given number of people in that catego
For example, suppose Jane suspected that gay and lesbian respondent
might be more sympathetic to immigrants, and decided this was one
the core issues she wanted to understand. Even a truly random sampl
would have yielded, at best, three or four gay or lesbian respondents o
of 35, of which one or two, at best, would reveal this to her. This wou
leave her no room to examine her question. In these circumstances, J
would be better served designing her study to include a large, pre-de
mined number of gay and lesbian respondents, even if this required findin
them through non-random means, such as contacting formal organizati
and requesting references. For many questions of interest to intervie
based researchers in the social sciences, sampling for range is mo
effective. Of course, from the language of statistics, Jane will conti
having problems with bias and representativeness. However, from a m
appropriate language, she will now be able to identify (at least some
the mechanisms through which sexual orientation and attitudes abou
immigration are related.

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14 Ethnography 10(1)

Another alternative is snow-ball sampling, the well-know

asking interviewees to recommend other interviewees (Wei
balling almost always increases the number of respondents
become more receptive to a researcher when the latter ha
for by a friend as trustworthy. (This trustworthiness migh
into greater openness, producing deeper interviews, but I
anyone demonstrate this proposition.) For example, if Jane
100 people, each based on a personal referral, she might ha
75 (it is impossible to know), but certainly many more th
obtained by cold-calling.
One consequence of snowballing is that the final intervie
likely to know one another than would be the case had the
at random. Thus, they are more likely to constitute a socia
this reason, many argue, again following the precepts of cla
that snowball samples in a small study such as Jane's would
than the 'random' sample she employed. (This type of crit
applied to interview-based studies of social networks.)
I believe this view is mistaken on two grounds. First, supp
both methods by the standards of classical statistics. In one
75 out of 100 people interviewed through personal referral
there are 35 who agreed to participate out of 100 selected
the standards of classical statistics, both samples wou
problem, the first due to in-network selection and the seco
response. What proponents of the random selection appro
in-depth interviewing rarely mention is that many peopl
called will not agree to long, in-depth interviews on person
stranger. This often buried detail - how many people refuse
were not home? - is critical. I am not surprised that many
not report it.
Second, we should not assess either method by the standa
statistics. That is to say, in a deeper and more important se
wrong term. What an in-depth interviewer with three doz
faces is not a 'bias' problem but a set of cases with particu
istics that, rather than being 'controlled away', should be
developed, and incorporated into her understanding of th
(more on this below). By inaccurately labeling 'representativ
that Jane employed, we erroneously assume that the others
only would Jane's ostensibly representative sample be bias
tive standards - neither bias nor representativeness is
standard for the kind of research Jane wanted to conduct.
To be clear, there are only two solutions to Jane's predi
should not conduct the study or she should change the lang
which she interprets it. The half-way solution, of 'try

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 Small m Case selection in field-based research 15

representative', does not work. Many are reluctant to agree to the

because it seems to imply that all interview-based studies should i
large samples (such as Newman, 1999). While such large studi
valuable, there is a place for a small interview study to make meani
contributions to knowledge, provided the language and assump
through which it is interpreted differ. In fact, as I suggest later, we mi
benefit from not calling Jane's interviewees a 'sample of n = 35', b
instead, a 'set of 35 cases'.

Second scenario: the study of an 'average' neighborhood

There is a similar problem in participant observation research aim

dealing with large-« questions. Today, major generalizations in bot
public and in the academic sphere are made about conditions in
areas, such as black and Latino inner-city neighborhoods in the US, f
in Brazil, or banlieues in Paris. Ethnographers are expected and ask
penetrate the neighborhoods and report to the public on conditions i
neighborhoods, not only to test the generalizations but also to produce t
own, to explain, for example, whether neighborhood conditions exac
the effects of heat waves or natural disasters. The question remains
to select a case and design a study to render such statements empi
valid? Again, a common answer, implicit or explicit, is to searc
representative cases. A hypothetical scenario should be instructive.

Selecting the average

Bill, a graduate student in sociology, wishes to study how neighbo
poverty affects out-of-wedlock births, by conducting an in-depth e
graphic study of a single high-poverty neighborhood. His main con
to uncover the set of mechanisms underlying this process. However
Jane, he wants to ensure his findings are 'generalizable' to poor nei
hoods. Dissatisfied with the absence of a clear answer in his standard
graduate methods course, he turns to the highly citied King et al. (1994)
model. The authors address a similar problem directly, and Bill finds solace
in their solution:

For example, we could first select our community very carefully in order to
make sure that it is especially representative of the rest of the country ...
We might ask a few residents or look at newspaper reports to see whether
it was an average community or whether some nonsystematic factor had
caused the observation to be atypical ... This would be the most difficult
part of the case-study estimator, and we would need to be very careful that

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16 Ethnography 10(1)

bias does not creep in. Once we are reasonably confident that
mized, we could focus on increasing efficiency. To do this, w
many weeks in the community conducting numerous sepa
(King et al., 1994: 67-8)"

Bill turns to the census, finds a neighborhood that is 40 perc

percent black, with 80 percent of the households female
discovers at the site) most streets littered and covered in graff
seem to accord with his definition of a 'representative' poor
(or, to paraphrase King et al., an average poor community).
IRB regulations, Bill gives his neighborhood a pseudonym,
and reports that it is located in a 'large Midwestern city'.1
his study, and finds that residents in this neighborhood ar
each other. This distrust, he finds, makes women unwillin
fathers of their children. Since his neighborhood was repr
surmises, he is confident that neighborhood poverty in
wedlock births in poor neighborhoods at large through the
reduced trust, among mothers, toward potential fathers.
Either explicit or implicit versions of Bill's approach to s
sites - that is, studying neighborhoods that seem to be ty
enclaves, or housing projects in order to improve one's con
generalizability of empirical statements to other neighborho
The problem with this approach is that, no matter how B
single neighborhood, it will never be representative of poor
Bill suffers from two problems. The first is exacerbated by
of an 'average' neighborhood. Since Bill lacked the means t
beyond the limited neighborhood characteristics recorded in
- that his neighborhood was in fact statistically average,
neighborhood that appeared typical, one exhibiting a prep
graffiti, for example, since this accorded with his picture of t
in an 'average' poor neighborhood. This selection was no dou
by film and television images of poor neighborhoods, image
commercial reasons which may or may not bear any resem
tically average neighborhoods. The second problem is Bill's
'representative' with 'average'. The neighborhood's condition
to match the traits that, from the census, one knows to be
observed demographic characteristics. But, as Frankfort-N
Nachmias (2000: 167) write, 'a sample is considered represe
analyses made using the sampling units produce results similar
would be obtained had the entire population been analyzed
of a single neighborhood can meet this criterion. In fact, there
determine whether the same results would have been obtain
the population of neighborhoods at large. Bill has painted h

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 Small m Case selection in field-based research 17

figurative corner in which he has assumed a warrant to make genera

tions based on a one-« study (Lieberson, 1991; on warrants, see K
1997).
To be clear on the hopelessness of Bill's situation given his objectiv
consider one potential solution, obtaining copious and very detailed inf
mation on the neighborhood, the generally sensible recommendation
King et al. (1994). Some believe that Bill could make up for the 'lack o
variation' in his single study by generating variation from within, and mak
up for the overall 'lack of statistical power' by digging deeper into his sing
case. Bill, for example, could examine in depth his neighborhood's hist
and institutions, and produce a rich, detailed, multi-layered study of
conditions. Obtaining more data on a case is always a laudable practice
but from the perspective of statistical generalizability, this 'solution' offer
no advantage. Suppose that instead of neighborhoods we were studyin
individuals, and selected one person with the characteristics of the aver
American: a married 36-year-old female with a high school education w
earned $36,911 last year.14 We interviewed this female for many hou
about her opinions on the admission of Turkey into the European Unio
How confident would we be that her thoughts accurately reflected thos
the average American? A scientist would have no confidence, and interv
ing her for 20 or 200 additional hours would not change this fact.15
The same logic is applicable in Bill's case. As his readers, we may w
to believe that he tapped into the true (essential?) nature of 'the Ameri
ghetto' because the neighborhood either matched census-collected traits
the average poor neighborhood or it generally accorded with pre-exist
notions of conditions in such neighborhoods, a sentiment reinforced by the
neighborhood's pseudonym ('The Streets') and anonymous location. In f
this is precisely how researchers in urban sociology, immigration, and socia
inequality frequently interpret and cite neighborhood ethnographies (
Small, 2007, 2008b). But reason would compel us to think otherwise: B
has earned a warrant to speak empirically about the average 'ghetto' th
is no greater than a study of the single 36-year-old female would ha
earned to speak empirically about the average American. In the langu
of statistics, these are both samples of one.

Better than the alternatives?

One could question, again, whether Bill's strategy is not superior to any
alternative. An alternative is to search for unique cases (Small, 2004; van
Velsen, 1978 [1967]). Suppose that Bill had chosen a neighborhood with a
40 percent poverty rate but little garbage or graffiti and a unique architec
tural design due to the influence of a mayor interested in promoting
architecture in the city. It is tempting to assume that inferences based on

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18 Ethnography 10(1)

this neighborhood would be less statistically generalizable th

on 'The Streets', since the latter was more 'typical' (in fact,
informed Morales, 2006). But, based on a sample of one, th
more nor less so. As before, one could ask if there is any ha
the statistics-inspired 'random' or 'average' strategy. Somet
Suppose the mayor in the second case also had institute
unique policy whereby mothers received significantly highe
plus $1000 per child for a college fund if they married befo
their second child. This rare case would suddenly present
tional opportunity to examine the relationship among high p
and out-of-wedlock births in ways that cases that happen to
might not. In case studies, rare situations are often precis
researcher wants (Small, 2004; Yin, 2002; also Schudson, 19
this below.)

Alternatives

Jane and Bill's designs, and related approaches to render field studies more
generalizable, simply fail in their objectives. I see only three solutions to
this predicament: 1) to ignore the problem; 2) to qualify the work by
explaining that it is provisional or 'hypothesis generating'; and 3) to
conceive and design the work from a different perspective and language of
inquiry.
While ignoring the problem may seem to be inappropriate, it remains
a suitable option under some circumstances, given the different goals that
underlie different theoretical perspectives. As in the case of Geertz's (1973)
cockfight study, the theoretical perspective informing a case study may
render irrelevant whether the study provides empirical information on
conditions in other cases. For example, ethnomethodologists aim to study
practical life as it is experienced, and they assume that social reality is
both inter-subjective and radically situational, such that the meaning of
actions and events can only be explained within the particular set of
circumstances in which they occurred (Garfinkel, 1967). This assumption
(that meanings are indexed to particular situations) implies that whether
other sites - for example, other neighborhoods - would exhibit the same
empirical characteristics is not merely beside the point, but it would
erroneously presume that the analyst can simply extract the characteristics
of a neighborhood from the context in which actors experienced them
and expect them to have the same consequences elsewhere. Similarly,
narrative theories fundamentally assume that identity derives from
personal experiences and the narratives actors tell themselves about them.
And while conditions shared with others, such as the experience of race

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 Small a Case selection in field-based research 19

discrimination, can affect an actor's narrative of self, her ultimate narrative

identity depends on her accumulation of experiences, which is hers alon
(Somers, 1994). In this light, asking whether the experiences of one acto
reveal something empirical about others would be conceptually senseles
and beside the point.16
But while these and other perspectives can afford to (in fact, by desig
often must) ignore the problem without consequences, not all perspectiv
can. The intellectual, professional, and public environment described at t
start of this article undermines efforts to simply ignore the problem in the
context of urban poverty, immigration, and social inequality scholarship
The field requires ethnographic and in-depth interview-based case studie
and it requires some answer about the empirical relationship between suc
case studies and other sites not observed.
The second solution, conceiving of the work as hypothesis generating, is
also suitable. However, as I show below, hypotheses may be either logical
or senseless, and different strategies will yield substantially better hypothe
ses than those a project such as Bill's might generate. Simply adding a
qualifier or disclaimer without articulating the difference between good and
bad hypotheses is merely a reactive solution to an external threat, not an
epistemological position grounded in a sound perspective.
In the rest of the article, I make a case for the third option that provides
a way of not only generating better hypotheses but also producing
compelling empirical statements. While several of the ideas I propose have
been discussed in other contexts, they have not been examined in light of
the contemporary predicament presented at the start of this article. For this
reason, the ideas require refinement, development, and in one case major
elaboration; their implications for what scholars such as Jane and Bill
should do must be articulated. I will discuss systematically two alternatives,
an extension of the extended case method and what I term sequential
interviewing.

First alternative: extending the extended case method

Probably the most prominent recent solution to the problem of generaliza

tion in case studies has been the extended case method, by which researchers
analyze a particular social situation in relation to the broader social forces
shaping it. In American sociology, the extended case method is most often
associated with Burawoy (Burawoy, 1998; Burawoy et al., 1991); else
where, it is associated with Gluckman and the Manchester School
(Gluckman, 1961; also Evens and Handelman, 2006). Even though
Burawoy learned the method from van Velsen, one of Gluckman's students
(Burawoy et al., 1991), there are still, in fact, several extended case

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20 Ethnography 10(1)

methods, or several conceptions of the core of the procedure

Mitchell (1983) and van Velsen (1978 [1967]) describe the
method in somewhat different terms, with the latter plac
emphasis on the identification of unique cases; and Burawoy
formulation differs in important details from his initial statem
which itself was an 'extension' of van Velsen's (Burawoy et a
For our purposes, two of these formulations matter most, B
Mitchell's.

The Berkeley school

Michael Burawoy made his first major statement on the met
coauthored with several of his Berkeley graduate students, w
empirical analyses applying the extended case method (Bura
1991). For them, the method is one of two ways to relate co
given case (organization, neighborhood, social event) to the so
in which it is embedded. In the interpretive method, Buraw
case reveals the essential nature of society at large, the way in G
the cockfight embodied the social organization of Balinese so
1973). In the extended case method, the case is understood
ing the larger forces shaping conditions in the case - Geert
would be understood as a 'ritual of resistance to colonial and
domination', and the economic and political forces shaping it
subject of analysis (Burawoy et al., 1991: 278; Burawoy, 199
distinction seems to suggest that 'extending' is what the an
understand the case: the analyst investigates society at large
its impacts on the case at hand.
But what is the basis of generalization in Burawoy's concep
reading, Burawoy is inconsistent on this point. On the one h
to suggest that the method is not inductive, in contrast, fo
grounded theory. In fact, he defines the core of the method
examines how the social situation is shaped by external for
et al., 1991: 6), which suggests that the ultimate purpose is t
the social situation. As he explains when contrasting th
grounded theory, while the latter develops 'micro foundatio
sociology', the extended case method develops the 'macro fou
microsociology' (Burawoy et al., 1991: 280; Burawoy, 1998),
to imply that the purpose is to understand the case, not to g
it.17 On the other hand, Burawoy does provide at least part
Rather than 'statistical significance', he argues, the extended
searches for 'societal significance. The importance of the sing
what it tells us about society as a whole rather than about t
of similar cases' (Burawoy et al., 1991: 281).

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 Small ■ Case selection in field-based research 21

This appears to be an appropriate solution, until one wonders how

would work in practice - that is, what the ethnographer would
differently. One clue comes from understanding how the method w
select cases, a practice that follows directly from van Velsen (1978 [19
Through the method, deviant or unique cases are especially interestin
because they provide for ways of developing or extending theories. T
represents a potentially appropriate alternative to Bill's predicament.
But this line of thinking would suggest that the ultimate purpose
refining or reconstructing a theory (see Burawoy, 1998, 2003; Burawo
al., 1991), rather than identifying an empirical fact about society, for whi
some understanding of the relationship between the case and other cas
important. For example, a theory might propose that small nonprof
organizations must be connected to stable funders to survive more than fiv
years from birth in highly competitive environments. The extended c
researcher might then find a small nonprofit that was not so connected bu
nevertheless survived 10 years, and ask why. Clearly, an interesting develo
ment of the theory might emerge from such a study. Less clear is what ki
of empirical knowledge of society would emerge from it, unless one ad
an a priori model of society as a whole, which Burawoy and his stud
do from a perspective of 'domination and resistance' and 'globalizatio
(Burawoy et al., 1991, 2000). Once the neo-Marxist or globalizat
perspective (or a pre-determined alternative) is abandoned, the ethno
rapher is still at a loss as to the type of empirical knowledge gained.18 Eith
it is knowledge about how one case works, or it is knowledge about h
other cases work. If it is the latter, then some logical justification, some b
for feeling confident that another nonprofit with no connection to st
funders would exhibit similar patterns, is still missing.
In this sense, I suggest that Burawoy's (1998; Burawoy et al., 19
extended case method is only a partial solution to Bill's particular pred
ment. It provides a potentially effective way of improving theories,
proposing (as many others have) the use of unique or deviant case
improve on existing theories. It does not quite propose a model f
distinguishing a good from a bad hypothesis, since this is not the way
orients its research. And it does not provide an explicit criterion to m
empirical assessments relevant to other cases.19

Manchester revisited

An earlier proponent of the extended case method, Clyde Mitchell, provides

a clearer answer to our particular set of questions. Mitchell's conception of
the method elaborates on Gluckman's but differs from Burawoy's. In a 1983
essay, Mitchell, following Gluckman, distinguishes 'apt illustrations' from
'extended case studies' in that the latter require 'further elaboration of the

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22 Ethnography 10(1)

basic study of case material' because they '[deal] with a sequ

sometimes over quite a long period, where the same actors
a series of situations' (Mitchell, 1983: 193). Whereas Buraw
key to the method is explaining local conditions in light of
Mitchell believes the key to the method is its ability to unc

The particular significance of the extended case study is that

the events in which the same set of main actors in the case stu
over a relatively long period, the processual aspect is gi
emphasis. The extended case study enables the analyst to trac
chain on to one another and how therefore events are necess
one another through time. (1983: 194)

This focus is generally consistent with the idea that fie

devote itself to uncovering mechanisms and tracing process
White, forthcoming). However, Mitchell does much more.
Mitchell takes up specifically the question Bill asked, in sligh
language: 'How do you know that the case you have cho
(1983: 188). Mitchell's answer is consistent with mine: he ar
question betrays a confusion between the procedures approp
inferences from statistical data and those appropriate to th
idiosyncratic combination of elements or events which con
(Mitchell, 1983: 188). Mitchell believes that statistical repre
an irrelevant criterion, which implies that trying to find repr
is a mistake. Thus, he argues, 'extrapolation is in fact based
of the analysis rather than the representativeness of the event
The natural question is how to determine that an analys
answer, Mitchell contrasts 'statistical inference' from what he
'logical', 'causal', or (more impishly) 'scientific inference'.20
'the process by which the analyst draws conclusions about
two or more characteristics in some wider population fro
of that population ...'; the latter, 'the process by which the
conclusions about the essential linkage between two or more
in terms of some explanatory schema' (1983: 199-200). Mos
research, he argues, employs both types of inference; case
can only employ the latter: 'inference from case studies ... cann
cal and ... extrapolability from any one case study to like
general is based only on logical inference' (1983: 200).
With a little elaboration, Mitchell's distinction between
logical inference provides an effective way to distinguish g
hypotheses. Hypotheses based on case studies such as Bill's,
argue, should never be statistical, only logical. Thus, it wou
for Bill to hypothesize that because he observed a preponde
public cocaine consumption in his neighborhood then the

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 Small m Case selection in field-based research 23

neighborhood will exhibit a preponderance of cocaine use in public. In t

hypothesis, logic played no role; it is a descriptive inference based on
case, a mechanical connection between characteristics in two settings t
would only have worked if the laws of probability could justify it. By
way of thinking, if Bill had observed a preponderance of cross-dressing
would have been forced to hypothesize that the average poor neighborh
experiences a preponderance of cross-dressing. In fact, whether B
hypothesis 'sounds' right or not, the inference is both statistically unju
fied and illogical - or more precisely logically unjustified, since there i
logical reason to believe it. This makes it an ineffective hypothesis.
But suppose Bill had observed that whenever a crime erupted in the neigh
borhood, some people retreated into their homes while others felt compelle
to get organized. He also observed that those in the latter group had strong
connections to the neighborhood. Their parents had been raised there
their extended family lived nearby. Their mothers, fathers, and uncles had
years earlier, collaborated with other neighbors in the creation of the l
community center and the foundation of a recreation area. Bill might h
uncovered a causal relationship between attachment and participation.
might then hypothesize that the reaction to crime will depend on th
strength of local attachment, such that those strongly attached (throu
various mechanisms) are likely to participate while those weakly attach
are likely to retreat. This is not a descriptive hypothesis; it is a logical
what Mitchell might call 'causal') one. While it still requires testing it
nonetheless, logically justified, which makes it an effective hypothesis.
The former hypothesis took the form 'All entities of type A will exhibit
characteristic Z', which was ineffective because there was no logical rea
to believe it. The latter hypothesis takes the form 'When X occurs, whethe
Y will follow depends on W', which is logically justified given the proce
observed. They are both hypotheses, to be sure, and both would requ
further testing. But only the latter is a good hypothesis (see Small, 200

One set of answers

Mitchell has brought us closer to solving Bill's predicament, by clarifying

the role of logic in distinguishing appropriate from inappropriate hypothe
ses based on single-case studies.21 Even if Bill only followed this principle
his approach to his research would increase in sophistication. Notice that,
for this model, whether Bill selected an ostensibly typical or an apparently
atypical case would be immaterial, since the hypothesis would be based on
a) logical inference and b) the internal conditions of the case.
While Mitchell provides a way to derive effective hypotheses, he still does
not clarify what kind of empirical statement Bill might make. In this respect,
Bill is limited but not powerless, since he can, with justification, offer one

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24 Ethnography 10(1)

category of empirical statement - ontological statements, t

the discovery of something previously unknown to exist.
executed single-case study can justifiably state that a par
phenomenon, mechanism, tendency, type, relationship, dynam
exists (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Lofland and Lofland, 1995)
remains one of the advantages of ethnographic work, the possi
emergent knowledge.

Second alternative: sequential interviewing

When it comes to making empirical statements, Jane poss

tage over Bill. While we have already provided several ideas
might approach her research differently, there is a more radic
Jane's predicament. This solution involves rethinking not m
tives but also her understanding of each of her interviews.
this will yield not only better hypotheses but also a m
foundation to make empirical statements relevant to the cases
The foundation is to adopt Yin's (2002) distinction betwe
logic and sampling logic (see Ragin and Becker, 1992). Yin'
case studies, and I am extrapolating from his work. I will a
study logic can be effectively applied to in-depth interview
such that the latter may be conceived as not small-sam
multiple-case studies. I do not believe all interview-based st
conducted in this fashion, but, for some objectives, it will
the most effective answers.22
Sampling and case study logic approaches are different
dependent ways of approaching data - they constitute wh
languages. Sampling logic refers to the principles of selec
with standard survey research. In a sampling model, the nu
(e.g. individuals) to be studied is predetermined; the sample
representative; all units should have equal (or known) proba
tion; and all units must be subject to exactly the same que
conducted properly, the characteristics of the sample are expec
within a margin of error, those of the population as a whol
is statistical representativeness. For example, a researcher desig
of political attitudes in the US would determine how many
needs, develop a sampling frame, create a short questionn
respondent is given, and ensure that her sample is statistic
tive. The objective would be to make sure that the distribut
in her sample matched that in the population.
Case study logic, in Yin's terms, proceeds sequentially, s
case provides an increasingly accurate understanding of th

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 Small m Case selection in field-based research 25

hand. In a case model, the number of units (cases) is unknown until t

study is completed; the collection of units is, by design, not representative
each unit has its own probability of selection; and different units are subje
to different questionnaires. The first unit or case yields a set of findings a
a set of questions that inform the next case. If the study is conducte
properly, the very last case examined will provide very little new or surpri
ing information. The objective is saturation. An important component
case study design is that each subsequent case attempts to replicate the prio
ones. Through 'literal replication' a similar case is found to determ
whether the same mechanisms are in play; through 'theoretical replicat
a case different according to the theory is found to determine whether the
expected difference is found. Sampling logic is superior when ask
descriptive questions about a population; case study logic is probably m
effective when asking how or why questions about processes unknow
before the start of the study.
To elaborate and demonstrate the fruitfulness of case-study log
consider an example based not on interviews but on experiments. Alfon
conducts an experiment in which one group of black and white student
Cal Tech is told they will receive an IQ test and another is told nothi
Both complete the test, and blacks in the first group do much worse th
whites, while those in the second do as well as whites in their group. Alfon
concludes that the fear of fulfilling a stereotype about low IQs among black
is at play. This inference is based on this one case.23
However, Alfonse realizes that black and white students at Cal Tech
might differ from those elsewhere, and that how college students take test
might differ from how other people take them. That is, he realizes that
did not have what statisticians would refer to as a representative sampl
the population. In addition, he realizes that his theory is not, strictly
speaking, about black people, but about the impact of fears of fulfill
stereotypes on performance. For this reason, he then conducts literal
theoretical replications. With a colleague at Duke, Alfonse repeats
experiment among Duke undergraduates (literal replication); back at C
Tech, he repeats it, but using women and men instead of blacks and whites,
since he knows that there are stereotypes about women's inability
perform well on math tests (theoretical replication). If the theory is rig
Alfonse infers, it should work for anyone, not just blacks and whites.
Some tests confirm his findings; others do not. Then he tries it amo
Asians and whites, and among issues other than IQ, and on more campu
and with high school students and senior citizens, and on and on. Wit
each experiment, he refines and re-evaluates his understanding of th
process. Slowly, as the number of experiments (i.e. cases) increases, h
confidence that his theory is right begins to grow. Eventually, every n
experiment contributes very little new knowledge, such that the 89t

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26 Ethnography 10(1)

experiment, with immigrant Asians and Russians in a low

school, shows exactly what he expected, even though he e
more subtle relationships than he could have envisioned d
experiment. At this point, he has attained saturation.
Alfonse has just conducted (after many years) a type of
study. Notice that at no point did Alfonse conduct a random
kind. On the contrary, the characteristics of respondents
quent experiment were chosen deliberately, based on his increa
and continuously re-evaluated understanding of the under
enon. Furthermore, he cannot make accurate descriptive st
the distribution of characteristics in the population as a w
would not report that, for example, 80 percent of blacks ar
stereotype threat, or that, since 75 percent of the experiment
theory, his theory is right 75 percent of the time (this wo
many, many counts). Instead, he has identified, and confi
reasonable empirical doubt, an important mechanism a
performance. I suggest that this approach may be used to t
depth interview research.24
Reconsider Jane's predicament. Jane was applying, or at
apply, sampling logic, and by that logic she had a weak sa
logic, she would have had a weak selection of cases as
inferential logic played little role in her selection of each s
viewee. However, depending on her question, she migh
saturation even if, in the end, the number of individuals i
relatively small.
The key is to conceive of every individual the way Alfons
every single experiment, as a single case. Jane, without kno
respondents she will eventually interview, interviews one. Afte
interview, the person, say, recalls and recounts experiencing
from Latino immigrants when she was a child, thus d
immigrant sentiments and favoring Draconian immigration
the interview, Jane has begun to form a new understandin
issue, the attitudes of African Americans about immigratio
that native-born blacks who have experienced discriminatio
immigrants will favor immigration reform due to their person
She then searches for blacks who report discrimination from L
replication), as well as those who have not experienced it (t
cation) and those who experienced discrimination from Russ
(theoretical replication). Importantly, she alters each new
include increasingly refined questions about different aspe
nation, since every interview is refining and forcing her to
understanding of the phenomenon. She repeats the process
Her last interviews are longer than the first, and they incl

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 Small ■ Case selection in field-based research 27

subtle variations on the way one experiences discrimination, includin

many that had not occurred to her during the first interview. Eventu
each new interview is telling her very little she had not already heard abou
the relationship between discrimination and immigrant attitudes. She
attained saturation.25
Jane's new approach would violate nearly all of the tenets of (freq
tist) sampling logic. Her group of respondents is not representative; e
respondent received a slightly different questionnaire; there was no attem
to minimize statistical bias. Consequently, Jane can make no accurate s
ment about the distribution of attitudes. She would not report that, say, 2
percent of working-class blacks favor immigration reform, just as Alf
would not make statements about the distribution of his effect in the pop
lation of African Americans. However, we would have the same confid
in her empirical findings as we do in Alfonse's statements that stereot
threat reduces performance.26
As for the most common question, the answer is clear: she will kn
how many interviewees she needs when her study is over - that is, w
she has attained saturation. This predicament is far less threatening t
may appear, since Jane retains the power to determine how to refine
re-evaluate her theory. The more complex the process, the more int
viewees she will need, and it is not difficult to imagine that, with the iden
cation of a straightforward but unknown process or a complex but commo
one, Jane might attain saturation with the 35th carefully selected case
a few years, my graduate students and I have been conducting a modi
version of this type of sequential analysis in interviews with urban mothe
whose children were enrolled in daycare centers in New York City. We wer
studying many aspects of their social networks (including several for whic
I was employing survey data), but one of the perplexing questions was
they developed so many friendships with other mothers, especially in a pla
where (I erroneously thought) all they did was drop off and retrieve t
children. After no more than a few dozen interviews - with rich and p
mothers; with blacks, whites, and Latinas; in multiple boroughs; and w
even a few men - my research assistants and I had attained saturation
the six or seven mechanisms through which mothers in New York C
centers made new ties (the PTA, the yearly fundraiser, the mandato
meetings, etc.) (Small, forthcoming). I was relatively confident, and s
quent interviews confirmed, that we would not identify new mechan
for friendship formation (or new opportunities for making friendships) t
we had not already seen. On this particular question, we had early
attained saturation.27

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28 Ethnography 10(1)

Conclusions

For ethnographers in many fields of study, the issues discussed in this articl
do not arise. These ethnographers have no intellectual engagement wit
quantitative researchers, no expectation that the latter will ever be reviewer
no need to assess the work against a larger body of quantitative studie
asking similar or related questions. For many others, however, the issue
are critical. In urban sociology, the study of immigration, and soci
inequality - as well as, to some extent, the sociology of organizations an
of education - ethnographers must contend, explicitly or implicitly, wi
scholars trained in radically different traditions who claim expertise on the
same questions and may well assume a unity of method.
In this context, I have argued that no matter what they do within th
parameters of their original projects, Jane and Bill will never build airplanes
with the capacity to fly. The 'representative' single neighborhood does n
exist.28 Jane and Bill should not be building airplanes; they should
building, say, boats, vessels that are equally important for transportatio
and, during some circumstances, much more effective. And rather tha
build boats that try to fly, they should build boats that sail effectively. I ha
defended Mitchell's elaboration of the extended case method and propose
sequential interviewing - along with the (common) recommendations t
consider sampling for range, snowballing, and identifying unique cases -
one set of tools, by no means the only ones, to build better vessels. Gen
ally, the approaches call for logical rather than statistical inference, for case
rather than sample-based logic, for saturation rather than representation as
the stated aims of research. The approaches produce more logically sensib
hypotheses and more transparent types of empirical statements. Regardle
of the method, ethnographers facing today's cross-methods discourse an
critiques should pursue alternative epistemological assumptions bett
suited to their unique questions, rather than retreat toward models designed
for statistical descriptive research. After all, to push the metaphor to it
limits, even the best built airplane will never do well at sea, and I do no
see any pilots losing sleep over it.

Notes

This article is a major elaboration of an earlier talk, 'Lost in Translation',

prepared for a 2005 National Science Foundation workshop on inter
disciplinary standards in qualitative research (Small, 2008a). I thank
members of the workshop, as well as Stanley Lieberson, Scott Lynch,
Sabrina Placeres, Loïc Wacquant, Yang Yang, the students in my logic of
inquiry courses at Princeton University and the University of Chicago, and

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 Small » Case selection in field-based research 29

the editors and anonymous reviewers of Ethnography for comments an

criticisms.

Social Problems and City and Community, among the mainstream journals
that publish papers in these fields, have exhibited stronger inclinations to
publish ethnographic work.
In fact, the National Science Foundation recently felt compelled to organize
two conferences, with accompanying reports, aimed at discussing what
constitutes 'science' in the context of ethnographic or interview-based
qualitative work (see Lamont and White, forthcoming; Ragin et al., 2004).
The purpose was clear, to help qualitative researchers negotiate a pre
dominantly quantitative discourse:

Workshop participants were asked to: 1 ) provide guidance both to reviewers

and investigators about the characteristics of strong qualitative research
proposals and the criteria for evaluating projects in NSF's merit review
process, and 2) provide recommendations to address the broader issue of
how to strengthen qualitative methods in sociology and the social sciences
in general. The workshop was intended to contribute to advancing the
quality of qualitative research, and thus to advancing research capacity,
tools, and infrastructure in the social sciences. (Ragin et al., 2004: 5)

The more standard practice to assess the work against other cases would
resemble Sallaz's (2008) recent study, which examines not cockfights but
casino card games in South Africa to assess the extent to which they also
embody social power relations and reflect larger structural transformations.
To be clear, these and other manuals certainly address questions of research
design, at length. However, they tend to say little explicitly about what
might be the most important questions for quantitative researchers. In fact,
the question of representativeness and statistical generalizability, probably
the most sensitive and ambiguous in the discourse between quantitative
and qualitative researchers, receives scant attention in the widely used
Hammersley and Atkinson (1995; see pages 42-5). It receives even less
coverage in Lofland and Lofland (1995).
Readers should note that they will not find in these pages an attack on
quantitative methods (which I often employ in my work). At issue is the
difference between an approach to science in which different questions are
asked within different epistemological frameworks and one in which all
social scientists attempt to answer all questions from one framework. It
should become obvious why this article defends epistemological pluralism.
I think Lamont's study of 160 upper-middle-class men in France and the
United States is a methodologically sophisticated interview-based study.
However, I do not believe, as others have commented, that it is sophisti
cated because 'she had a representative sample'. The study's response rate
was very low, between 42 percent and 58 percent, by liberal estimates

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30 Ethnography 10(1)

(Lamont, 1992). (As Lamont [1992: 285] writes, the figures 'do
potential respondents who did not provide the information n
determine whether they qualified or not' for the study. Thu
could overstate the response rate.) In addition, the samples ar
80 individuals in each country (40 in each site). The methodol
tication of the book comes from the sensitivity of the interv
Lamont's ability to interpret the meaning of respondents' stat
their cultural contexts; her use of a comparative model to
concepts; her judicious use of both semi-structured interviews,
findings to emerge inductively, and a structured survey, wh
comparative data across the cases; and her thoughtful selectio
sites (Lamont, 1992, Appendix II).
8 For a discussion of these issues from researchers aimed at
qualitative/quantitative divide, see King et al. (1994, pp. 63ff)
9 A more accurate statement of her question is this: Jane
know that, were she to sample the same population repeatedly
100 times the true number of working-class blacks w
immigration reform would fall within +/- five percentage po
estimated value.
10 The formula is n = (Z2 X p X (1 - p)) / C2, where Z is the Z value (1.96
for a 95% confidence level); C is the confidence interval, expressed as a
decimal (in this case, .05); and p is the percentage of people who are
expected to be, in this case, pro-reform. We assume .5, the most conserv
ative assumption. (If 51% are pro- and 49% are anti-reform, the room for
error is high, so a large sample is needed; if 90% were pro-reform one
could get by on a much smaller sample of 139.) There are dozens of sample
size calculators on the Internet, where one can manipulate the assumptions.
For example, [www.raosoft.com/samplesize.html].
11 In this passage, the authors were discussing much broader issues, so this
selection does not do justice to their book. The purpose here is not to
produce a full-fledged critique of the authors' book. Rather, it is to show
the pitfalls of this particular way of thinking about case study selection,
which the authors share with many others. One could argue that the
authors' flaw in this instance stems from their attempt to use a case study
to find an 'estimator', in the quantitative sense. From that perspective, we
may quote Campbell and Stanley, who said of 'the one-shot case study'
that 'such studies have such a total absence of control as to be of almost
no scientific value' (Campbell and Stanley, 1963: 6). I disagree strongly with
Campbell and Stanley's implied assessment of the purpose of a case study;
however, I agree that, if the purpose were to make a statistically general
izable statement of the effect of one variable on another, the authors would
be right, and their critique would apply to King et al.'s 'case study
estimator' (1994).

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 Small m Case selection in field-based research 31

On the research dilemmas brought about by IRBs and the problems

confidentiality, see Shea (2000). Today, researchers have to make difficul
decisions about how to report their findings, since IRBs often requi
ethnographers to guarantee the confidentiality of their respondents. All t
often, the solution requires thinking of neighborhoods in the abstrac
devoid of historical or political context, further reinforcing the tendency
think of cases within sample-based logic.
In fact, one of the advantages of this section of King et al.'s (1994) book,
as seen through Bill's application, is that it takes the logic of many such
studies - where the approach is implicit - to its natural conclusion. Some
ethnographers in these fields do, in fact, select their neighborhoods or ca
based on careful demographic assessments of whether the site is empiri
cally average (e.g. Klinenberg, 2002; McDermott, 2006). Others select, and
at times even stumble, onto their cases through more informal processe
but with a similar understanding that the site being studied is somehow
typical (e.g. Pattillo, 1999; Venkatesh, 2000; Wacquant, 2007). (In fac
this is one of the strongest proclivities inherited from the Chicago Scho
of sociology.) In both cases, the implication is that by studying the righ
neighborhood, the ethnographer has earned a greater warrant to speak o
'the ghetto', 'the American housing project', 'the immigrant enclave', or
another equivalent type of case. Conversely (following that logic), had an
apparently atypical neighborhood been studied - such as a housing projec
that managed to keep crime at bay - then the weight of the warrant woul
be radically lowered. Of course, some ethnographers are more careful th
others in the care with which they subsequently make claims about othe
neighborhoods, or neighborhoods in the general 'type', based on the stud
of the 'typical' case. However, as we shall see, I argue that no single neig
borhood, whether apparently typical or radically atypical, produces such
a warrant; that there is little justification for studying apparently typic
neighborhoods within this context and several motivations to explicit
study atypical ones; and that the language for discussing work in the
contexts should change radically.
The median age for males and females is 36; more individuals are married
than never married, widowed, or divorced; among persons 25 or olde
more are high school graduates or graduates with some college than not
high school graduates, college graduates, or persons with advanced degre
$36,911 is the median earnings for individuals for the year 2006. Se
Section 1, Population, of the Statistical Abstract of the United States [http
www.census.gov/prod/2007pubs/08statab/pop.pdf].
Early Chicago School criminologists adopted a version of this procedu
in their book-length studies of a single juvenile delinquent (Shaw, 193
1931). In a discussion included in one of the studies, Burgess convincingl
argues that an in-depth study of this nature is especially informative abou

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32 Ethnography 10(1)

the processes of becoming a full-time offender, but then unc

attempts to argue that the case is 'representative':

The case of Stanley appears also to be typical in a more real se

be verified by any statistical calculation. It is typical (i.e., belo
type) in the same way that every case is representative of its k
This case is a member of the criminal species ... The individ
more intrinsically a specimen of any group of which he is a me
a plant or animal of its species ... [T]he relation of the person
is organic and hence representative upon a cultural rather t
biological level. (Burgess, in Shaw, 1930, p. 186)

Burgess's use of metaphors here does little to address the

completely different delinquent would have to be understo
'representative', thus begging the initial question.
16 In his two articles proposing seven approaches from whic
ethnographies, Katz (2001a, 2002) suggests several additional p
For example, when ethnographic data are praised as reve
hidden or overlooked aspects of social life, discovery bec
important than mere empirical applicability to other cases. (M
below.)
17 This interpretation is reinforced by his global ethnography, where he argues
that the larger functions that should play a role in understanding the case
are not merely societal but global (Burawoy et al., 2000).
18 Interestingly, one might trace this tendency - of the method to rest foun
dationally on a theoretical proposition about society - to van Velsen (1978
[1967]). Van Velsen preferred the term 'situational analysis', because his
concern was that, when studying a case, one should present it as a situation
as a whole, with all of the local and external factors shaping the observed
phenomena. When identifying the assumptions of his model, van Velsen
(1978 [1967]: 146) writes: 'One of the assumptions on which situational
analysis rests is that the norms of society do not constitute a constituent
and coherent whole. On the contrary, they are often vaguely formulated
and discrepant Situational analysis therefore lays stress on the study of
norms in conflict.' In this respect, the method (situational analysis) pre
supposes a theoretical subject matter (norms in conflict), the way Burawoy's
extended case method presupposed, or seemed to, a theoretical subject
matter (domination and resistance).
19 Burawoy's later work would not so much solve the problem as change the
question. In Burawoy (1998), Burawoy et al. (2000), and Burawoy (2003)
he pushes, respectively, for a reflexive mode of science that takes the obtru
siveness of the researcher as a starting point; for an ethnographic program
that aims to understand the local case in light of global conditions; and for
an approach to revisiting sites in which not mere refutation but a revised

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 Small m Case selection in field-based research 33

understanding of the role of structure in affecting both present and past

conditions plays a role.
Many have made some version of this distinction: 'statistical inference vs
logical inference', 'statistical generalizability vs analytical generalizability'
(Yin, 2002), and 'enumerative induction vs analytical induction'. This last
distinction is Znaniecki's (1934), whose predicament - defining case studies
in an age inclined to rely on quantitative research to examine social
problems - parallels our current one all too closely.
It is worth noting that many of the other, quite appropriate recommen
dations - that ethnographers engage in 'process tracing' or 'unpacking
mechanisms' or 'identifying conditions' - are in essence more complex
versions of this basic insight (see e.g. Lamont and White, forthcoming).
Some of the ideas that follow are consistent with grounded theory. In fact,
the processes of literal and theoretical replication, described below, are
similar to Glaser and Strauss's (1967: 59) description of 'theoretical
sampling'. Readers will also notice that sequential interviewing has much
in common with Bayesian inference. See also Katz (2001b).
The inspiration for this example is the work of Claude Steele and colleagues
at Stanford University on 'stereotype threat' (see Aronson et al., 1999;
Steele, 1992; Steele and Aronson, 1995). The example by no means
attempts to represent the process through which Steele and his colleagues
actually performed their research.
To be clear, I do not believe Alfonse can now make determinist statements.
His understanding of the effect of stereotype threat would still fall within
the parameters of a probabilistic understanding of the social world
(Lieberson, 1991).
These descriptions of the research process are stylized, as all of them are forced
to be. In real life, Jane might have interviewed 10 people before any
semblance of a story had emerged. She then would have limited the scope of
her study and her questions, to prevent continuing to interview indefinitely.
Of course, if Jane had simply selected her 35 cases as she had before, she
would not be able to make statements about distributions either.
A reviewer asked how this approach would work in the large, team ethno
graphic projects that have proliferated in recent years (e.g. Newman, 1999).
In theory, there should be no difference in the application of sequential
interviewing. However, the logistics of running such projects may render
the careful application of a sequential process difficult, which happens to
highlight one of their potential weaknesses. If one or two Pis supervise
without entering the field, or if the team is especially large, or if the project
takes place in multiple cities, it becomes difficult to coordinate early discov
eries, to devise literal or theoretical propositions to replicate, or to shift
direction collectively to answer newly pressing questions. Indeed, it is
possible that as the number of ethnographers increases the more the project

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34 Ethnography 10(1)

will resemble a survey, rather than a study in which most o

are emergent.
28 One of my first-year graduate students, convinced of the logic of these
arguments, nonetheless explained that 'it feels better' to pursue these
pseudo-representative samples, since, irrational as it may be, she had been
indoctrinated into worshiping the gods of statistical representativeness. To
this I have no reply, except perhaps to paraphrase Goya: when reason goes
to sleep, nothing but monsters comes to life.

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38 Ethnography 10(1)

■ MARIO LUIS SMALL is Associate Professor of Socio

the College at the University of Chicago. His research fo
urban poverty, neighborhoods, inequality and culture,
study methods. He is the author of Villa Victoria: The
Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio (2004
which he received the C. Wright Mills Prize, and of arti
published in journals such as the American Journal of So
Annual Review of Sociology, Social Forces, Theory and S
Social Science Quarterly. His forthcoming book. Unantic
Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday Life, e
qualitative and quantitative data on urban mothers to ex
how routine organizations affect the advantages that p
secure from their networks. Address: 1126 E. 59th Stree
IL 60637, USA. [home.uchicago.edu/~mariosmall, email:
[email protected]] ■

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