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Chapter 3 Research Framework
relation to social, economic and political factors may be ignored. These factors are
essential in understanding the contextual issues that may affect resident autonomy.
Case study research was then considered most suitable for meeting the aims of this
research study. Walshe et al. (2005) presented the advantages of using case study
design when 1)situations are complex, 2)the real-world context of the service is
central, 3)multiple perspectives are required, 4)flexibility is desirable, 5)research
needs to be congruent with clinical practice, 6)there is no obvious suitable theory,
and 7)other methods present practical difficulties.
Zucker (2001) identified case study research for nurses as a method that centralises
the patient in the process and this is particularly pertinent for this research, which
seeks the resident’s perspective. Yin (1994) further clarified this point by stating that
multiple sources of evidence gathered from multiple data collection techniques make
the case study design attractive to the researcher (e.g. both staff and resident
perspectives). Gerring (2007) added that case study research often employs a great
variety of techniques – both qualitative and quantitative – in order to gather evidence
for analysis. Thus case study research offers a depth of analysis, a richness, a
completeness, a wholeness, and can quite rightly be referred to as a holistic method
yielding “thick” descriptions of events. Yin (2009) stated that case studies are very
broadly considered qualitative or quantitative or both, depending on the research
question. This flexibility enables the researcher to gather data that is in-depth and
delve below the surface of the research phenomenon.
Gerring (2007) explained that in case study research the case connotes a spatially
delimited phenomenon (a unit) observed at a single point in time or over some period
of time. A case may be created out of any phenomenon so long as it has identifiable
boundaries and comprises the primary object of an inference. Its spatial boundaries
may be more apparent than its temporal boundaries (we may know where a case
begins and ends but maybe not when it begins and ends). In this research study the
extent of residents’ autonomy in one long-stay care unit is the case, and this was
subdivided into the practices of the individual nurses, caregivers and residents and
the context that surrounded the approach to care. According to Luck, Jackson and
Usher (2006), an acknowledgment of the particular characteristics of the case, such