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Chapter 3. Research Methodology Adoption, Diffusion and Use of E-government
Hassan Al-Zaabi Services in Abu Dhabi Police Force
Research Method Form of Research
Question
Requires Control of
Behavioural Events?
Focuses on
Contemporary Events?
Experiment How, why? Yes Yes
Survey Who, what, where, how
many, how much?
Archival Analysis Who, what, where, how
many, how much?
No Yes
No Yes / No
History How, why? No No
Case Study How, why? No Yes
Table 3.3: Relevant situations for different research methods (Source: Yin, 2009: 8)
It is possible to have a single or multiple case studies (Darke et al., 1998). Yin (2009: 61) argued that
multiple case studies are more preferred than single case studies, “analytic conclusions from two or
more cases are more powerful than those coming from a single case”. In this research four departments
from ADPF were viewed as 4 different case studies, the departments used for this research are: security
information, IT and communications, strategic management and policing operations department. More
details about the departments will be looked at in the next chapter. The reason for using multiple cases
is because the researcher wanted to examine the ADPF e-services in depth to understand the factors
affecting the adoption and usage of e-services. An in-depth case study was not pursued as accessibility
to only one department and various viewpoints was not possible. Further a sole department did not
have enough participants for this researcher to form a sound and deep understanding. Furthermore,
using multiple case studies provides rich explanations (Walsham, 1995) and also provides the
opportunity of comparing results between the case studies “cross-case analysis”. Multiple case studies
“allow cross case analysis and comparison, and the investigation of a particular phenomenon in diverse
settings” (Darke et al., 1998: 277), this will be looked at in depth when analysing the data in chapter 4
and 5.
As given earlier this study examined four different departments within ADPF. Figure 3.4 shows the
multiple case study method used in this research. Each case study will be analysed separately which
will be looked at in chapter 4 (pilot study) and chapter 5 (final study), after that a cross-case analysis
will be concluded by looking at all the four case studies.
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