case study narrative

• Laurel Learning Tips (Blog)
• Schedule Time to Discuss Your Needs
• 608-219-3594
• About Deborah Laurel
• Questions & Answers
• International Trainer Experience
• Capabilities Statement
• Training Philosophy
• Testimonials
• Whitepapers/Articles
• Laurel Learning Blog
• Where We've Been - Travelogue
• Custom Training Audits
• Audit Approach
• Training Audit Clients
• Curriculum Design Approach
• Our Curriculum Design Process
• Banking Curriculum Design
• Energy Curriculum Design
• Participant-Centered Curriculum
• Technical Curriculum Design
• Customized Training Workshops
• Assertiveness
• Business Growth
• Business Management
• Career Development
• Change Management
• Coaching and Mentoring
• Communication Skills
• Conflict Management
• Customer Service
• Direction and Supervision
• Group Process
• Interpersonal Relations
• Management and Leadership
• Organizational Culture
• Organizational Development
• Performance Management
• Personal Management
• Presentation Skills
• Training Skills
• Conflict Management Online Courses

Tip #509: Directions for Writing a Narrative Case Study

• March 17, 2014
• case study , conversation , decisions , detail , development , dialogue , instructions , questions , success , thinking

“If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn’t need to have the rest of the universities attached.” Judith Martin

I created these instructions for writing a narrative case study, for the benefit of three health professionals in Kenya who were contracted to create case studies for a US Agency for Industrial Development training program. Please see what you think:

A narrative case study is a story of a real life problem or situation that provides sufficient background data so that the problem can be analyzed and solved.

• A good case study is written in the form of a story.
• It has a problem for the readers to solve.
• It has characters who have names and use authentic dialogue.
• It is descriptive, with realistic details.
• The flow is easy to follow.
• There is sufficient information so that the readers can understand what the problem is and, after thinking about it and analyzing the information, come up with a proposed solution.
• It has pertinent questions that focus the readers on the key points.

Directions:

• Draw your information from real situations that were either resolved successfully or unsuccessfully.
• Your case study should include:
• A decision maker who is dealing with some question or problem that needs to be resolved;
• A description of the problem;
• An explanation of the context in which the problem occurred; and
• Sufficient supporting data.
• Your case study should provide the answers to these questions:
• What is the issue?
• Who is involved?
• When did the situation occur?
• Where did the situation take place?
• Why did the issue/problem arise?
• What key facts should be considered?
• What questions do the key characters need to resolve?
• What alternatives are available to the decision-maker?
• Your case study should have five sections:
• Introduction
• Answers to Questions [identify what the actual owner did in the situation]

If you would like a copy of the Narrative Case Study Template that accompanied these directions, just contact Deborah Laurel .

May your learning be sweet.

Related Posts

Tip #1052: the performance drivers of employee engagement.

What do workplace friendships and quality commitment have in common? According to Gallup’s

Tip #1051: Building Strong Workplace Relationships: The Heart of Employee Engagement

Want to know the secret to reducing safety incidents by 46% and absenteeism

Tip #1050: The Foundation of Employee Engagement

Did you know that companies with highly engaged employees outperform their competitors by

Learn at your own pace with these online learning courses

It doesn’t have to be difficult to Deal with Difficult People .

How to Manage Change in Your Business for Smooth Transitions

Share This Post

Wisconsin Woman-Owned Business Enterprise

The Answer is Yes Certified Trainer

Association for Talent Development

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

Download Free PDF

Narrative approaches to case studies

Related papers

International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2020

Case study and narrative inquiry as merged methodological frameworks can make a vital contribution that seeks to understand processes that may explain current realities within professions and broader society. This article offers an explanation of how a critical perspective on case study and narrative inquiry as an embedded methodology unearthed the interplay between structure and agency within storied lives. This case narrative emerged out of a doctoral thesis in occupational therapy, a single instrumental case describing a process of professional role transition within school-level specialized education in the Western Cape, South Africa. This case served as an exemplar in demonstrating how case study recognized the multiple layers to the context within which the process of professional role transition unfolded. The embedded narrative inquiry served to clarify emerging professional identities for occupational therapists within school-level specialized education in postapartheid Sout...

"Examining narrative methods in the context of its multi-disciplinary social science origins, this text looks at its theoretical underpinnings, while retaining an emphasis on the process of doing narrative research. The authors provide a comprehensive guide to narrative methods, taking the reader from initial decisions about forms of narrative analysis, through more complex issues of reflexivity, interpretation and the research context. The contributions included here clearly demonstrate the value of narrative methods for contemporary social research and practice. This book will be invaluable for all social science postgraduate students and researchers looking to use narrative methods in their own research."

Doing Narrative Research edition 1, 2008

This article is intended to be an introduction to narrative analysis. It introduces key terms in narrative theory (eg story and plot), discusses various types of narratives relevant for social studies and features three selected analytical approaches to narratives: a poetic classification, a tripartite way of reading and a deconstructive analysis. The conclusion presents some reflections on narratives as ways to make sense of time.

Anecdotes are central to understanding and writing about people's lives. They provide an essential stepping stone to case studies and are fundamental to qualitative research methodologies. It draws upon Laclau's poststructuralist approach to discourse in exploring the development of narrative based case studies and in doing so presents an approach to 'triangulation' as a basis for validity and the reduction of bias.

NB This paper is a draft. Please reference the chapter as published: Esin, C., Fathi, M., & Squire, C. (2014). Narrative analysis: The constructionist approach. In U. Flick (Ed.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative data analysis. (pp. 203-217). London: SAGE Publications Ltd. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446282243.n14 Narrative analysis is an analytical method that accommodates a variety of approaches. Through these approaches, social researchers explore how people story their lives. This is also a process through which researchers understand the complexities of personal and social relations. Narrative analysis provides the researcher with useful tools to comprehend the diversity and the different levels involved in stories, rather than treating those stories simply as coherent, natural and unified entities (Andrews et al., 2004). It is this approach to narrative analysis, which we shall call the constructionist approach to narrative analysis, that we aim to explain in the chapter that follows.

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, 2023

Disentangling Jihad, Political Violence, and Media, 2023

. Odlew z Czernawczyc i zapinki typu 41 O. Almgrena z ziem Białorusi, 2023

INTERPRETATION: A Journal of Political Philosophy, 2020

Siting Culture, eds. Karen Fog Olwig & Kirsten Hastrup, 1997

Chemical Engineering Research and Design, 2019

Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence

Organic Process Research & Development, 2006

Global health action, 2009

PloS one, 2017

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2018

Nordic Pulp & Paper Research Journal, 2019

J. Soc. & Soc. Welfare, 2008

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

Brief Guide to Writing Case Narratives

• First Online: 26 July 2019

Cite this chapter

• Sarah Shick 4 ,
• Ifeolorunbode Adebambo 5 &
• Adam Perzynski 6  

806 Accesses

Narratives have long been a tradition in both medicine and social science. Narratives emphasize a depth of understanding and tie abstract ideas to real life. Case narratives help us to develop the concepts and relationships between concepts that form the foundation for theory and change. This chapter distinguishes between types of narratives and presents tools and strategies for conducting workshops and working with learners to write case narratives of health disparities and social determinants of health. The materials in this chapter were the foundation for all of the narratives presented in this book. Students and faculty in our courses are for the most part eager to participate. This chapter provides some basic introductory steps that help health-care professionals synthesize their clinical and life experiences into written cases.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save.

• Get 10 units per month
• Download Article/Chapter or eBook
• 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
• Cancel anytime
• Available as EPUB and PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Compact, lightweight edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info
• Durable hardcover edition

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Guidelines for Narratives Workshops

Narrative Medicine

Narrative Research

Lamott A (2007) Bird by bird: some instructions on writing and life. Anchor, Norwell

Google Scholar  

Fritz K (2008) Case study and narrative analysis. The Johns Hopkins University. Available: http://ocw.jhsph.edu/courses/QualitativeDataAnalysis/PDFs/Session4.pdf

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Sociology, Case Western Reserve University, Center for Health Care Research and Policy, The MetroHealth System, Cleveland, OH, USA

Sarah Shick

Department of Family Medicine, The MetroHealth System, Cleveland, OH, USA

Ifeolorunbode Adebambo

Center for Health Care Research and Policy, The MetroHealth System, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA

Adam Perzynski

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Adam Perzynski .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Case Western Reserve University Center for Health Care Research and Policy, The MetroHealth System, Cleveland, OH, USA

Department of Sociology, Case Western Reserve University Center for Health Care Research and Policy, The MetroHealth System, Cleveland, OH, USA

Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Shick, S., Adebambo, I., Perzynski, A. (2019). Brief Guide to Writing Case Narratives. In: Perzynski, A., Shick, S., Adebambo, I. (eds) Health Disparities. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12771-8_61

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12771-8_61

Published : 26 July 2019

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-030-12770-1

Online ISBN : 978-3-030-12771-8

eBook Packages : Medicine Medicine (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research