Top 3 Stellar Social Media Case Studies to Inspire You

In this blog you will explore 3 captivating social media case studies and their tips for success. Benefit from their strategies, and mistakes to assure success of your next campaign.

Top 3 Stellar Social Media Case Studies to Inspire You

Social media is every marketer’s safe haven for branding and marketing.

And why not?

More than 50% of the population is active on social media, and more are signing up with every passing second.

In a recent poll by Hubspot, 79% of the respondents have made a purchase after seeing a paid advertisement on social media .

This isn’t just a happenstance.

It’s the constant efforts that these brands put behind their dynamic presence on social media, that counts.

But how do they captivate their customers’ attention for this long despite the budding competitors?

Well, that’s something that we’ll reveal in this blog.

We shall assess 3 different social media case studies. All of them are best in their niches. Their game is simple yet effective.

How effective? Let’s take a look.

Social Media Case Study 1: Starbucks

Starbucks and social media are a match made in heaven. Being one of the sensational brands online, they are stirring the social media world with their strong presence.

They brew the right content to elevate the experiences of their coffee lovers. But how do they nail marketing with perfection every single time? Let’s find out.

Starbucks in Numbers

Starbucks mastered the advertising transition from offline fame to online undertaking. They use each social media with a varied goal to target pitch-perfect reach. Drawing in more customers than ever before, they strike the right balance in content across multiple platforms.

Starbucks

Key Takeaways

Though not every company has a Starbucks budget to promote and spend lavishly on social media marketing, here are some quick takeaways that will undoubtedly help.

1. Chasing Trends

Be it any event, brands must take the advantage to showcase their viewpoints and opinions. Successful brands like Starbucks jump into the bandwagon and leave no stone unturned to make their voice count in the trending list.

Here’s one such social media campaign example from Starbucks.

Chasing

Starbucks is a firm believer in LGBTQ+ rights. When the pride wave surged, Starbucks came forward and reinstated its belief through the #ExtraShotOfPride campaign.

Starbucks joined hands with the Born This Way Foundation to raise $250K to support the LGBTQ+ community. Throughout the social media campaign, they shared quotes and stories of various Starbucks employees cherishing the pride spirit.

2. Less is More

Social media is not about quantity but quality. Starbucks follows the “less is more” principle to maintain the quality standards, even in the caption. Spamming followers’ feeds with constant posting is a big no-no. Starbucks shares 5-6 posts per week on Instagram and 3-4 weekly posts on Facebook .

Starbucks follows

Creative and crisp! That’s what defines a Starbucks caption. This post with 111+k likes is no exception. Nothing is better than a minimalist post with a strong caption.

3. User Generated Content is the King

Ditch the worry of creating content every day when you can make use of user generated content. Starbucks makes sure to retweet or post its loyal customers’ content. User generated content postings starkly improve brand credibility.

Generated Content

Look at this Facebook post made out of customers’ tweets. The new Oatmilk drink got the appreciation shower by some, and Starbucks couldn’t resist but share it with others. It saved them efforts on content brainstorming, plus they got free PR.

4. Building Rapport

Building rapport with the audience is an unsaid rule to brand fame. Social media has now taken the onus of dispensing quality service by aiding brands in prompting faster replies .

Building rapport

Starbucks is always on its toe to respond to customers actively solving concerns, expressing gratitude, or reposting. That kind of proactive service definitely deserves love and adoration.

5. Loads of campaigns

Starbucks is known for its innovative social media campaigns. Be it a new product launch or any festivity around the corner, Starbucks always turns up with a rewarding campaign.

Loads of campaign

In this social media campaign example, Starbucks introduced #RedCupContest with prizes worth $4500 during Christmas of 2016. A new entry came every 14 seconds.

The grand total of entries was a whopping 40,000 in just two days. Indeed Starbucks knows how to get the most out of the festive fever.

6. Content mix

Last but not least, the content mix of Starbucks is inspiring. They create tailored content for every platform.

Starbucks youtube channel

The official youtube channel of Starbucks comprises content in varied hues. From recipes to even series, Starbucks is the ultimate pioneer of experimenting.

Starbucks Instagram

Even on Instagram, they use all the features like Guides, Reels, and IGTV without affecting their eye-popping feed. Starbucks also follows the design consistency for its aesthetic content mix.

Starbucks has proved time and again to be a customer-centric brand with their unrelenting efforts.

Social Media Case Study 2: Ogilvy & Mather

Ogilvy & Mather needs no introduction. Founded by David Ogilvy, the ‘Father of Advertising’ in 1948, the agency continues the legacy of revolutionizing marketing long before the advent of social media.

The iconic agency helps several Fortune 500 companies and more make a massive impact on their audiences worldwide.

Ogilvy & Mather knows its game too well and never fails to astonish. Not just high-profile clients, Ogilvy nails its marketing with perfection every single time.

Keep on reading.

Ogilvy & Mather in Numbers

They use social media to target pitch-perfect reach. Drawing in more hype than ever before, they know how to strike the right balance and bring out emotions with their heart-warming campaigns.

Ogilvy

Not every company has David Ogilvy’s legacy or even affluent clients to boast of, but here are some quick takeaways that will undoubtedly help you become a pro marketer.

1. Integrating Values

Ogilvy stands apart from the crowd, creating trends. They leave no stone unturned to communicate values.

Ogilvy

Proud Whopper is one such social media campaign by Ogilvy that was an instant hit on the internet. People were offered whoppers in rainbow-colored wrappers, with a note that said, “Everyone’s the same on the inside.” This was to reinstate the importance of LGTQ+ rights.

The campaign got 1.1 billion impressions, $21 million of earned media, 450,000 blog mentions, 7 million views, and became the #1 trending topic on Facebook and Twitter.

Ogilvy made a remarkable #Tbt video to honor this momentous event showcasing their supremacy in creating impactful campaigns.

2. Quality over Quantity

Ogilvy believes in the “ Quality supremacy ” to maintain their high standards, even in post captions.

Arbitrary posting isn’t a part of their agenda. They share 5-7 posts on Instagram and Facebook weekly.

Quality over Quantity

Direct and very precise. That’s what defines an Ogilvy caption. This post is no exception. They have exhibited the success of their client work by describing the motive behind the campaign and sharing the ad they created for raising awareness.

3. Adding Credibility

Won awards? It’s time to boast! Because that’s the most authentic way of establishing trust among your clients. It bears proof of your excellence.

Adding Credibility

Look at this pinned Twitter post. Ogilvy won the Global Network of the Year by the very prestigious London International Awards. It also earned Regional Network of the year for Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe.

What better than this to give its audience an idea about Ogilvy’s roaring success and undoubted potential?

4. Being Innovative

Building rapport with the audience is an unsaid rule to brand fame. And that’s why you need to tell stories. Social media has become an indispensable medium to spread your stories far and wide.

Being Innovative

Ogilvy shares its historical tale of existence and how it has adapted to the challenges of the changing world. The team extensively talks about their adaptation to the latest trends to stay on top always.

5. Brainstorming Uniqueness

Being unique is what propels you on social media. People are always looking for brands that do something different from the herd. So your task each day is undeniably brainstorming unique content.

Brainstorming Uniqueness

KFC wanted more of its customers to use its app. Well, Ogilvy and KFC decided to hide a secret menu in the app, which was a mass invitation for the download without being salesy at all. Results? Downloads up by 111% at launch!

6. Inspire Your Peeps

Inspiration is everywhere. But how do you channelize and mold it as per your brand guidelines? The renowned brands move their audience, filling them with a sense of realization. Who doesn’t seek validation? We all need quotes and inspiration to live by.

Inspire Your Peeps

Ogilvy has dedicated its entire Pinterest profile to inspiration. The profile has numerous insightful infographics that encourage you to pursue marketing when your spirits run low. And that’s how it brings out the very essence of being the marketing leader: by inspiring its followers.

Got some good ideas for your branding? We have created templates and tools to help you execute them hassle-free. Tread on further and download the Trending Hashtag Kit for 2024 to get into action.

Social Media Case Study 3: PewDiePie

YouTube king with 111 Million subscribers on PewDiePie Channel, Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, has defied all norms. One of the most prolific content creators of the decade, Felix was on the list of World’s 100 Most Influential People by Time Magazine in 2016.

Needless to say, he is still relevant to this day and has a massive following on social media. Not just for branding, the Swedish YouTuber leveraged social media to give himself a new identity and opened doors to fame and a successful career.

What was the cause of this extraordinary trajectory?

Let’s find out.

PewDiePie in Numbers

PewDiePie likes to keep his social media raw and unfiltered. That’s why subscribers love to have a glimpse of his everyday life and follow him on other social media platforms as well. Here’s a quick snapshot of that.

PewDiePie

Felix took the early bird advantage and started creating content when it wasn’t even popular practice. We can’t go back in time, but we can definitely learn a lot from his social media success.

1. Start Now

If you are still skeptical about making the first move, then don’t. Stop waiting and experiment. It’s better late than never.

Social media is in favor of those who start early because then you create surplus content to hold your audience . You quench their thirst for more quality content.

PewDiePie started creating videos

PewDiePie started creating videos in 2011 and live-streamed his gaming sessions with commentaries. It was something new and completely original. Ever since, he has continued to make thousands of videos that entertain his audience.

2. Gather Your Tribe

Being a content creator, PewDiePie knows his act of engaging his audience very well. He strives to build lasting connections and encourages two-way communication. As a result, his followers like to jump onto his exciting challenges.

gaming community

Felix treasures his gaming community. He frequently asks his followers to take screenshots and turn them into funny memes . He gives them tasks to keep them engaged and amused .

3. Collaboration and Fundraising

Once you reach the stage and gain popularity, people want to see more of you with their favorite personalities. That’s what Felix does.

He collaborates with multiple YouTubers and brands and puts out exclusive content for his followers. He also goes for multiple fundraising campaigns to support vital causes and social wellbeing.

social media campaign

Here’s one such social media campaign example. PewDiePie supported the CRY foundation and raised $239000 in just one day to bring a positive impact for children in India. He thanked all for their contribution and taking active participation towards a noble cause.

4. Keep it Real

Felix likes to keep his content fluff-free. You get to witness raw emotions from an unfiltered life. This instantly appeals to the audience and makes the posts more relatable .

Apart from that, he also uses storytelling techniques to narrate his experiences, adding a very personalized touch to each of the videos.

PewDiePie

Here’s a video of Felix where he and Ken from CinnamonToastKen discuss what can be possibly done with a million dollars around the world. The topic is quite intriguing.

More than 3.8M people have watched it and 216K of them liked it as well, proving that you need not always sweat to create complex content. Even the simplest ones can make the cut.

Social media campaigns are winning hearts on every platform. However, their success rates largely depend on your year-round presence. That’s why being consistent really does the trick.

We’re sure, you must have learned a few things from the above mentioned social media case studies .

To excel further at your social media marketing, use our FREE Trending Hashtag Kit and fill your calendar with everyday content ideas.

On downloading, you get 3000+ hashtags based on each day’s theme or occasion. You also get editable design templates for a hassle-free social media posting.

What are you waiting for? Download now.

Frequently Asked Questions

🌟 How do I start a social media campaign idea?

Here’s how you can start a social media campaign:

  • Finalize your campaign goals
  • Brainstorm personas
  • Pick a social media channel
  • Research your competitors and audience
  • Finalize an idea that’s in trend
  • Promote the campaign
  • Start the campaign
  • Track the performance

🌟 What are the different types of social media campaigns?

Different types of social media campaigns are:

  • Influencer Campaigns
  • Hashtag Challenges

🌟 Why is social media campaign important?

Social media campaigns have various benefits:

  • Boost traffic
  • Better Conversions
  • Cost-effective Marketing
  • Lead Generation
  • PR & Branding
  • Loyal Followers

🌟 What are some of the best social media campaign tools?

Some of the best social media campaign tools are:

  • SocialPilot

🌟 What are the top social media sites?

The top social media sites are:

About the Author

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20 Best Social Media Marketing Case Study Examples

How would you like to read the best social media marketing case studies ever published?

More importantly, how would you like to copy the best practices in social media marketing that are based on real-world examples and not just theory?

Below, you’ll find a list of the top 20 social media case study examples along with the results and key findings. By studying these social media marketing studies and applying the lessons learned on your own accounts, you can hopefully achieve similar results.

Table of Contents

Social Media Case Study Examples

793,500+ impressions for semrush on twitter  – walker sands social media case study.

The case study shows how Walker Sands implemented a premium Twitter microcontent program for Semrush, a global leader in digital marketing software. Semrush needed a strategic social media marketing partner to help distinguish its brand from competitors, drive a higher engagement rate among its target audience, and build brand loyalty. In this case study, you’ll find out how the social strategy focused on three things: using humor, embedding the brand in trending conversations, and focusing on the audience’s interests over marketing messages. The result was an increase of more than 793,500 impressions, 34,800 engagements, and a 4.4% average engagement rate.

Viral Oreo Super Bowl Tweet  – Social Media Case Study

This is a popular case study to learn valuable insights for B2C marketing. During Super Bowl XLVII, the lights went out in the football stadium and the Oreo brand went viral with a single tweet that said “Power out? No problem. You can still dunk in the dark.” Read the historical account of that famous social media marketing moment from the people who lived through it so you can gather ideas on how to be better prepared for future social media campaigns that you can take advantage of in real-time.

Facebook Posting Strategy That Lead to 3X Reach & Engagement  – Buffer Social Media Case Study

In this social media case study example, you’ll find out how Buffer cut its Facebook posting frequency by 50% but increased the average weekly reach and engagement by 3X. Hint: The strategy had to do with creating fewer, better-quality posts, that were aimed at gaining higher engagement.

Achieving a 9 Million Audience by Automating Pinterest SEO  – Social Media Case Study

This is a good social media marketing case study for marketers who use Pinterest. Discover how Chillital went from 0 to 9 million engaged audience members and 268 million impressions. You’ll learn about the step-by-step research process of finding where your audience lives and breathes content, get a detailed analysis of how the author used Pinterest to generate brand awareness, and learn about using community-driven content promotion to scale social media results.

5X Increase In App Installs from TikTok  – Bumble Social Media Case Study

With the use of TikTok on the rise, social media case studies are now being shared about how to get the most value out of marketing on this platform. This one, in particular, is good to read because it explains how Bumble, a dating app, used TikTok more effectively by following the mantra, “Don’t Make Ads, Make TikToks”. This case study in social media marketing resulted in a 5X increase in app installs and a 64% decrease in cost-per-registration.

330% Increase In Reach for the Make a Wish Foundation – Disney Social Media Case Study

Check out this case study to find out how the Make-A-Wish Foundation increased its social media reach, audience, and engagement by partnering with Disney in a Share Your Ears campaign. The strategy was simple: ask people to take a photo of themselves wearing Mickey Mouse ears, post it on social media with the hashtag #ShareYouEars, and a $5 donation would be made to Make-A-Wish. The results were unbelievable with over 1.7 million posted photos and 420 million social media impressions. This led to a 15% audience increase on Facebook and a 13% audience increase on Instagram with a total increase of 330% in social media reach and a 554% increase in engagement during the campaign.

How 3 Schools Used Social Media Advertising to Increase Website Traffic & Applications – Social Media Case Study

This example includes three of the best social media case studies from Finalsite, a marketing agency for educational institutions. It shows the power of social media advertising to increase website traffic and enrollment. One case study, in particular, shows how a limited budget of $350 per month increased website sessions by 515%, more than 2,200 clicks on the apply button for a study abroad application, 2,419 views on the request information page, and 575 views on the application process page.

Client Case Studies – LYFE Marketing Social Media Case Study

LYFE Marketing is a social media management company that helps clients gain new customers, generate sales, and increase brand exposure online. This page includes several of its top social media marketing case studies along with the approach and key results from each campaign. It’s packed with screenshots of the social media posts and engagement metrics so you can understand how each strategy worked for success, and get inspiration for your own campaigns.

3X Leads for a Local Business – Vertex Marketing Social Media Case Study

This is a good case study about finding the right balance between organic reach with social media posts and paid reach with social media marketing ads. You’ll find out how Vertex Marketing helped a local kitchen and bath remodeling business increase the number of leads by 3X. As for the return on investment (ROI) for this campaign, each lead for the client was worth about $10,000. The result was 6,628 audience reach, $12.43 average cost per conversion, and 18 conversions.

235% Increase In Conversions with Facebook Ads Funnel – Marketing 360 Social Media Case Study

This is one of Marketing 360’s case study examples that demonstrates the effectiveness of a Facebook ads sales funnel for B2B marketing. An ads funnel is a series of social media advertisements that target a specific audience at each stage of the buyer’s journey. By mapping out the buyer’s journey and creating a social media marketing ad campaign for each stage, you can guide new leads through the sales funnel and turn them into paying customers. This case study resulted in a 235% increase in conversions for a truck lift manufacturer.

15% Increase In Social Media Followers In 6 Months – Hootsuite Social Media Case Study

This is one of the best social media marketing case studies available online for businesses in the hospitality industry. Find out how Meliá Hotels International incorporated social media directly into its business model, both as a channel for client communication and as a platform to listen and learn about client needs and preferences. As a result, Meliá Hotel’s social media following grew from 5 million to 6 million in six months; an increase of more than 15%.

The Impact of Social Signals On SEO – Fat Stacks Social Media Case Study

This is a good case study for understanding the effect social media can have on SEO. By building links for a web page on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc, the rankings for long tail keywords improved in Google’s search engine.

96 Link Clicks for a Vacation Rental – Maria Peagler Social Media Case Study

As the title of this social media case study example suggests, you’ll learn how Maria Peagler helped a vacation rental get 96 clicks out of 3,274 audience reach on a single Facebook ad; about a 2.9% click-through rate (CTR). What’s most important about this B2C example is those clicks were of the highest quality the client could receive because Maria dug into the analytics to find out the best time during the day to post the ad and the perfect age groups to target while also using specific language to only drive clicks that would more likely convert.

Vienna Tourist Board Uses an Instagram Wall to Attract Tourists – Walls.io Social Media Case Study

Inside this case study, you’ll find out how the City of Vienna uses a simple social media content aggregator to display its Instagram feed on the website. This basic marketing strategy harnesses the power of user-generated content to gain more followers and keep in touch with previous visitors to increase brand awareness and repeat visits.

Complete Instagram Marketing Strategy for Sixthreezero – Vulpine Interactive Social Media Case Study

This is an in-depth case study on social media marketing with Instagram. You’ll discover how Vulpine Interactive was able to turn an existing, unmanaged account into a strong company asset for Sixthreezero, a bicycling company that uses ecommerce to drive sales. There was a lot of strategy and planning that went into growing the account by 39%, increasing website traffic from Instagram by over 300%, and achieving 77,659 total engagements. Inside, you’ll get the complete social strategy, tactics, key performance indicators (KPIs), and results

Twitter Marketing Success Stories – Social Media Case Study

If you’re looking for social media case study examples for Twitter using both organic and paid ads, then this page has everything you need. It includes Twitter’s top marketing success stories for you to get new ideas for your own B2C and B2B marketing campaigns.

How 3 Big Brands Use Pinterest for Marketing – SmartInsights Social Media Case Study

This is a case study page by SmartInsights with an overview of how 3 big brands use Pinterest for marketing. Although it’s a quick read, you can learn some valuable tactics that Nordstrom, Sephora, and Petplan are using to market their brands on this social media platform.

25+ TikTok Social Campaign Results – Chatdesk Social Media Case Study

If you’re looking for the best social media case studies for TikTok, then this list by Chatdesk is an excellent resource. It includes more than 25 examples from big brands like Starbucks, Redbull, Spikeball, Crocs, Guess Jeans, and Gym Shark. Give it a read to find out exactly how these brands use TikTok effectively to scale their businesses.

Reddit for Business: Meet Your Maker – Social Media Case Study

Want to learn how to use Reddit to market your business online? This new social media marketing case study page by Reddit called “Meet Your Maker” showcases the people behind some of the most innovative and creative brand activations on our platform. Examples include campaigns by Adobe, Capcom, and noosa Yoghurt.

How Boston University Uses Snapchat to Engage with Students – Social Media Case Study

With more than 75% of college students using Snapchat on a daily basis, it became clear that Boston University had to make this platform a primary marketing channel. This social media case study outlines all of the top strategies Boston University uses to connect with prospective and current students.

Now, if you’re looking for more digital marketing ideas, then make sure to check out these other related guides:  SEO case studies with data on improving organic search engine optimization, PPC case studies  for paid search examples, email marketing case studies , affiliate marketing case studies , content marketing case studies , and general digital marketing case studies .

What Is a Social Media Case Study?

A social media case study is an in-depth study of social media marketing in a real-world context. It can focus on one social media tactic or a group of social media strategies to find out what works in social media marketing to promote a product or service.

Are Case Studies Good for Social Media Marketing?

Case studies are good for social media because you can learn about how to do social media marketing in an effective way. Instead of just studying the theory of social media, you can learn from real examples that applied social media marketing methods to achieve success.

Social Media Marketing Case Study Examples: Platform Icons

Summary for Social Media Marketing Case Studies

I hope you enjoyed this list of the best social media marketing case study examples that are based on real-world results and not just theory.

As you discovered, the social media case studies above demonstrated many different ways to perform well on social platforms. By studying the key findings from these case study examples, and applying the methods learned to your own accounts, you can hopefully achieve the same positive outcome. New social media case studies are being published every month and I’ll continue to update this list as they become available. So keep checking back to read the current sources of information on social media.

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How to write a social media case study (with template)

Written by by Jenn Chen

Published on  October 10, 2019

Reading time  8 minutes

You’ve got a good number of social media clients under your belt and you feel fairly confident in your own service or product content marketing strategy. To attract new clients, you’ll tell them how you’ve tripled someone else’s engagement rates but how do they know this is true? Enter the case study.

Social media case studies are often used as part of a sales funnel: the potential client sees themselves in the case study and signs up because they want the same or better results. At Sprout, we use this strategy with our own case studies highlighting our customer’s successes.

Writing and publishing case studies is time intensive but straight forward. This guide will walk through how to create a social media case study for your business and highlight some examples.

What is a social media case study?

A case study is basically a long testimonial or review. Case studies commonly highlight what a business has achieved by using a social media service or strategy, and they illustrate how your company’s offerings help clients in a specific situation. Some case studies are written just to examine how a problem was solved or performance was improved from a general perspective. For this guide, we’ll be examining case studies that are focused on highlighting a company’s own products and services.

Case studies come in all content formats: long-form article, downloadable PDF, video and infographic. A single case study can be recycled into different formats as long as the information is still relevant.

At their core, case studies serve to inform a current or potential customer about a real-life scenario where your service or product was applied. There’s often a set date range for the campaign and accompanying, real-life statistics. The idea is to help the reader get a clearer understanding of how to use your product and why it could help.

Broad selling points like “our service will cut down your response time” are nice but a sentence like “After three months of using the software for responses, the company decreased their response time by 52%” works even better. It’s no longer a dream that you’ll help them decrease the response time because you already have with another company.

So now that you understand what a case study is, let’s get started on how to create one that’s effective and will help attract new clients.

How to write a social marketing case study

Writing an effective case study is all about the prep work. You’ve got to get all of the questions and set up ready so you can minimize lots of back and forth between you and the client.

1. Prepare your questions

Depending on how the case study will be presented and how familiar you are with the client to be featured, you may want to send some preliminary questions before the interview. It’s important to not only get permission from the company to use their logo, quotes and graphs but also to make sure they know they’ll be going into a public case study.

Your preliminary questions should cover background information about the company and ask about campaigns they are interested in discussing. Be sure to also identify which of your products and services they used. You can go into the details in the interview.

Once you receive the preliminary answers back, it’s time to prepare your questions for the interview. This is where you’ll get more information about how they used your products and how they contributed to the campaign’s success.

2. Interview

When you conduct your interview, think ahead on how you want it to be done. Whether it’s a phone call, video meeting or in-person meeting, you want to make sure it’s recorded. You can use tools like Google Meet, Zoom or UberConference to host and record calls (with your client’s permission, of course). This ensures that your quotes are accurate and you can play it back in case you miss any information. Tip: test out your recording device and process before the interview. You don’t want to go through the interview only to find out the recording didn’t save.

Ask open-ended questions to invite good quotes. You may need to use follow-up questions if the answers are too vague. Here are some examples.

  • Explain how you use (your product or service) in general and for the campaign. Please name specific features.
  • Describe how the feature helped your campaign achieve success.
  • What were the campaign outcomes?
  • What did you learn from the campaign?

Since we’re focused on creating a social media case study in this case, you can dive more deeply into social strategies and tactics too:

  • Tell me about your approach to social media. How has it changed over time, if at all? What role does it play for the organization? How do you use it? What are you hoping to achieve?
  • Are there specific social channels you prioritize? If so, why?
  • How do you make sure your social efforts are reaching the right audience?
  • What specific challenges do organizations like yours face when it comes to social?
  • How do you measure the ROI of using social ? Are there certain outcomes that prove the value of social for your organization? What metrics are you using to determine how effective social is for you?

As the conversation continues, you can ask more leading questions if you need to to make sure you get quotes that tie these strategic insights directly back to the services, products or strategies your company has delivered to the client to help them achieve success. Here are just a couple of examples.

  • Are there specific features that stick out to you as particularly helpful or especially beneficial for you and your objectives?
  • How are you using (product/service) to support your social strategy? What’s a typical day like for your team using it?

quote from sprout case study

The above quote was inserted into the Sprout Lake Metroparks case study . It’s an example of identifying a quote from an interview that helps make the impact of the product tangible in a client’s day to day.

At the end of the interview, be sure to thank the company and request relevant assets.

Afterwards, you may want to transcribe the interview to increase the ease of reviewing the material and writing the case study. You can DIY or use a paid service like Rev to speed up this part of the process.

3. Request assets and graphics

This is another important prep step because you want to make sure you get everything you need out of one request and avoid back and forth that takes up both you and your customer’s time. Be very clear on what you need and the file formats you need them in.

Some common assets include:

  • Logo in .png format
  • Logo guidelines so you know how to use them correctly
  • Links to social media posts that were used during the campaign
  • Headshots of people you interviewed
  • Social media analytics reports. Make sure you name them and provide the requested date range, so that if you’re using a tool like Sprout, clients know which one to export.

social media contests - instagram business report

4. Write the copy

Now that the information has been collected, it’s time to dissect it all and assemble it. At the end of this guide, we have an example outline template for you to follow. When writing a case study, you want to write to the audience that you’re trying to attract . In this case, it’ll be a potential customer that’s similar to the one you’re highlighting.

Use a mix of sentences and bullet points to attract different kinds of readers. The tone should be uplifting because you’re highlighting a success story. When identifying quotes to use, remove any fillers (“um”) and cut out unnecessary info.

pinterest case study

5. Pay attention to formatting

Sprout case study of Stoneacre Motor Group

And finally, depending on the content type, enlist the help of a graphic designer to make it look presentable. You may also want to include call-to-action buttons or links inside of your article. If you offer free trials, case studies are a great place to promote them.

Social media case study template

Writing a case study is a lot like writing a story or presenting a research paper (but less dry). This is a general outline to follow but you are welcome to enhance to fit your needs.

Headline Attention-grabbing and effective. Example: “ How Benefit turns cosmetics into connection using Sprout Social ” Summary A few sentences long with a basic overview of the brand’s story. Give the who, what, where, why and how. Which service and/or product did they use? Introduce the company Give background on who you’re highlighting. Include pertinent information like how big their social media team is, information about who you interviewed and how they run their social media. Describe the problem or campaign What were they trying to solve? Why was this a problem for them? What were the goals of the campaign? Present the solution and end results Describe what was done to achieve success. Include relevant social media statistics (graphics are encouraged). Conclusion Wrap it up with a reflection from the company spokesperson. How did they think the campaign went? What would they change to build on this success for the future? How did using the service compare to other services used in a similar situation?

Case studies are essential marketing and sales tools for any business that offer robust services or products. They help the customer reading them to picture their own company using the product in a similar fashion. Like a testimonial, words from the case study’s company carry more weight than sales points from the company.

When creating your first case study, keep in mind that preparation is the key to success. You want to find a company that is more than happy to sing your praises and share details about their social media campaign.

Once you’ve started developing case studies, find out the best ways to promote them alongside all your other content with our free social media content mix tool .

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A Guide How to Create Social Media Case Studies that Convert (with Template)

Julius Preloznik

As you already know, moving leads through the sales pipeline is no easy feat. In the world of digital marketing, it takes an average of 18-21 touchpoints to convert a lead. If you want any chance of pushing prospects down the funnel, you have to directly communicate the value of your product or service and one of the best ways to do this is with case studies. 

Putting together a compelling social media marketing case study is one of the most powerful strategies for attracting future customers or digital agency clients. But it’s not easy. In this article, we’ll go over the ingredients of a winning case study and how to deliver said case study in the most effective way. We’ll also include a template that you can go by. 

Let’s dive right in.

The importance of social media case studies 

There’s a lot of content out there. Your potential customers are constantly bombarded with whitepapers, e-books, 10-step guides, newsletters and unpalatable sales hype. To get the attention of prospects today you have to demonstrate your product or service’s value, not just talk about it. 

B2B buyers today don’t have time to interpret marketing messages that aren’t concise and relevant. That means that instead of aimlessly beating around the bush about how great your company is and how terrific your products are, you have to share the real-life experiences customers are having with you and your products. 

best social case study

Traditional marketing tactics don’t work anymore. We already know that. People nowadays drive their own buying decisions through online research and the importance of social proof cannot be understated. 

About 57% of the customers will only use or buy a business service if it has at least 4 or five-star ratings. It should be noted however that reviews aren’t enough. In fact,  88% of consumers view ratings and reviews as a personal suggestion, not definitive proof of a product’s efficacy. 

Reviews are all well and good but if you’re marketing B2B software or agency services, creating in-depth, data-driven case studies is the way to go. Case studies are extremely effective in the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey when they are actively comparing solutions and providers to solve a problem they’re experiencing. 

As we already mentioned, your prospects are actively researching your products and there’s a 100% chance that they will stumble upon content from your competitors. Having relevant resources like case studies can cement your brand as an authority figure. 

Now that you know why case studies are important it’s time to tackle the creation process. 

The ingredients for a perfect case study 

1. detailed and full of data .

Have you ever read a case study where a business states they “doubled traffic” for the customer in their case study, and wondered if that meant they went from 50 to 100 visits or 5,000 to 10,000 visits?

The point of a case study is to highlight the exact ways your product or service has helped a customer. The most compelling case studies hit prospects in the face with how amazing your customers’ results were, meaning you need to include numbers. Lots of them. Here’s an example: 

Instead of saying “How client X got more sales thanks to us”, use “How client X increased their sales by X% in X days thanks to us” 

This step may sound like a no-brainer but it’s absolutely essential to use relevant data when crafting your social media case study, especially if you run a digital agency. Include statistics like a decrease in ad spend, an improvement in engagement or increase in organic followers.

best social case study

It’s important to remember that not everyone is as familiar with analytics and KPIs as you are, so break down the complicated sections into digestible bits that anyone can understand. Provide context as you go along so the data flows with the overall narrative of the case study. 

Include some eye-catching visuals like picture proof or real-time dashboards so the reader can envision the positive potential of your product or service. 

2. A complete, compelling story 

Storytelling is a powerful marketing strategy that has stood the test of time. A great social media case study uses narrative techniques to put readers in the subject’s shoes. 

When crafting your subject’s persona, be sure to include: 

  • Who is the sample customer, what do they do and why do they do it?
  • What were the customer’s goals?
  • What were the customer’s needs?
  • How did you satisfy those needs and help the customer meet their goals?

As a rule of thumb, structure your case study by splitting up the main takeaways into three easy snippets: The challenge, the impact you had, and the outcome. This way you make sure that your case study isn’t all over the place and concludes with the reader being wowed. 

Furthermore, you want to carry the story through and show how your business helps your customers long-term. You want your product or service to become a cornerstone of your customers’ workflow, something they simply can’t live without.  When you conclude the “outcome” section of your case study, include ways customers can use your business further down the line. 

When it comes to creating a compelling story, throwing in some emotional benefits alongside the hard numbers is absolutely necessary. Did your solution improve workplace morale, free up time or overall take a load off of your subject’s shoulders? Ask for a quote from the case study subject to make things more personal and relatable. 

To really drive the narrative home, use quotes from your team as well. Any potential prospects will love discovering how your team overcame certain hurdles and delivered the end result. Interview your graphic designer or content manager and get them to break down the project into steps. This will help prospects further familiarize themselves with your organization and how your team thinks and operates, a connection that can help keep you top-of-mind when leads are ready to convert. 

3. Compelling visuals 

Using visuals and images to enrich the case study experience is a key element of a comprehensive marketing case study. But cramming in screenshots and haphazard designs is sure to have an adverse effect to what you were hoping for. 

You want your case study to be a joy to read and as such it’s important to keep a few key rules in mind:       – Write a catchy headline that gives a clear idea of what the case study is about 

  • Leave plenty of negative space when arranging your visual elements. You don’t want a busy mess of visuals that’s hard on the eyes 
  • Ensure that your visual elements compliment the data and written content of your case study. 
  • Keep your target audience in mind. What kind of creatives would they be drawn to? What fonts, visual cues and tones would keep them hooked? It goes without saying to add your company’s unique branding as well. 
  • The information you present should flow like a story. The graphic elements, along with the text should guide the reader’s eye through the study from beginning to end. 

To spice things up, consider adding multimedia elements such as videos, PDFs, and images to make the case study more engaging. 

When getting together the creative assets for your case study, be sure to include headshots of the actual customer, dashboards of results (graphs are great for visual storytelling) and screenshots of any social media posts that were created during the campaign (if relevant). 

You can use tools like Kontentino’s social media a n a l y t i c s tool to implement custom metrics and create stunning reports. 

Relatable to your target audience 

If you’re at the point where you’re sharing success stories, chances are that you know who your ideal customer is. When crafting a case study, you want to write to the audience that you’re trying to attract. The readers of your study will most likely be very similar to the customers you’re writing about.

People who will read your case study most likely have a decent understanding of what your business is and what you can offer. They’re already somewhere in the middle of your funnel and as such it’s time to take advantage of personalization . Now you may need to create multiple case studies tailored toward different audiences, but it’s sure to pay off in the long run. 

Reflect on the project you’re highlighting in the case study and think about who the customer was. What industry were they in? What kind of client were they? Were they visually-oriented? Did they appreciate heavy-handed analytical reports, a good story or a combination of the two? 

These insights can help you nail down the written tone and show potential clients that you understand their specific needs, are comfortable in their niche and can apply strategies in accordance to their use-case.

Different ways to deliver a social media marketing case study

If you just created an amazing case study that’s sure to knock readers’ socks off, you want people to find it. This means populating every channel at your disposal with your content so your potential customers can’t miss it. 

 Youtube is the second-largest search engine in the world and the platform’s algorithm holds the potential to show your video to a whole new audience. While YouTube’s algorithm is often iffy, writing a catchy title, detailed description and creating an effective thumbnail are good ways to keep your video in the algorithm’s favor. 

In addition, you’ll want to link your full case study in the comments and get viewers to land on your website. 

best social case study

  • Social media 

If you’re creating a social media case study, using social media to share said case study should be a no-brainer.

 Break down the content of your case study into bite-sized chunks for Instagram or Facebook, post analytics dashboards from the study on Twitter and link the study in a LinkedIn post to spice up your profile. The shareable nature of social media may lead to your case study going further than just your own site.

  • Embedded in other types of content  

Case studies can also be embedded in other types of content like blog posts, newsletters, guides or ebooks. Go through your current pieces of relevant content and link to your case study to provide extra value. 

3 winning social media marketing case study examples 

Now that we’ve gone over the components of a winning social media case study, let’s check out some real world examples. 

1. “How ERA Belgium Provides Great Content for Franchise Businesses with Kontentino,” by Kontentino 

best social case study

A thing to note regarding this case study is how Kontentino not only highlighted the impressive data but also how the product helped solve a core pain point for ERA Belgium’s franchises .

Highlighted in the middle of the case study is a bold quote from the client that helps solidify Kontentino’s KontentBase product as a must-have tool for franchises. When creating your own case study, consider your product and who’s needs it addresses. Align your customer quotes and data and results reports to match exactly what your target audience is looking for. 

The Konetino case study also includes a CTA at the end so any potential prospects could directly contact the support team.

2. “How an SEO Agency Helped an Artisan Bakery Increase Organic Traffic by 214%,” is a very well written case study by Semrush

best social case study

This comprehensive case study by Semrush is a perfect example of pinpoint narrative structure and proper formatting. The study flows like a well-written story and guides the reader through the subjects, conflicts and resolutions without a hitch. The tasteful addition of dashboards and bullet points ties the case study up perfectly. 

3. “How Good Dye Young Increased Their Monthly E-commerce Revenue by 305%,” an impressive storytelling case study by Mailchimp 

best social case study

This case study by MailChimp is full of personality and storytelling. While MailChimp did include impressive numbers, the centerpiece of this case study is the people. The subjects in the case study are referenced casually by their first names, their journey is explored in-depth and there’s no shortage of quotes from them. The imaging MailChimp uses only emphasizes the human side of the relationship between them and the customer. 

Keeping you on track with your social media case study 

So now you’ve got a solid idea of what a comprehensive case study should include and you’ve seen the techniques we’ve covered in action. Now it’s time to go over a full template to ensure you stay on track when creating your awesome social media case study. 

Social media marketing case study template 

Outline: Case Study Title

Customer: Customer’s full name 

Company: Company’s name 

Industry: The industry the customer operates in (if applicable) 

Video: Link to a video version (if applicable)

Author: Author’s name 

Case study title

A short introduction of the customer. 

 Be sure to highlight:

  • The customer’s name and a little bit about them.
  • Why you and your customer were a perfect fit 
  • The key successes your customer had after working with you 

Introduce your customer 

In this section, provide a more in-depth overview of your customer. If it’s an individual, explain the person’s background in the context of your product/service. If it’s a business, talk about the company’s background, industry and any recent successes or milestones they have had. 

Describe the problem 

Explain the challenge or opportunity your customer faced before they did business with you. This could be either a reactive reason (i.e. the customer had an issue that needed to be addressed) or a proactive reason (i.e. there was an untapped potential that was unleashed by working with your business).

Why (Customer Name) Chose (Your Company)

In this section, speak about the decision process of your customer. Speak about how they discovered you, your possible competition and what made them ultimately decide to do business with you.

How (Your Company) Responded 

Here, explain what happened once your business started working with your customer. What was addressed first, and why? How did your customer feel about working with you in the early days?

The Results

In closing, speak to the results your customer saw after working with you. This section can be supported by statements, quotes, visuals, graphs, and metrics. Whatever you decide to include, be sure it illustrates how much of an impact your company made on your customer. 

Call-to-Action

Use this section to move your readers down the funnel. Add a CTA that encourages readers to either join your newsletter or get in touch with your sales team.

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Methodology

  • What Is a Case Study? | Definition, Examples & Methods

What Is a Case Study? | Definition, Examples & Methods

Published on May 8, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on November 20, 2023.

A case study is a detailed study of a specific subject, such as a person, group, place, event, organization, or phenomenon. Case studies are commonly used in social, educational, clinical, and business research.

A case study research design usually involves qualitative methods , but quantitative methods are sometimes also used. Case studies are good for describing , comparing, evaluating and understanding different aspects of a research problem .

Table of contents

When to do a case study, step 1: select a case, step 2: build a theoretical framework, step 3: collect your data, step 4: describe and analyze the case, other interesting articles.

A case study is an appropriate research design when you want to gain concrete, contextual, in-depth knowledge about a specific real-world subject. It allows you to explore the key characteristics, meanings, and implications of the case.

Case studies are often a good choice in a thesis or dissertation . They keep your project focused and manageable when you don’t have the time or resources to do large-scale research.

You might use just one complex case study where you explore a single subject in depth, or conduct multiple case studies to compare and illuminate different aspects of your research problem.

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best social case study

Once you have developed your problem statement and research questions , you should be ready to choose the specific case that you want to focus on. A good case study should have the potential to:

  • Provide new or unexpected insights into the subject
  • Challenge or complicate existing assumptions and theories
  • Propose practical courses of action to resolve a problem
  • Open up new directions for future research

TipIf your research is more practical in nature and aims to simultaneously investigate an issue as you solve it, consider conducting action research instead.

Unlike quantitative or experimental research , a strong case study does not require a random or representative sample. In fact, case studies often deliberately focus on unusual, neglected, or outlying cases which may shed new light on the research problem.

Example of an outlying case studyIn the 1960s the town of Roseto, Pennsylvania was discovered to have extremely low rates of heart disease compared to the US average. It became an important case study for understanding previously neglected causes of heart disease.

However, you can also choose a more common or representative case to exemplify a particular category, experience or phenomenon.

Example of a representative case studyIn the 1920s, two sociologists used Muncie, Indiana as a case study of a typical American city that supposedly exemplified the changing culture of the US at the time.

While case studies focus more on concrete details than general theories, they should usually have some connection with theory in the field. This way the case study is not just an isolated description, but is integrated into existing knowledge about the topic. It might aim to:

  • Exemplify a theory by showing how it explains the case under investigation
  • Expand on a theory by uncovering new concepts and ideas that need to be incorporated
  • Challenge a theory by exploring an outlier case that doesn’t fit with established assumptions

To ensure that your analysis of the case has a solid academic grounding, you should conduct a literature review of sources related to the topic and develop a theoretical framework . This means identifying key concepts and theories to guide your analysis and interpretation.

There are many different research methods you can use to collect data on your subject. Case studies tend to focus on qualitative data using methods such as interviews , observations , and analysis of primary and secondary sources (e.g., newspaper articles, photographs, official records). Sometimes a case study will also collect quantitative data.

Example of a mixed methods case studyFor a case study of a wind farm development in a rural area, you could collect quantitative data on employment rates and business revenue, collect qualitative data on local people’s perceptions and experiences, and analyze local and national media coverage of the development.

The aim is to gain as thorough an understanding as possible of the case and its context.

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In writing up the case study, you need to bring together all the relevant aspects to give as complete a picture as possible of the subject.

How you report your findings depends on the type of research you are doing. Some case studies are structured like a standard scientific paper or thesis , with separate sections or chapters for the methods , results and discussion .

Others are written in a more narrative style, aiming to explore the case from various angles and analyze its meanings and implications (for example, by using textual analysis or discourse analysis ).

In all cases, though, make sure to give contextual details about the case, connect it back to the literature and theory, and discuss how it fits into wider patterns or debates.

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

  • Normal distribution
  • Degrees of freedom
  • Null hypothesis
  • Discourse analysis
  • Control groups
  • Mixed methods research
  • Non-probability sampling
  • Quantitative research
  • Ecological validity

Research bias

  • Rosenthal effect
  • Implicit bias
  • Cognitive bias
  • Selection bias
  • Negativity bias
  • Status quo bias

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Social Enterprise Case Studies

Requests for teaching notes, as well as your comments, can be sent to  [email protected]

If any case is reproduced and used in a course please contact us before distribution. For a complete listing of case studies by the Yale School of Management, please visit the Yale SOM Case Studies Directory . 

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Based on the idea that many community programs have some small budgets with which to purchase books, the FBMP was dedicated to stretching those dollars as far as possible, allowing programs to buy quality books in larger quantities than ever before while still earning a profit that would be used to support the First Book mission.

New Hampshire Community Loan Fund

For Americans who cannot afford a standard home mortgage, one alternative to renting an apartment is to buy a mobile home. Also known as manufactured housing, mobile homes are built in a factory and then transported by tractor-trailer to the site where they will be occupied. They provide permanent housing at prices that are less than half the cost per square foot of regular “site-built” houses.

Compumentor and the DiscounTech.org Service

A nonprofit organization has established a for-profit venture to sell donated and discounted technology products. The venture is now profitable and ambitious goals have been set for the future. This case focuses on how the general manager of a nonprofit must develop a communications strategy to build sales through different channels.

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What Is a Case Study?

Weighing the pros and cons of this method of research

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

best social case study

Cara Lustik is a fact-checker and copywriter.

best social case study

Verywell / Colleen Tighe

  • Pros and Cons

What Types of Case Studies Are Out There?

Where do you find data for a case study, how do i write a psychology case study.

A case study is an in-depth study of one person, group, or event. In a case study, nearly every aspect of the subject's life and history is analyzed to seek patterns and causes of behavior. Case studies can be used in many different fields, including psychology, medicine, education, anthropology, political science, and social work.

The point of a case study is to learn as much as possible about an individual or group so that the information can be generalized to many others. Unfortunately, case studies tend to be highly subjective, and it is sometimes difficult to generalize results to a larger population.

While case studies focus on a single individual or group, they follow a format similar to other types of psychology writing. If you are writing a case study, we got you—here are some rules of APA format to reference.  

At a Glance

A case study, or an in-depth study of a person, group, or event, can be a useful research tool when used wisely. In many cases, case studies are best used in situations where it would be difficult or impossible for you to conduct an experiment. They are helpful for looking at unique situations and allow researchers to gather a lot of˜ information about a specific individual or group of people. However, it's important to be cautious of any bias we draw from them as they are highly subjective.

What Are the Benefits and Limitations of Case Studies?

A case study can have its strengths and weaknesses. Researchers must consider these pros and cons before deciding if this type of study is appropriate for their needs.

One of the greatest advantages of a case study is that it allows researchers to investigate things that are often difficult or impossible to replicate in a lab. Some other benefits of a case study:

  • Allows researchers to capture information on the 'how,' 'what,' and 'why,' of something that's implemented
  • Gives researchers the chance to collect information on why one strategy might be chosen over another
  • Permits researchers to develop hypotheses that can be explored in experimental research

On the other hand, a case study can have some drawbacks:

  • It cannot necessarily be generalized to the larger population
  • Cannot demonstrate cause and effect
  • It may not be scientifically rigorous
  • It can lead to bias

Researchers may choose to perform a case study if they want to explore a unique or recently discovered phenomenon. Through their insights, researchers develop additional ideas and study questions that might be explored in future studies.

It's important to remember that the insights from case studies cannot be used to determine cause-and-effect relationships between variables. However, case studies may be used to develop hypotheses that can then be addressed in experimental research.

Case Study Examples

There have been a number of notable case studies in the history of psychology. Much of  Freud's work and theories were developed through individual case studies. Some great examples of case studies in psychology include:

  • Anna O : Anna O. was a pseudonym of a woman named Bertha Pappenheim, a patient of a physician named Josef Breuer. While she was never a patient of Freud's, Freud and Breuer discussed her case extensively. The woman was experiencing symptoms of a condition that was then known as hysteria and found that talking about her problems helped relieve her symptoms. Her case played an important part in the development of talk therapy as an approach to mental health treatment.
  • Phineas Gage : Phineas Gage was a railroad employee who experienced a terrible accident in which an explosion sent a metal rod through his skull, damaging important portions of his brain. Gage recovered from his accident but was left with serious changes in both personality and behavior.
  • Genie : Genie was a young girl subjected to horrific abuse and isolation. The case study of Genie allowed researchers to study whether language learning was possible, even after missing critical periods for language development. Her case also served as an example of how scientific research may interfere with treatment and lead to further abuse of vulnerable individuals.

Such cases demonstrate how case research can be used to study things that researchers could not replicate in experimental settings. In Genie's case, her horrific abuse denied her the opportunity to learn a language at critical points in her development.

This is clearly not something researchers could ethically replicate, but conducting a case study on Genie allowed researchers to study phenomena that are otherwise impossible to reproduce.

There are a few different types of case studies that psychologists and other researchers might use:

  • Collective case studies : These involve studying a group of individuals. Researchers might study a group of people in a certain setting or look at an entire community. For example, psychologists might explore how access to resources in a community has affected the collective mental well-being of those who live there.
  • Descriptive case studies : These involve starting with a descriptive theory. The subjects are then observed, and the information gathered is compared to the pre-existing theory.
  • Explanatory case studies : These   are often used to do causal investigations. In other words, researchers are interested in looking at factors that may have caused certain things to occur.
  • Exploratory case studies : These are sometimes used as a prelude to further, more in-depth research. This allows researchers to gather more information before developing their research questions and hypotheses .
  • Instrumental case studies : These occur when the individual or group allows researchers to understand more than what is initially obvious to observers.
  • Intrinsic case studies : This type of case study is when the researcher has a personal interest in the case. Jean Piaget's observations of his own children are good examples of how an intrinsic case study can contribute to the development of a psychological theory.

The three main case study types often used are intrinsic, instrumental, and collective. Intrinsic case studies are useful for learning about unique cases. Instrumental case studies help look at an individual to learn more about a broader issue. A collective case study can be useful for looking at several cases simultaneously.

The type of case study that psychology researchers use depends on the unique characteristics of the situation and the case itself.

There are a number of different sources and methods that researchers can use to gather information about an individual or group. Six major sources that have been identified by researchers are:

  • Archival records : Census records, survey records, and name lists are examples of archival records.
  • Direct observation : This strategy involves observing the subject, often in a natural setting . While an individual observer is sometimes used, it is more common to utilize a group of observers.
  • Documents : Letters, newspaper articles, administrative records, etc., are the types of documents often used as sources.
  • Interviews : Interviews are one of the most important methods for gathering information in case studies. An interview can involve structured survey questions or more open-ended questions.
  • Participant observation : When the researcher serves as a participant in events and observes the actions and outcomes, it is called participant observation.
  • Physical artifacts : Tools, objects, instruments, and other artifacts are often observed during a direct observation of the subject.

If you have been directed to write a case study for a psychology course, be sure to check with your instructor for any specific guidelines you need to follow. If you are writing your case study for a professional publication, check with the publisher for their specific guidelines for submitting a case study.

Here is a general outline of what should be included in a case study.

Section 1: A Case History

This section will have the following structure and content:

Background information : The first section of your paper will present your client's background. Include factors such as age, gender, work, health status, family mental health history, family and social relationships, drug and alcohol history, life difficulties, goals, and coping skills and weaknesses.

Description of the presenting problem : In the next section of your case study, you will describe the problem or symptoms that the client presented with.

Describe any physical, emotional, or sensory symptoms reported by the client. Thoughts, feelings, and perceptions related to the symptoms should also be noted. Any screening or diagnostic assessments that are used should also be described in detail and all scores reported.

Your diagnosis : Provide your diagnosis and give the appropriate Diagnostic and Statistical Manual code. Explain how you reached your diagnosis, how the client's symptoms fit the diagnostic criteria for the disorder(s), or any possible difficulties in reaching a diagnosis.

Section 2: Treatment Plan

This portion of the paper will address the chosen treatment for the condition. This might also include the theoretical basis for the chosen treatment or any other evidence that might exist to support why this approach was chosen.

  • Cognitive behavioral approach : Explain how a cognitive behavioral therapist would approach treatment. Offer background information on cognitive behavioral therapy and describe the treatment sessions, client response, and outcome of this type of treatment. Make note of any difficulties or successes encountered by your client during treatment.
  • Humanistic approach : Describe a humanistic approach that could be used to treat your client, such as client-centered therapy . Provide information on the type of treatment you chose, the client's reaction to the treatment, and the end result of this approach. Explain why the treatment was successful or unsuccessful.
  • Psychoanalytic approach : Describe how a psychoanalytic therapist would view the client's problem. Provide some background on the psychoanalytic approach and cite relevant references. Explain how psychoanalytic therapy would be used to treat the client, how the client would respond to therapy, and the effectiveness of this treatment approach.
  • Pharmacological approach : If treatment primarily involves the use of medications, explain which medications were used and why. Provide background on the effectiveness of these medications and how monotherapy may compare with an approach that combines medications with therapy or other treatments.

This section of a case study should also include information about the treatment goals, process, and outcomes.

When you are writing a case study, you should also include a section where you discuss the case study itself, including the strengths and limitiations of the study. You should note how the findings of your case study might support previous research. 

In your discussion section, you should also describe some of the implications of your case study. What ideas or findings might require further exploration? How might researchers go about exploring some of these questions in additional studies?

Need More Tips?

Here are a few additional pointers to keep in mind when formatting your case study:

  • Never refer to the subject of your case study as "the client." Instead, use their name or a pseudonym.
  • Read examples of case studies to gain an idea about the style and format.
  • Remember to use APA format when citing references .

Crowe S, Cresswell K, Robertson A, Huby G, Avery A, Sheikh A. The case study approach .  BMC Med Res Methodol . 2011;11:100.

Crowe S, Cresswell K, Robertson A, Huby G, Avery A, Sheikh A. The case study approach . BMC Med Res Methodol . 2011 Jun 27;11:100. doi:10.1186/1471-2288-11-100

Gagnon, Yves-Chantal.  The Case Study as Research Method: A Practical Handbook . Canada, Chicago Review Press Incorporated DBA Independent Pub Group, 2010.

Yin, Robert K. Case Study Research and Applications: Design and Methods . United States, SAGE Publications, 2017.

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

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Social commerce case studies to inspire your brand

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Anna Valaik

Anna Valaik

Associate Social Commerce Strategist

May 22, 2023

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Here we’ve compiled three of the best social commerce case studies we’ve seen because in our social driven world, businesses and brands know the basic steps to building a seamless social and e-commerce shopping experience — utilizing content, making multiple touchpoints shoppable, pushing customers to PDP’s, and more.

However, learning about social commerce is one thing, seeing real life social commerce case studies in action and how they drive success for brands is another.

Shoppers, more than ever, want to see products being used in real life by other shoppers. Who’s using it, how it’s being used, and how they can see it fit into their own life. And as the demand for authenticity skyrockets, brands have to find unique ways to build consumer confidence. 

One clear-cut method to building that confidence? With user-generated content . User-generated content, or UGC, is a type of social proof , whereby shoppers can see trusted individuals using and recommending products. According to our Shopper Experience Index, an annual study into changing shopper behavior, 40% of global shoppers agree that UGC, like reviews and customer photos, makes them more likely to buy a product from an ad. 

UGC works in creating community, building customer engagement and trust, and driving social commerce revenue on social and product pages.

Top 3 social commerce case studies

Let’s take a look at three unique social commerce case studies we’ve seen for some killer UGC strategies.

1. Iconic London

The makeup and beauty industry especially is all about reviews and recommendations, especially on social media. Who wouldn’t want to see how a $30 lipstick performs and looks on someone that looks like yourself? 

To meet this expectation, UGC collection is more important than ever for this specific industry. Iconic London, a UK beauty brand, realized this and positioned themselves as a digital-first brand above all else. 

“We’ve been very good at outreach, making people aware of the voice of the brand, but we’re in a competitive industry with a lot of brands with great messaging and fantastic products. What we needed to do was find a way to make the social piece work for us, both in awareness and financially, and that’s what Bazaarvoice helped us to do,” says Eleanor Assa, CMO at Iconic London.

Yet, building a full-proof, well-rounded UGC strategy was proving to be difficult, especially conceptualizing how UGC could be used across social platforms and the e-commerce site. The first step they took was discovering how Instagram can work hand-in-hand with their e-commerce site.

Building the relationship between social and site

Oftentimes, brands make the mistake of building two distinct, separate experiences: one on their social platforms and one on their e-commerce site. The aesthetic, photos, product layout, and more are just different. This isn’t necessarily a good thing.

When your customer discovers your brand, whether that’s browsing Google or scrolling through Instagram, you want them to feel there’s an authenticity present. When the shopping, community, and brand experience does not match across the board, authenticity is lost.

One way to solve this problem? Do what Iconic London did and turn your social content into a shoppable experience .

Everyone loves the simplicity of Instagram and being inspired to make a purchase. But, one thing many brands haven’t been able to solve is how to bring those new or returning customers to their actual site to make that purchase. Enter: Like2Buy. As a link-in-bio solution, Like2buy directly mirrors your Instagram feed, making the user-generated (and branded) content shoppable via links to product pages. 

social commerce case studies

“We know that our customers like shopping in a social environment. It’s the way the industry is going, but especially Iconic. So having Like2Buy allows us to maintain that social shopping experience a bit longer. It allows it to overflow into the website, onto the product page, and the homepage,” says Lizzie Newell, Head of Marketing, Social, and Campaigns.

Make the path to purchase that much simpler with Like2Buy, and never worry again about those customers lost on social media. Furthermore, once they reach the site, make sure their shopping experience goes uninterrupted with Bazaarvoice Galleries.

The importance of time on site

Nowadays, there are more distractions than ever before, especially if you are just in “browsing mode” while shopping. With no intent or purpose, you are less likely to be convinced to shop around if you aren’t interested in the first minute or so.

But, if you see a homepage full of engaging, shoppable content versus static images with no ability to browse, you will want to stay. Bazaarvoice Galleries, an on-site display of content that can exist almost anywhere on site, enables shoppers to really see products in action.

In the last year, Iconic London saw their customers spending more time browsing UGC and product pages because of their Galleries, with a 361% lift in time on site. They positively benefited from taking into account their customers shopping habits and desires when buying makeup.

“Time on site is a really exciting one for us. We were very pleased with that increase because I think that just proves that what we suspected about our audience was right — they like to have a browse, they like to look at people who look a bit like them. And at the same time, they’re looking at multiple images and product pages,” says Lizzie Newell, Head of Marketing, Social, and Campaigns at Iconic London.

Placing UGC across your storefront will not only drive those sales, but it will also drive traffic to almost every page that is important to the shopper. In just 12 months of harnessing the power of social commerce, Iconic saw a 126% lift in conversion rate, and an 11% lift in average order value.

Read the full social commerce case study here for a more in-depth look.

2. Urban Barn

Have you ever been in the market for a new sofa but wanted to know how it looked in the real world, not just a showroom? And so scrolled through countless photos or videos of it, imagining it fifteen different times in your room? Well, if you have, you’re not alone.

Urban Barn, a furniture and decor company, knew many of their customers visit their website before coming into a store to actually buy the item they’re looking for. With furniture being such a large purchase, too, it’s essential to show a diverse range of products in diverse settings, fresh up the content often, and build inspirational collection pages. 

Although Urban Barn has beautiful brand-owned content, they used UGC to really inspire shoppers to build their own, unique home with Urban Barn products by incorporating it across their social channels and website to meet shoppers everywhere they are.

The art of the hashtag

There’s nothing wrong with directly asking your customer for UGC. Instead, it’s empowering and showcases that your brand genuinely cares about building a supportive, interactive community. 

Urban Barn collects UGC by encouraging customers to post images of its product using the hashtag #Rightathome. From this pool of content, they then select the photos and videos they feel most authentically represent them and their community. 

best social case study

What people also forget is that UGC, and collecting it via a hashtag, is entirely free. No expensive influencer partnership or brand photoshoot required. Instead, it’s a win-win on both sides. People love being featured on social media and on a website, and you get beautiful content with no heavy-lifting on your end.

Furthermore, sometimes customers know the brand better than the brand does, especially in the furniture industry. There are countless styles and looks out there, which all all worthy of being displayed

“Customer images show the diverse styles of interiors and different angles of the products that are not often captured by our in-house photographers,” said Ainslie Fincham, Director of Marketing at Urban Barn.

When Urban Barn started placing this UGC across their website and social channels, they saw major lifts in time on site, conversion, and average order value. The numbers were great to see but Sasha Becker, Director of E-commerce at Urban Barn, knows the reason they built this strategy was, in the end, to align with their mission — inspiring others. 

“Our end goal is to create beautiful spaces that people can come home to and feel good in,” said Becker. 

To say they did that would be an understatement. The strategy has already led to a 270% lift in time on site, a 59% lift in conversion rate, and a 29% lift in average order value. Read the full case study here to learn more. 

3. Samsonite 

We’ve left (arguably) the best case study in social commerce til last. Sometimes all you need is a new campaign to really kick-start your social and e-commerce strategy! Just ask Samsonite.

After leveraging ratings and reviews heavily, they felt it was time to explore more ways they could improve their customer’s shopping experience. Samonite’s two main focuses were driving product discovery and providing content across the site to inspire their shoppers.

Sourcing the UGC and brand-owned content was never an issue for the accessory brand, though. The challenge was driving product discovery and providing consistent inspirational content from social and marketing channels.

By launching and leveraging Bazaarvoice Galleries, an on-site display of content, this solution enabled them to put beautiful, inspirational content on multiple pages rather than just on Instagram, for example.

However, they didn’t just stop there. 

Use campaigns to elevate your content

Not only did they implement galleries, but they also sourced relevant, new images and videos by running a campaign at the same time.

“This year, we had a really robust summer campaign which featured a new product launch, our Elevation Plus collection, at the forefront. We worked with a ton of influencers and got a lot of content added to our galleries, and I think it made for a really engaging experience, both on our own sites and through the content we distribute to our partners,” said Meghan O’Keefe, Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Samsonite. 

best social case study

Samsonite didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. They had plans to run this campaign, but they took it the next level by strategically partnering with influencers and using the #takewhatsyours to gather incredible UGC. It was a low-lift action, yet made all the difference for driving traffic and revenue. 

By the campaign’s end, they’d gained over 27k posts. Furthermore, Using Bazaarvoice Galleries led to:

  • 4x higher conversion rates
  • 5x increase in time on page
  • 254% increase in revenue

Making it one of the most successful social commerce case studies to date. Read it in full here .

Become the next social commerce case study

There’s no reason why this time next year, you aren’t one of the social commerce case studies everyone is talking about.

As the social media landscape changes year after year, brands must evolve and act accordingly. Responding to the customer’s needs is the only way to stay relevant and continue seeing a lift in engagement, trust, and revenue. 

Yet, trends come and go as quickly as you can say “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” nowadays. Social media and e-commerce managers are constantly having to keep the pulse on what’s performing and what’s not, which is no easy task. But, regardless of if TikTok or Instagram is winning this week and not the next, UGC will continue performing well for brands.

Global social commerce sales are expected to reach $1.3 billion this year . So take a note from these three brand case studies and rethink your social commerce strategy. Is UGC a part of your conversations? Because it should be. And if it isn’t, get in touch with us and learn how the #1 in UGC according to G2 can help you get started.

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28 Case Study Examples Every Marketer Should See

Caroline Forsey

Published: March 08, 2023

Putting together a compelling case study is one of the most powerful strategies for showcasing your product and attracting future customers. But it's not easy to create case studies that your audience can’t wait to read.

marketer reviewing case study examples

In this post, we’ll go over the definition of a case study and the best examples to inspire you.

Download Now: 3 Free Case Study Templates

What is a case study?

A case study is a detailed story of something your company did. It includes a beginning — often discussing a conflict, an explanation of what happened next, and a resolution that explains how the company solved or improved on something.

A case study proves how your product has helped other companies by demonstrating real-life results. Not only that, but marketing case studies with solutions typically contain quotes from the customer. This means that they’re not just ads where you praise your own product. Rather, other companies are praising your company — and there’s no stronger marketing material than a verbal recommendation or testimonial. A great case study is also filled with research and stats to back up points made about a project's results.

There are myriad ways to use case studies in your marketing strategy . From featuring them on your website to including them in a sales presentation, a case study is a strong, persuasive tool that shows customers why they should work with you — straight from another customer. Writing one from scratch is hard, though, which is why we’ve created a collection of case study templates for you to get started.

Fill out the form below to access the free case study templates.

best social case study

Free Case Study Templates

Showcase your company's success using these three free case study templates.

  • Data-Driven Case Study Template
  • Product-Specific Case Study Template
  • General Case Study Template

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

There’s no better way to generate more leads than by writing case studies . But without case study examples to draw inspiration from, it can be difficult to write impactful studies that convince visitors to submit a form.

Marketing Case Study Examples

To help you create an attractive and high-converting case study, we've put together a list of some of our favorites. This list includes famous case studies in marketing, technology, and business.

These studies can show you how to frame your company offers in a way that is both meaningful and useful to your audience. So, take a look, and let these examples inspire your next brilliant case study design.

These marketing case studies with solutions show the value proposition of each product. They also show how each company benefited in both the short and long term using quantitative data. In other words, you don’t get just nice statements, like "This company helped us a lot." You see actual change within the firm through numbers and figures.

You can put your learnings into action with HubSpot's Free Case Study Templates . Available as custom designs and text-based documents, you can upload these templates to your CMS or send them to prospects as you see fit.

case study template

1. " How Handled Scaled from Zero to 121 Locations with the Help of HubSpot ," by HubSpot

Case study examples: Handled and HubSpot

What's interesting about this case study is the way it leads with the customer. That reflects a major HubSpot cornerstone, which is to always solve for the customer first. The copy leads with a brief description of why the CEO of Handled founded the company and why he thought Handled could benefit from adopting a CRM. The case study also opens up with one key data point about Handled’s success using HubSpot, namely that it grew to 121 locations.

Notice that this case study uses mixed media. Yes, there is a short video, but it's elaborated upon in the other text on the page. So while your case studies can use one or the other, don't be afraid to combine written copy with visuals to emphasize the project's success.

Key Learnings from the HubSpot Case Study Example

  • Give the case study a personal touch by focusing on the CEO rather than the company itself.
  • Use multimedia to engage website visitors as they read the case study.

2. " The Whole Package ," by IDEO

Case study examples: IDEO and H&M

Here's a design company that knows how to lead with simplicity in its case studies. As soon as the visitor arrives at the page, they’re greeted with a big, bold photo and the title of the case study — which just so happens to summarize how IDEO helped its client. It summarizes the case study in three snippets: The challenge, the impact, and the outcome.

Immediately, IDEO communicates its impact — the company partnered with H&M to remove plastic from its packaging — but it doesn't stop there. As the user scrolls down, the challenge, impact, and progress are elaborated upon with comprehensive (but not overwhelming) copy that outlines what that process looked like, replete with quotes and intriguing visuals.

Key Learnings from the IDEO Case Study Example

  • Split up the takeaways of your case studies into bite-sized sections.
  • Always use visuals and images to enrich the case study experience, especially if it’s a comprehensive case study.

3. " Rozum Robotics intensifies its PR game with Awario ," by Awario

Case study example from Awario

In this case study, Awario greets the user with a summary straight away — so if you’re feeling up to reading the entire case study, you can scan the snapshot and understand how the company serves its customers. The case study then includes jump links to several sections, such as "Company Profile," "Rozum Robotics' Pains," "Challenge," "Solution," and "Results and Improvements."

The sparse copy and prominent headings show that you don’t need a lot of elaborate information to show the value of your products and services. Like the other case study examples on this list, it includes visuals and quotes to demonstrate the effectiveness of the company’s efforts. The case study ends with a bulleted list that shows the results.

Key Learnings from the Awario Robotics Case Study Example

  • Create a table of contents to make your case study easier to navigate.
  • Include a bulleted list of the results you achieved for your client.

4. " Chevrolet DTU ," by Carol H. Williams

Case study examples: Carol H. Williams and Chevrolet DTU

If you’ve worked with a company that’s well-known, use only the name in the title — like Carol H. Williams, one of the nation’s top advertising agencies, does here. The "DTU," stands for "Discover the Unexpected." It generates interest because you want to find out what the initials mean.

They keep your interest in this case study by using a mixture of headings, images, and videos to describe the challenges, objectives, and solutions of the project. The case study closes with a summary of the key achievements that Chevrolet’s DTU Journalism Fellows reached during the project.

Key Learnings from the Carol H. Williams Case Study Example

  • If you’ve worked with a big brand before, consider only using the name in the title — just enough to pique interest.
  • Use a mixture of headings and subheadings to guide users through the case study.

5. " How Fractl Earned Links from 931 Unique Domains for Porch.com in a Single Year ," by Fractl

Case study example from Fractl

Fractl uses both text and graphic design in their Porch.com case study to immerse the viewer in a more interesting user experience. For instance, as you scroll, you'll see the results are illustrated in an infographic-design form as well as the text itself.

Further down the page, they use icons like a heart and a circle to illustrate their pitch angles, and graphs to showcase their results. Rather than writing which publications have mentioned Porch.com during Fractl’s campaign, they incorporated the media outlets’ icons for further visual diversity.

Key Learnings from the Fractl Case Study Example

  • Let pictures speak for you by incorporating graphs, logos, and icons all throughout the case study.
  • Start the case study by right away stating the key results, like Fractl does, instead of putting the results all the way at the bottom.

6. " The Met ," by Fantasy

Case study example from Fantasy

What's the best way to showcase the responsiveness and user interface of a website? Probably by diving right into it with a series of simple showcases— which is exactly what Fantasy does on their case study page for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They keep the page simple and clean, inviting you to review their redesign of the Met’s website feature-by-feature.

Each section is simple, showing a single piece of the new website's interface so that users aren’t overwhelmed with information and can focus on what matters most.

If you're more interested in text, you can read the objective for each feature. Fantasy understands that, as a potential customer, this is all you need to know. Scrolling further, you're greeted with a simple "Contact Us" CTA.

Key Learnings from the Fantasy Case Study Example

  • You don’t have to write a ton of text to create a great case study. Focus on the solution you delivered itself.
  • Include a CTA at the bottom inviting visitors to contact you.

7. " Rovio: How Rovio Grew Into a Gaming Superpower ," by App Annie

Case study example from App Annie

If your client had a lot of positive things to say about you, take a note from App Annie’s Rovio case study and open up with a quote from your client. The case study also closes with a quote, so that the case study doesn’t seem like a promotion written by your marketing team but a story that’s taken straight from your client’s mouth. It includes a photo of a Rovio employee, too.

Another thing this example does well? It immediately includes a link to the product that Rovio used (namely, App Annie Intelligence) at the top of the case study. The case study closes with a call-to-action button prompting users to book a demo.

Key Learnings from the App Annie Case Study Example

  • Feature quotes from your client at the beginning and end of the case study.
  • Include a mention of the product right at the beginning and prompt users to learn more about the product.

8. " Embracing first-party data: 3 success stories from HubSpot ," by Think with Google

Case study examples: Think with Google and HubSpot

Google takes a different approach to text-focused case studies by choosing three different companies to highlight.

The case study is clean and easily scannable. It has sections for each company, with quotes and headers that clarify the way these three distinct stories connect. The simple format also uses colors and text that align with the Google brand.

Another differentiator is the focus on data. This case study is less than a thousand words, but it's packed with useful data points. Data-driven insights quickly and clearly show how the value of leveraging first-party data while prioritizing consumer privacy.

Case studies example: Data focus, Think with Google

Key Learnings from the Think with Google Case Study Example

  • A case study doesn’t need to be long or complex to be powerful.
  • Clear data points are a quick and effective way to prove value.

9. " In-Depth Performance Marketing Case Study ," by Switch

Case study example from Switch

Switch is an international marketing agency based in Malta that knocks it out of the park with this case study. Its biggest challenge is effectively communicating what it did for its client without ever revealing the client’s name. It also effectively keeps non-marketers in the loop by including a glossary of terms on page 4.

The PDF case study reads like a compelling research article, including titles like "In-Depth Performance Marketing Case Study," "Scenario," and "Approach," so that readers get a high-level overview of what the client needed and why they approached Switch. It also includes a different page for each strategy. For instance, if you’d only be interested in hiring Switch for optimizing your Facebook ads, you can skip to page 10 to see how they did it.

The PDF is fourteen pages long but features big fonts and plenty of white space, so viewers can easily skim it in only a few minutes.

Key Learnings from the Switch Case Study Example

  • If you want to go into specialized information, include a glossary of terms so that non-specialists can easily understand.
  • Close with a CTA page in your case study PDF and include contact information for prospective clients.

10. " Gila River ," by OH Partners

Case study example from OH Partners

Let pictures speak for you, like OH Partners did in this case study. While you’ll quickly come across a heading and some text when you land on this case study page, you’ll get the bulk of the case study through examples of actual work OH Partners did for its client. You will see OH Partners’ work in a billboard, magazine, and video. This communicates to website visitors that if they work with OH Partners, their business will be visible everywhere.

And like the other case studies here, it closes with a summary of what the firm achieved for its client in an eye-catching way.

Key Learnings from the OH Partners Case Study Example

  • Let the visuals speak by including examples of the actual work you did for your client — which is especially useful for branding and marketing agencies.
  • Always close out with your achievements and how they impacted your client.

11. " Facing a Hater ," by Digitas

Case study example from Digitas

Digitas' case study page for Sprite’s #ILOVEYOUHATER campaign keeps it brief while communicating the key facts of Digitas’ work for the popular soda brand. The page opens with an impactful image of a hundred people facing a single man. It turns out, that man is the biggest "bully" in Argentina, and the people facing him are those whom he’s bullied before.

Scrolling down, it's obvious that Digitas kept Sprite at the forefront of their strategy, but more than that, they used real people as their focal point. They leveraged the Twitter API to pull data from Tweets that people had actually tweeted to find the identity of the biggest "hater" in the country. That turned out to be @AguanteElCofler, a Twitter user who has since been suspended.

Key Learnings from the Digitas Case Study Example

  • If a video was part of your work for your client, be sure to include the most impactful screenshot as the heading.
  • Don’t be afraid to provide details on how you helped your client achieve their goals, including the tools you leveraged.

12. " Better Experiences for All ," by HermanMiller

Case study example from HermanMiller

HermanMiller sells sleek, utilitarian furniture with no frills and extreme functionality, and that ethos extends to its case study page for a hospital in Dubai.

What first attracted me to this case study was the beautiful video at the top and the clean user experience. User experience matters a lot in a case study. It determines whether users will keep reading or leave. Another notable aspect of this case study is that the video includes closed-captioning for greater accessibility, and users have the option of expanding the CC and searching through the text.

HermanMiller’s case study also offers an impressive amount of information packed in just a few short paragraphs for those wanting to understand the nuances of their strategy. It closes out with a quote from their client and, most importantly, the list of furniture products that the hospital purchased from the brand.

Key Learnings from the HermanMiller Case Study Example

  • Close out with a list of products that users can buy after reading the case study.
  • Include accessibility features such as closed captioning and night mode to make your case study more user-friendly.

13. " Capital One on AWS ," by Amazon

Case study example from Amazon AWS

Do you work continuously with your clients? Consider structuring your case study page like Amazon did in this stellar case study example. Instead of just featuring one article about Capital One and how it benefited from using AWS, Amazon features a series of articles that you can then access if you’re interested in reading more. It goes all the way back to 2016, all with different stories that feature Capital One’s achievements using AWS.

This may look unattainable for a small firm, but you don’t have to go to extreme measures and do it for every single one of your clients. You could choose the one you most wish to focus on and establish a contact both on your side and your client’s for coming up with the content. Check in every year and write a new piece. These don’t have to be long, either — five hundred to eight hundred words will do.

Key Learnings from the Amazon AWS Case Study Example

  • Write a new article each year featuring one of your clients, then include links to those articles in one big case study page.
  • Consider including external articles as well that emphasize your client’s success in their industry.

14. " HackReactor teaches the world to code #withAsana ," by Asana

Case study examples: Asana and HackReactor

While Asana's case study design looks text-heavy, there's a good reason. It reads like a creative story, told entirely from the customer's perspective.

For instance, Asana knows you won't trust its word alone on why this product is useful. So, they let Tony Phillips, HackReactor CEO, tell you instead: "We take in a lot of information. Our brains are awful at storage but very good at thinking; you really start to want some third party to store your information so you can do something with it."

Asana features frequent quotes from Phillips to break up the wall of text and humanize the case study. It reads like an in-depth interview and captivates the reader through creative storytelling. Even more, Asana includes in-depth detail about how HackReactor uses Asana. This includes how they build templates and workflows:

"There's a huge differentiator between Asana and other tools, and that’s the very easy API access. Even if Asana isn’t the perfect fit for a workflow, someone like me— a relatively mediocre software engineer—can add functionality via the API to build a custom solution that helps a team get more done."

Key Learnings from the Asana Example

  • Include quotes from your client throughout the case study.
  • Provide extensive detail on how your client worked with you or used your product.

15. " Rips Sewed, Brand Love Reaped ," by Amp Agency

Case study example from Amp Agency

Amp Agency's Patagonia marketing strategy aimed to appeal to a new audience through guerrilla marketing efforts and a coast-to-coast road trip. Their case study page effectively conveys a voyager theme, complete with real photos of Patagonia customers from across the U.S., and a map of the expedition. I liked Amp Agency's storytelling approach best. It captures viewers' attention from start to finish simply because it's an intriguing and unique approach to marketing.

Key Learnings from the Amp Agency Example

  • Open up with a summary that communicates who your client is and why they reached out to you.
  • Like in the other case study examples, you’ll want to close out with a quantitative list of your achievements.

16. " NetApp ," by Evisort

Case study examples: Evisort and NetApp

Evisort opens up its NetApp case study with an at-a-glance overview of the client. It’s imperative to always focus on the client in your case study — not on your amazing product and equally amazing team. By opening up with a snapshot of the client’s company, Evisort places the focus on the client.

This case study example checks all the boxes for a great case study that’s informative, thorough, and compelling. It includes quotes from the client and details about the challenges NetApp faced during the COVID pandemic. It closes out with a quote from the client and with a link to download the case study in PDF format, which is incredibly important if you want your case study to be accessible in a wider variety of formats.

Key Learnings from the Evisort Example

  • Place the focus immediately on your client by including a snapshot of their company.
  • Mention challenging eras, such as a pandemic or recession, to show how your company can help your client succeed even during difficult times.

17. " Copernicus Land Monitoring – CLC+ Core ," by Cloudflight

Case study example from Cloudflight

Including highly specialized information in your case study is an effective way to show prospects that you’re not just trying to get their business. You’re deep within their industry, too, and willing to learn everything you need to learn to create a solution that works specifically for them.

Cloudflight does a splendid job at that in its Copernicus Land Monitoring case study. While the information may be difficult to read at first glance, it will capture the interest of prospects who are in the environmental industry. It thus shows Cloudflight’s value as a partner much more effectively than a general case study would.

The page is comprehensive and ends with a compelling call-to-action — "Looking for a solution that automates, and enhances your Big Data system? Are you struggling with large datasets and accessibility? We would be happy to advise and support you!" The clean, whitespace-heavy page is an effective example of using a case study to capture future leads.

Key Learnings from the Cloudflight Case Study Example

  • Don’t be afraid to get technical in your explanation of what you did for your client.
  • Include a snapshot of the sales representative prospects should contact, especially if you have different sales reps for different industries, like Cloudflight does.

18. " Valvoline Increases Coupon Send Rate by 76% with Textel’s MMS Picture Texting ," by Textel

Case study example from Textel

If you’re targeting large enterprises with a long purchasing cycle, you’ll want to include a wealth of information in an easily transferable format. That’s what Textel does here in its PDF case study for Valvoline. It greets the user with an eye-catching headline that shows the value of using Textel. Valvoline saw a significant return on investment from using the platform.

Another smart decision in this case study is highlighting the client’s quote by putting it in green font and doing the same thing for the client’s results because it helps the reader quickly connect the two pieces of information. If you’re in a hurry, you can also take a look at the "At a Glance" column to get the key facts of the case study, starting with information about Valvoline.

Key Learnings from the Textel Case Study Example

  • Include your client’s ROI right in the title of the case study.
  • Add an "At a Glance" column to your case study PDF to make it easy to get insights without needing to read all the text.

19. " Hunt Club and Happeo — a tech-enabled love story ," by Happeo

Case study example from Happeo

In this blog-post-like case study, Happeo opens with a quote from the client, then dives into a compelling heading: "Technology at the forefront of Hunt Club's strategy." Say you’re investigating Happeo as a solution and consider your firm to be technology-driven. This approach would spark your curiosity about why the client chose to work with Happeo. It also effectively communicates the software’s value proposition without sounding like it’s coming from an in-house marketing team.

Every paragraph is a quote written from the customer’s perspective. Later down the page, the case study also dives into "the features that changed the game for Hunt Club," giving Happeo a chance to highlight some of the platform’s most salient features.

Key Learnings from the Happeo Case Study Example

  • Consider writing the entirety of the case study from the perspective of the customer.
  • Include a list of the features that convinced your client to go with you.

20. " Red Sox Season Campaign ," by CTP Boston

Case study example from CTP Boston

What's great about CTP's case study page for their Red Sox Season Campaign is their combination of video, images, and text. A video automatically begins playing when you visit the page, and as you scroll, you'll see more embedded videos of Red Sox players, a compilation of print ads, and social media images you can click to enlarge.

At the bottom, it says "Find out how we can do something similar for your brand." The page is clean, cohesive, and aesthetically pleasing. It invites viewers to appreciate the well-roundedness of CTP's campaign for Boston's beloved baseball team.

Key Learnings from the CTP Case Study Example

  • Include a video in the heading of the case study.
  • Close with a call-to-action that makes leads want to turn into prospects.

21. " Acoustic ," by Genuine

Case study example from Genuine

Sometimes, simple is key. Genuine's case study for Acoustic is straightforward and minimal, with just a few short paragraphs, including "Reimagining the B2B website experience," "Speaking to marketers 1:1," and "Inventing Together." After the core of the case study, we then see a quote from Acoustic’s CMO and the results Genuine achieved for the company.

The simplicity of the page allows the reader to focus on both the visual aspects and the copy. The page displays Genuine's brand personality while offering the viewer all the necessary information they need.

  • You don’t need to write a lot to create a great case study. Keep it simple.
  • Always include quantifiable data to illustrate the results you achieved for your client.

22. " Using Apptio Targetprocess Automated Rules in Wargaming ," by Apptio

Case study example from Apptio

Apptio’s case study for Wargaming summarizes three key pieces of information right at the beginning: The goals, the obstacles, and the results.

Readers then have the opportunity to continue reading — or they can walk away right then with the information they need. This case study also excels in keeping the human interest factor by formatting the information like an interview.

The piece is well-organized and uses compelling headers to keep the reader engaged. Despite its length, Apptio's case study is appealing enough to keep the viewer's attention. Every Apptio case study ends with a "recommendation for other companies" section, where the client can give advice for other companies that are looking for a similar solution but aren’t sure how to get started.

Key Learnings from the Apptio Case Study Example

  • Put your client in an advisory role by giving them the opportunity to give recommendations to other companies that are reading the case study.
  • Include the takeaways from the case study right at the beginning so prospects quickly get what they need.

23. " Airbnb + Zendesk: building a powerful solution together ," by Zendesk

Case study example from Zendesk

Zendesk's Airbnb case study reads like a blog post, and focuses equally on Zendesk and Airbnb, highlighting a true partnership between the companies. To captivate readers, it begins like this: "Halfway around the globe is a place to stay with your name on it. At least for a weekend."

The piece focuses on telling a good story and provides photographs of beautiful Airbnb locations. In a case study meant to highlight Zendesk's helpfulness, nothing could be more authentic than their decision to focus on Airbnb's service in such great detail.

Key Learnings from the Zendesk Case Study Example

  • Include images of your client’s offerings — not necessarily of the service or product you provided. Notice how Zendesk doesn’t include screenshots of its product.
  • Include a call-to-action right at the beginning of the case study. Zendesk gives you two options: to find a solution or start a trial.

24. " Biobot Customer Success Story: Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida ," by Biobot

Case study example from Biobot

Like some of the other top examples in this list, Biobot opens its case study with a quote from its client, which captures the value proposition of working with Biobot. It mentions the COVID pandemic and goes into detail about the challenges the client faced during this time.

This case study is structured more like a news article than a traditional case study. This format can work in more formal industries where decision-makers need to see in-depth information about the case. Be sure to test different methods and measure engagement .

Key Learnings from the Biobot Case Study Example

  • Mention environmental, public health, or economic emergencies and how you helped your client get past such difficult times.
  • Feel free to write the case study like a normal blog post, but be sure to test different methods to find the one that best works for you.

25. " Discovering Cost Savings With Efficient Decision Making ," by Gartner

Case study example from Gartner

You don't always need a ton of text or a video to convey your message — sometimes, you just need a few paragraphs and bullet points. Gartner does a fantastic job of quickly providing the fundamental statistics a potential customer would need to know, without boggling down their readers with dense paragraphs. The case study closes with a shaded box that summarizes the impact that Gartner had on its client. It includes a quote and a call-to-action to "Learn More."

Key Learnings from the Gartner Case Study Example

  • Feel free to keep the case study short.
  • Include a call-to-action at the bottom that takes the reader to a page that most relates to them.

26. " Bringing an Operator to the Game ," by Redapt

Case study example from Redapt

This case study example by Redapt is another great demonstration of the power of summarizing your case study’s takeaways right at the start of the study. Redapt includes three easy-to-scan columns: "The problem," "the solution," and "the outcome." But its most notable feature is a section titled "Moment of clarity," which shows why this particular project was difficult or challenging.

The section is shaded in green, making it impossible to miss. Redapt does the same thing for each case study. In the same way, you should highlight the "turning point" for both you and your client when you were working toward a solution.

Key Learnings from the Redapt Case Study Example

  • Highlight the turning point for both you and your client during the solution-seeking process.
  • Use the same structure (including the same headings) for your case studies to make them easy to scan and read.

27. " Virtual Call Center Sees 300% Boost In Contact Rate ," by Convoso

Case study example from Convoso

Convoso’s PDF case study for Digital Market Media immediately mentions the results that the client achieved and takes advantage of white space. On the second page, the case study presents more influential results. It’s colorful and engaging and closes with a spread that prompts readers to request a demo.

Key Learnings from the Convoso Case Study Example

  • List the results of your work right at the beginning of the case study.
  • Use color to differentiate your case study from others. Convoso’s example is one of the most colorful ones on this list.

28. " Ensuring quality of service during a pandemic ," by Ericsson

Case study example from Ericsson

Ericsson’s case study page for Orange Spain is an excellent example of using diverse written and visual media — such as videos, graphs, and quotes — to showcase the success a client experienced. Throughout the case study, Ericsson provides links to product and service pages users might find relevant as they’re reading the study.

For instance, under the heading "Preloaded with the power of automation," Ericsson mentions its Ericsson Operations Engine product, then links to that product page. It closes the case study with a link to another product page.

Key Learnings from the Ericsson Case Study Example

  • Link to product pages throughout the case study so that readers can learn more about the solution you offer.
  • Use multimedia to engage users as they read the case study.

Start creating your case study.

Now that you've got a great list of examples of case studies, think about a topic you'd like to write about that highlights your company or work you did with a customer.

A customer’s success story is the most persuasive marketing material you could ever create. With a strong portfolio of case studies, you can ensure prospects know why they should give you their business.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in August 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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5 outstanding social media marketing case studies

Do you read social media marketing case studies for inspiration? It’s always a good idea to benchmark against your competitors or pinch ideas from them, but it’s also worth looking at success stories from the biggest brands out there. You might not have their budget, but you can always gain inspiration from their campaigns.

Here are five of the best brands on social and what I think you can learn from them:

1.Mercedes Benz – Repeated, successful social media marketing campaigns

Mercedes Benz seem to win every time with their social media campaigns.  The one that stands out to me was back in 2013 when they created what I still believe to be one of the best Instagram marketing campaigns to date. Mercedes wanted to reach out to the younger audience so they hired five top Instagram photographers to each take the wheel of a new Mercedes CLA. Whoever got the most likes got to keep the car – so they all really worked at it!

By the end of the campaign, Mercedes has received:

  • 87,000,000 organic Instagram impressions
  • 2,000,000 Instagram likes
  • 150 new marketing assets (stunning photos)

What lessons can you learn from this? Could you put your followers up for a challenge and make it into a competition or campaign?

  • Can you do a competition that gets people trying out your product first?
  • Think about your target audience. What is a prize they would value?
  • Like Mercedes you could recruit bloggers/influencers via social media and get them blogging about your service or product. Whoever receives the most engagement wins .

2. Dove – Connecting with their target audience

Is it just me or do all the Dove marketing campaigns make you cry? If you’ve seen their Real Beauty sketches campaign, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Dove’s goal is to make women feel good about themselves. They know their target market and create content that tells a story that women can relate to.

Today I am… pic.twitter.com/VoAf2wRdwa — Dove UK & Ireland (@DoveUK) February 19, 2016

Dove did some research and found that 80 percent of women came across negative chatter on social media. Dove’s goal was to change that and make social media a more positive experience. As a result, Dove teamed up with Twitter and built a tool to launch the #SpeakBeautiful Effect, that breaks down which body- related words people use the most and when negative chatter appears during the day.

According to Dove, women were inspired by their message.

  • #SpeakBeautiful was used more than 168,000 times
  • Drove 800 million social media impressions of the campaign

Dove know their audience. Knowing your audience is the only way you will engage with them. The best way for this is creating personas. Knowing what life stage they are in, if they’re employed, what their interests are etc. will certainly help you when creating content. Then think about linking your audience to your brand values in order to create something just as successful as Dove’s campaign.

3. Nutella – Incredible content that makes you salivate

Each post makes you want to eat Nutella. There are a lot of people (including me) who take photos of their food before they eat it. Nutella does the same and it works. Nutella isn’t afraid to be fun and creative with different ingredients. Nutella is just a chocolate spread yet they manage to have fun with it. Do you, or could you, have a bit more fun with your brand?

Here are some ideas for having fun with your brand:

  • Are you on different social media channels? If you’re B2B you might not think that Instagram is for you, but it can be a great way to demonstrate your brand values by telling a story. Fedex is a great example of this, showing images of their trucks always on the move. This tells a story that they are always delivering and that is the key message we take away.
  • Key influencers/bloggers can be a great way to  different types of content and to see how they have fun with your brand (if this is new to you, read our post on the rise of the social media influencer ).
  • Instead of posting behind-the-scenes photos at your head office, can you encourage your followers to share their experiences with your brand? Maybe host an event or go out and meet them.
Take your #breakfast bread pudding to the next level with #Nutella ! 😉 pic.twitter.com/k0ko5Nm9iX — Nutella (@NutellaGlobal) May 5, 2016

4. Oreo – Smart content planning and timely delivery

Oreo is another brand that is known for their creative social media marketing. They must have a big design team to produce their content, but it works! They are consistent with their branding and manage to catch onto real time events. We all remember when the lights went out at the Super Bowl and during the half hour blackout Oreo tweeted out:

Power out? No problem. pic.twitter.com/dnQ7pOgC — OREO Cookie (@Oreo) February 4, 2013

This was retweeted over 15,000 times.  Are you thinking outside the box about your brand? Plan ahead for events coming up that you might be able to jump on to.

Do you plan your social media content out? If you’re in B2B and don’t currently create content read here for some B2B content marketing tips to help you get started, or check out our B2B marketing strategy tips ebook for 2021.

It’s always a good idea to prepare content ahead of time. If you can schedule content on a monthly basis – perfect, but if not bi-weekly is great. That way you can check what events are coming up and plan content around them. This gives you time for any ad hoc creative to be done, such as jumping on real-time events like the Oreo blackout example above.

5. Airbnb – Stunning imagery and UGC

What might look like a visual travel blog,  Airbnb ’ s content attracts fans with their visually compelling posts. On Instagram, they post user-generated photos from its hosts and guests. The content embraces their new campaign of ‘Don’t just go there, Live there’ which is captured through real photography. Each post receives high engagement, between 3,000 and 14,000 Instagram likes.

Airbnb social media case study

This is a great example of thinking slightly outside the box. Airbnb is all about accommodation. They don’t just post images of the inside of people’s homes. Seeing the culture and images of places all over the world comes with the experience of where you stay and that’s what connects with people. Think about your brand: are you just posting about the product/ service itself? Why not tell your followers a story instead?

Thanks for reading. I hope by reading these five social media marketing case studies it has spiked some inspiration! If you need any help with your social media advertising , influencer marketing , or other aspects of your social media strategy, feel free to contact us .

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Principles of Social Research Methodology pp 313–321 Cite as

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This chapter reviews the strengths and limitations of case study as a research method in social sciences. It provides an account of an evidence base to justify why a case study is best suitable for some research questions and why not for some other research questions. Case study designing around the research context, defining the structure and modality, conducting the study, collecting the data through triangulation mode, analysing the data, and interpreting the data and theory building at the end give a holistic view of it. In addition, the chapter also focuses on the types of case study and when and where to use case study as a research method in social science research.

  • Qualitative research approach
  • Social work research

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Research Method

Home » Case Study – Methods, Examples and Guide

Case Study – Methods, Examples and Guide

Table of Contents

Case Study Research

A case study is a research method that involves an in-depth examination and analysis of a particular phenomenon or case, such as an individual, organization, community, event, or situation.

It is a qualitative research approach that aims to provide a detailed and comprehensive understanding of the case being studied. Case studies typically involve multiple sources of data, including interviews, observations, documents, and artifacts, which are analyzed using various techniques, such as content analysis, thematic analysis, and grounded theory. The findings of a case study are often used to develop theories, inform policy or practice, or generate new research questions.

Types of Case Study

Types and Methods of Case Study are as follows:

Single-Case Study

A single-case study is an in-depth analysis of a single case. This type of case study is useful when the researcher wants to understand a specific phenomenon in detail.

For Example , A researcher might conduct a single-case study on a particular individual to understand their experiences with a particular health condition or a specific organization to explore their management practices. The researcher collects data from multiple sources, such as interviews, observations, and documents, and uses various techniques to analyze the data, such as content analysis or thematic analysis. The findings of a single-case study are often used to generate new research questions, develop theories, or inform policy or practice.

Multiple-Case Study

A multiple-case study involves the analysis of several cases that are similar in nature. This type of case study is useful when the researcher wants to identify similarities and differences between the cases.

For Example, a researcher might conduct a multiple-case study on several companies to explore the factors that contribute to their success or failure. The researcher collects data from each case, compares and contrasts the findings, and uses various techniques to analyze the data, such as comparative analysis or pattern-matching. The findings of a multiple-case study can be used to develop theories, inform policy or practice, or generate new research questions.

Exploratory Case Study

An exploratory case study is used to explore a new or understudied phenomenon. This type of case study is useful when the researcher wants to generate hypotheses or theories about the phenomenon.

For Example, a researcher might conduct an exploratory case study on a new technology to understand its potential impact on society. The researcher collects data from multiple sources, such as interviews, observations, and documents, and uses various techniques to analyze the data, such as grounded theory or content analysis. The findings of an exploratory case study can be used to generate new research questions, develop theories, or inform policy or practice.

Descriptive Case Study

A descriptive case study is used to describe a particular phenomenon in detail. This type of case study is useful when the researcher wants to provide a comprehensive account of the phenomenon.

For Example, a researcher might conduct a descriptive case study on a particular community to understand its social and economic characteristics. The researcher collects data from multiple sources, such as interviews, observations, and documents, and uses various techniques to analyze the data, such as content analysis or thematic analysis. The findings of a descriptive case study can be used to inform policy or practice or generate new research questions.

Instrumental Case Study

An instrumental case study is used to understand a particular phenomenon that is instrumental in achieving a particular goal. This type of case study is useful when the researcher wants to understand the role of the phenomenon in achieving the goal.

For Example, a researcher might conduct an instrumental case study on a particular policy to understand its impact on achieving a particular goal, such as reducing poverty. The researcher collects data from multiple sources, such as interviews, observations, and documents, and uses various techniques to analyze the data, such as content analysis or thematic analysis. The findings of an instrumental case study can be used to inform policy or practice or generate new research questions.

Case Study Data Collection Methods

Here are some common data collection methods for case studies:

Interviews involve asking questions to individuals who have knowledge or experience relevant to the case study. Interviews can be structured (where the same questions are asked to all participants) or unstructured (where the interviewer follows up on the responses with further questions). Interviews can be conducted in person, over the phone, or through video conferencing.

Observations

Observations involve watching and recording the behavior and activities of individuals or groups relevant to the case study. Observations can be participant (where the researcher actively participates in the activities) or non-participant (where the researcher observes from a distance). Observations can be recorded using notes, audio or video recordings, or photographs.

Documents can be used as a source of information for case studies. Documents can include reports, memos, emails, letters, and other written materials related to the case study. Documents can be collected from the case study participants or from public sources.

Surveys involve asking a set of questions to a sample of individuals relevant to the case study. Surveys can be administered in person, over the phone, through mail or email, or online. Surveys can be used to gather information on attitudes, opinions, or behaviors related to the case study.

Artifacts are physical objects relevant to the case study. Artifacts can include tools, equipment, products, or other objects that provide insights into the case study phenomenon.

How to conduct Case Study Research

Conducting a case study research involves several steps that need to be followed to ensure the quality and rigor of the study. Here are the steps to conduct case study research:

  • Define the research questions: The first step in conducting a case study research is to define the research questions. The research questions should be specific, measurable, and relevant to the case study phenomenon under investigation.
  • Select the case: The next step is to select the case or cases to be studied. The case should be relevant to the research questions and should provide rich and diverse data that can be used to answer the research questions.
  • Collect data: Data can be collected using various methods, such as interviews, observations, documents, surveys, and artifacts. The data collection method should be selected based on the research questions and the nature of the case study phenomenon.
  • Analyze the data: The data collected from the case study should be analyzed using various techniques, such as content analysis, thematic analysis, or grounded theory. The analysis should be guided by the research questions and should aim to provide insights and conclusions relevant to the research questions.
  • Draw conclusions: The conclusions drawn from the case study should be based on the data analysis and should be relevant to the research questions. The conclusions should be supported by evidence and should be clearly stated.
  • Validate the findings: The findings of the case study should be validated by reviewing the data and the analysis with participants or other experts in the field. This helps to ensure the validity and reliability of the findings.
  • Write the report: The final step is to write the report of the case study research. The report should provide a clear description of the case study phenomenon, the research questions, the data collection methods, the data analysis, the findings, and the conclusions. The report should be written in a clear and concise manner and should follow the guidelines for academic writing.

Examples of Case Study

Here are some examples of case study research:

  • The Hawthorne Studies : Conducted between 1924 and 1932, the Hawthorne Studies were a series of case studies conducted by Elton Mayo and his colleagues to examine the impact of work environment on employee productivity. The studies were conducted at the Hawthorne Works plant of the Western Electric Company in Chicago and included interviews, observations, and experiments.
  • The Stanford Prison Experiment: Conducted in 1971, the Stanford Prison Experiment was a case study conducted by Philip Zimbardo to examine the psychological effects of power and authority. The study involved simulating a prison environment and assigning participants to the role of guards or prisoners. The study was controversial due to the ethical issues it raised.
  • The Challenger Disaster: The Challenger Disaster was a case study conducted to examine the causes of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion in 1986. The study included interviews, observations, and analysis of data to identify the technical, organizational, and cultural factors that contributed to the disaster.
  • The Enron Scandal: The Enron Scandal was a case study conducted to examine the causes of the Enron Corporation’s bankruptcy in 2001. The study included interviews, analysis of financial data, and review of documents to identify the accounting practices, corporate culture, and ethical issues that led to the company’s downfall.
  • The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster : The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster was a case study conducted to examine the causes of the nuclear accident that occurred at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan in 2011. The study included interviews, analysis of data, and review of documents to identify the technical, organizational, and cultural factors that contributed to the disaster.

Application of Case Study

Case studies have a wide range of applications across various fields and industries. Here are some examples:

Business and Management

Case studies are widely used in business and management to examine real-life situations and develop problem-solving skills. Case studies can help students and professionals to develop a deep understanding of business concepts, theories, and best practices.

Case studies are used in healthcare to examine patient care, treatment options, and outcomes. Case studies can help healthcare professionals to develop critical thinking skills, diagnose complex medical conditions, and develop effective treatment plans.

Case studies are used in education to examine teaching and learning practices. Case studies can help educators to develop effective teaching strategies, evaluate student progress, and identify areas for improvement.

Social Sciences

Case studies are widely used in social sciences to examine human behavior, social phenomena, and cultural practices. Case studies can help researchers to develop theories, test hypotheses, and gain insights into complex social issues.

Law and Ethics

Case studies are used in law and ethics to examine legal and ethical dilemmas. Case studies can help lawyers, policymakers, and ethical professionals to develop critical thinking skills, analyze complex cases, and make informed decisions.

Purpose of Case Study

The purpose of a case study is to provide a detailed analysis of a specific phenomenon, issue, or problem in its real-life context. A case study is a qualitative research method that involves the in-depth exploration and analysis of a particular case, which can be an individual, group, organization, event, or community.

The primary purpose of a case study is to generate a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the case, including its history, context, and dynamics. Case studies can help researchers to identify and examine the underlying factors, processes, and mechanisms that contribute to the case and its outcomes. This can help to develop a more accurate and detailed understanding of the case, which can inform future research, practice, or policy.

Case studies can also serve other purposes, including:

  • Illustrating a theory or concept: Case studies can be used to illustrate and explain theoretical concepts and frameworks, providing concrete examples of how they can be applied in real-life situations.
  • Developing hypotheses: Case studies can help to generate hypotheses about the causal relationships between different factors and outcomes, which can be tested through further research.
  • Providing insight into complex issues: Case studies can provide insights into complex and multifaceted issues, which may be difficult to understand through other research methods.
  • Informing practice or policy: Case studies can be used to inform practice or policy by identifying best practices, lessons learned, or areas for improvement.

Advantages of Case Study Research

There are several advantages of case study research, including:

  • In-depth exploration: Case study research allows for a detailed exploration and analysis of a specific phenomenon, issue, or problem in its real-life context. This can provide a comprehensive understanding of the case and its dynamics, which may not be possible through other research methods.
  • Rich data: Case study research can generate rich and detailed data, including qualitative data such as interviews, observations, and documents. This can provide a nuanced understanding of the case and its complexity.
  • Holistic perspective: Case study research allows for a holistic perspective of the case, taking into account the various factors, processes, and mechanisms that contribute to the case and its outcomes. This can help to develop a more accurate and comprehensive understanding of the case.
  • Theory development: Case study research can help to develop and refine theories and concepts by providing empirical evidence and concrete examples of how they can be applied in real-life situations.
  • Practical application: Case study research can inform practice or policy by identifying best practices, lessons learned, or areas for improvement.
  • Contextualization: Case study research takes into account the specific context in which the case is situated, which can help to understand how the case is influenced by the social, cultural, and historical factors of its environment.

Limitations of Case Study Research

There are several limitations of case study research, including:

  • Limited generalizability : Case studies are typically focused on a single case or a small number of cases, which limits the generalizability of the findings. The unique characteristics of the case may not be applicable to other contexts or populations, which may limit the external validity of the research.
  • Biased sampling: Case studies may rely on purposive or convenience sampling, which can introduce bias into the sample selection process. This may limit the representativeness of the sample and the generalizability of the findings.
  • Subjectivity: Case studies rely on the interpretation of the researcher, which can introduce subjectivity into the analysis. The researcher’s own biases, assumptions, and perspectives may influence the findings, which may limit the objectivity of the research.
  • Limited control: Case studies are typically conducted in naturalistic settings, which limits the control that the researcher has over the environment and the variables being studied. This may limit the ability to establish causal relationships between variables.
  • Time-consuming: Case studies can be time-consuming to conduct, as they typically involve a detailed exploration and analysis of a specific case. This may limit the feasibility of conducting multiple case studies or conducting case studies in a timely manner.
  • Resource-intensive: Case studies may require significant resources, including time, funding, and expertise. This may limit the ability of researchers to conduct case studies in resource-constrained settings.

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Definition and Introduction

Case analysis is a problem-based teaching and learning method that involves critically analyzing complex scenarios within an organizational setting for the purpose of placing the student in a “real world” situation and applying reflection and critical thinking skills to contemplate appropriate solutions, decisions, or recommended courses of action. It is considered a more effective teaching technique than in-class role playing or simulation activities. The analytical process is often guided by questions provided by the instructor that ask students to contemplate relationships between the facts and critical incidents described in the case.

Cases generally include both descriptive and statistical elements and rely on students applying abductive reasoning to develop and argue for preferred or best outcomes [i.e., case scenarios rarely have a single correct or perfect answer based on the evidence provided]. Rather than emphasizing theories or concepts, case analysis assignments emphasize building a bridge of relevancy between abstract thinking and practical application and, by so doing, teaches the value of both within a specific area of professional practice.

Given this, the purpose of a case analysis paper is to present a structured and logically organized format for analyzing the case situation. It can be assigned to students individually or as a small group assignment and it may include an in-class presentation component. Case analysis is predominately taught in economics and business-related courses, but it is also a method of teaching and learning found in other applied social sciences disciplines, such as, social work, public relations, education, journalism, and public administration.

Ellet, William. The Case Study Handbook: A Student's Guide . Revised Edition. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2018; Christoph Rasche and Achim Seisreiner. Guidelines for Business Case Analysis . University of Potsdam; Writing a Case Analysis . Writing Center, Baruch College; Volpe, Guglielmo. "Case Teaching in Economics: History, Practice and Evidence." Cogent Economics and Finance 3 (December 2015). doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/23322039.2015.1120977.

How to Approach Writing a Case Analysis Paper

The organization and structure of a case analysis paper can vary depending on the organizational setting, the situation, and how your professor wants you to approach the assignment. Nevertheless, preparing to write a case analysis paper involves several important steps. As Hawes notes, a case analysis assignment “...is useful in developing the ability to get to the heart of a problem, analyze it thoroughly, and to indicate the appropriate solution as well as how it should be implemented” [p.48]. This statement encapsulates how you should approach preparing to write a case analysis paper.

Before you begin to write your paper, consider the following analytical procedures:

  • Review the case to get an overview of the situation . A case can be only a few pages in length, however, it is most often very lengthy and contains a significant amount of detailed background information and statistics, with multilayered descriptions of the scenario, the roles and behaviors of various stakeholder groups, and situational events. Therefore, a quick reading of the case will help you gain an overall sense of the situation and illuminate the types of issues and problems that you will need to address in your paper. If your professor has provided questions intended to help frame your analysis, use them to guide your initial reading of the case.
  • Read the case thoroughly . After gaining a general overview of the case, carefully read the content again with the purpose of understanding key circumstances, events, and behaviors among stakeholder groups. Look for information or data that appears contradictory, extraneous, or misleading. At this point, you should be taking notes as you read because this will help you develop a general outline of your paper. The aim is to obtain a complete understanding of the situation so that you can begin contemplating tentative answers to any questions your professor has provided or, if they have not provided, developing answers to your own questions about the case scenario and its connection to the course readings,lectures, and class discussions.
  • Determine key stakeholder groups, issues, and events and the relationships they all have to each other . As you analyze the content, pay particular attention to identifying individuals, groups, or organizations described in the case and identify evidence of any problems or issues of concern that impact the situation in a negative way. Other things to look for include identifying any assumptions being made by or about each stakeholder, potential biased explanations or actions, explicit demands or ultimatums , and the underlying concerns that motivate these behaviors among stakeholders. The goal at this stage is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the situational and behavioral dynamics of the case and the explicit and implicit consequences of each of these actions.
  • Identify the core problems . The next step in most case analysis assignments is to discern what the core [i.e., most damaging, detrimental, injurious] problems are within the organizational setting and to determine their implications. The purpose at this stage of preparing to write your analysis paper is to distinguish between the symptoms of core problems and the core problems themselves and to decide which of these must be addressed immediately and which problems do not appear critical but may escalate over time. Identify evidence from the case to support your decisions by determining what information or data is essential to addressing the core problems and what information is not relevant or is misleading.
  • Explore alternative solutions . As noted, case analysis scenarios rarely have only one correct answer. Therefore, it is important to keep in mind that the process of analyzing the case and diagnosing core problems, while based on evidence, is a subjective process open to various avenues of interpretation. This means that you must consider alternative solutions or courses of action by critically examining strengths and weaknesses, risk factors, and the differences between short and long-term solutions. For each possible solution or course of action, consider the consequences they may have related to their implementation and how these recommendations might lead to new problems. Also, consider thinking about your recommended solutions or courses of action in relation to issues of fairness, equity, and inclusion.
  • Decide on a final set of recommendations . The last stage in preparing to write a case analysis paper is to assert an opinion or viewpoint about the recommendations needed to help resolve the core problems as you see them and to make a persuasive argument for supporting this point of view. Prepare a clear rationale for your recommendations based on examining each element of your analysis. Anticipate possible obstacles that could derail their implementation. Consider any counter-arguments that could be made concerning the validity of your recommended actions. Finally, describe a set of criteria and measurable indicators that could be applied to evaluating the effectiveness of your implementation plan.

Use these steps as the framework for writing your paper. Remember that the more detailed you are in taking notes as you critically examine each element of the case, the more information you will have to draw from when you begin to write. This will save you time.

NOTE : If the process of preparing to write a case analysis paper is assigned as a student group project, consider having each member of the group analyze a specific element of the case, including drafting answers to the corresponding questions used by your professor to frame the analysis. This will help make the analytical process more efficient and ensure that the distribution of work is equitable. This can also facilitate who is responsible for drafting each part of the final case analysis paper and, if applicable, the in-class presentation.

Framework for Case Analysis . College of Management. University of Massachusetts; Hawes, Jon M. "Teaching is Not Telling: The Case Method as a Form of Interactive Learning." Journal for Advancement of Marketing Education 5 (Winter 2004): 47-54; Rasche, Christoph and Achim Seisreiner. Guidelines for Business Case Analysis . University of Potsdam; Writing a Case Study Analysis . University of Arizona Global Campus Writing Center; Van Ness, Raymond K. A Guide to Case Analysis . School of Business. State University of New York, Albany; Writing a Case Analysis . Business School, University of New South Wales.

Structure and Writing Style

A case analysis paper should be detailed, concise, persuasive, clearly written, and professional in tone and in the use of language . As with other forms of college-level academic writing, declarative statements that convey information, provide a fact, or offer an explanation or any recommended courses of action should be based on evidence. If allowed by your professor, any external sources used to support your analysis, such as course readings, should be properly cited under a list of references. The organization and structure of case analysis papers can vary depending on your professor’s preferred format, but its structure generally follows the steps used for analyzing the case.

Introduction

The introduction should provide a succinct but thorough descriptive overview of the main facts, issues, and core problems of the case . The introduction should also include a brief summary of the most relevant details about the situation and organizational setting. This includes defining the theoretical framework or conceptual model on which any questions were used to frame your analysis.

Following the rules of most college-level research papers, the introduction should then inform the reader how the paper will be organized. This includes describing the major sections of the paper and the order in which they will be presented. Unless you are told to do so by your professor, you do not need to preview your final recommendations in the introduction. U nlike most college-level research papers , the introduction does not include a statement about the significance of your findings because a case analysis assignment does not involve contributing new knowledge about a research problem.

Background Analysis

Background analysis can vary depending on any guiding questions provided by your professor and the underlying concept or theory that the case is based upon. In general, however, this section of your paper should focus on:

  • Providing an overarching analysis of problems identified from the case scenario, including identifying events that stakeholders find challenging or troublesome,
  • Identifying assumptions made by each stakeholder and any apparent biases they may exhibit,
  • Describing any demands or claims made by or forced upon key stakeholders, and
  • Highlighting any issues of concern or complaints expressed by stakeholders in response to those demands or claims.

These aspects of the case are often in the form of behavioral responses expressed by individuals or groups within the organizational setting. However, note that problems in a case situation can also be reflected in data [or the lack thereof] and in the decision-making, operational, cultural, or institutional structure of the organization. Additionally, demands or claims can be either internal and external to the organization [e.g., a case analysis involving a president considering arms sales to Saudi Arabia could include managing internal demands from White House advisors as well as demands from members of Congress].

Throughout this section, present all relevant evidence from the case that supports your analysis. Do not simply claim there is a problem, an assumption, a demand, or a concern; tell the reader what part of the case informed how you identified these background elements.

Identification of Problems

In most case analysis assignments, there are problems, and then there are problems . Each problem can reflect a multitude of underlying symptoms that are detrimental to the interests of the organization. The purpose of identifying problems is to teach students how to differentiate between problems that vary in severity, impact, and relative importance. Given this, problems can be described in three general forms: those that must be addressed immediately, those that should be addressed but the impact is not severe, and those that do not require immediate attention and can be set aside for the time being.

All of the problems you identify from the case should be identified in this section of your paper, with a description based on evidence explaining the problem variances. If the assignment asks you to conduct research to further support your assessment of the problems, include this in your explanation. Remember to cite those sources in a list of references. Use specific evidence from the case and apply appropriate concepts, theories, and models discussed in class or in relevant course readings to highlight and explain the key problems [or problem] that you believe must be solved immediately and describe the underlying symptoms and why they are so critical.

Alternative Solutions

This section is where you provide specific, realistic, and evidence-based solutions to the problems you have identified and make recommendations about how to alleviate the underlying symptomatic conditions impacting the organizational setting. For each solution, you must explain why it was chosen and provide clear evidence to support your reasoning. This can include, for example, course readings and class discussions as well as research resources, such as, books, journal articles, research reports, or government documents. In some cases, your professor may encourage you to include personal, anecdotal experiences as evidence to support why you chose a particular solution or set of solutions. Using anecdotal evidence helps promote reflective thinking about the process of determining what qualifies as a core problem and relevant solution .

Throughout this part of the paper, keep in mind the entire array of problems that must be addressed and describe in detail the solutions that might be implemented to resolve these problems.

Recommended Courses of Action

In some case analysis assignments, your professor may ask you to combine the alternative solutions section with your recommended courses of action. However, it is important to know the difference between the two. A solution refers to the answer to a problem. A course of action refers to a procedure or deliberate sequence of activities adopted to proactively confront a situation, often in the context of accomplishing a goal. In this context, proposed courses of action are based on your analysis of alternative solutions. Your description and justification for pursuing each course of action should represent the overall plan for implementing your recommendations.

For each course of action, you need to explain the rationale for your recommendation in a way that confronts challenges, explains risks, and anticipates any counter-arguments from stakeholders. Do this by considering the strengths and weaknesses of each course of action framed in relation to how the action is expected to resolve the core problems presented, the possible ways the action may affect remaining problems, and how the recommended action will be perceived by each stakeholder.

In addition, you should describe the criteria needed to measure how well the implementation of these actions is working and explain which individuals or groups are responsible for ensuring your recommendations are successful. In addition, always consider the law of unintended consequences. Outline difficulties that may arise in implementing each course of action and describe how implementing the proposed courses of action [either individually or collectively] may lead to new problems [both large and small].

Throughout this section, you must consider the costs and benefits of recommending your courses of action in relation to uncertainties or missing information and the negative consequences of success.

The conclusion should be brief and introspective. Unlike a research paper, the conclusion in a case analysis paper does not include a summary of key findings and their significance, a statement about how the study contributed to existing knowledge, or indicate opportunities for future research.

Begin by synthesizing the core problems presented in the case and the relevance of your recommended solutions. This can include an explanation of what you have learned about the case in the context of your answers to the questions provided by your professor. The conclusion is also where you link what you learned from analyzing the case with the course readings or class discussions. This can further demonstrate your understanding of the relationships between the practical case situation and the theoretical and abstract content of assigned readings and other course content.

Problems to Avoid

The literature on case analysis assignments often includes examples of difficulties students have with applying methods of critical analysis and effectively reporting the results of their assessment of the situation. A common reason cited by scholars is that the application of this type of teaching and learning method is limited to applied fields of social and behavioral sciences and, as a result, writing a case analysis paper can be unfamiliar to most students entering college.

After you have drafted your paper, proofread the narrative flow and revise any of these common errors:

  • Unnecessary detail in the background section . The background section should highlight the essential elements of the case based on your analysis. Focus on summarizing the facts and highlighting the key factors that become relevant in the other sections of the paper by eliminating any unnecessary information.
  • Analysis relies too much on opinion . Your analysis is interpretive, but the narrative must be connected clearly to evidence from the case and any models and theories discussed in class or in course readings. Any positions or arguments you make should be supported by evidence.
  • Analysis does not focus on the most important elements of the case . Your paper should provide a thorough overview of the case. However, the analysis should focus on providing evidence about what you identify are the key events, stakeholders, issues, and problems. Emphasize what you identify as the most critical aspects of the case to be developed throughout your analysis. Be thorough but succinct.
  • Writing is too descriptive . A paper with too much descriptive information detracts from your analysis of the complexities of the case situation. Questions about what happened, where, when, and by whom should only be included as essential information leading to your examination of questions related to why, how, and for what purpose.
  • Inadequate definition of a core problem and associated symptoms . A common error found in case analysis papers is recommending a solution or course of action without adequately defining or demonstrating that you understand the problem. Make sure you have clearly described the problem and its impact and scope within the organizational setting. Ensure that you have adequately described the root causes w hen describing the symptoms of the problem.
  • Recommendations lack specificity . Identify any use of vague statements and indeterminate terminology, such as, “A particular experience” or “a large increase to the budget.” These statements cannot be measured and, as a result, there is no way to evaluate their successful implementation. Provide specific data and use direct language in describing recommended actions.
  • Unrealistic, exaggerated, or unattainable recommendations . Review your recommendations to ensure that they are based on the situational facts of the case. Your recommended solutions and courses of action must be based on realistic assumptions and fit within the constraints of the situation. Also note that the case scenario has already happened, therefore, any speculation or arguments about what could have occurred if the circumstances were different should be revised or eliminated.

Bee, Lian Song et al. "Business Students' Perspectives on Case Method Coaching for Problem-Based Learning: Impacts on Student Engagement and Learning Performance in Higher Education." Education & Training 64 (2022): 416-432; The Case Analysis . Fred Meijer Center for Writing and Michigan Authors. Grand Valley State University; Georgallis, Panikos and Kayleigh Bruijn. "Sustainability Teaching using Case-Based Debates." Journal of International Education in Business 15 (2022): 147-163; Hawes, Jon M. "Teaching is Not Telling: The Case Method as a Form of Interactive Learning." Journal for Advancement of Marketing Education 5 (Winter 2004): 47-54; Georgallis, Panikos, and Kayleigh Bruijn. "Sustainability Teaching Using Case-based Debates." Journal of International Education in Business 15 (2022): 147-163; .Dean,  Kathy Lund and Charles J. Fornaciari. "How to Create and Use Experiential Case-Based Exercises in a Management Classroom." Journal of Management Education 26 (October 2002): 586-603; Klebba, Joanne M. and Janet G. Hamilton. "Structured Case Analysis: Developing Critical Thinking Skills in a Marketing Case Course." Journal of Marketing Education 29 (August 2007): 132-137, 139; Klein, Norman. "The Case Discussion Method Revisited: Some Questions about Student Skills." Exchange: The Organizational Behavior Teaching Journal 6 (November 1981): 30-32; Mukherjee, Arup. "Effective Use of In-Class Mini Case Analysis for Discovery Learning in an Undergraduate MIS Course." The Journal of Computer Information Systems 40 (Spring 2000): 15-23; Pessoa, Silviaet al. "Scaffolding the Case Analysis in an Organizational Behavior Course: Making Analytical Language Explicit." Journal of Management Education 46 (2022): 226-251: Ramsey, V. J. and L. D. Dodge. "Case Analysis: A Structured Approach." Exchange: The Organizational Behavior Teaching Journal 6 (November 1981): 27-29; Schweitzer, Karen. "How to Write and Format a Business Case Study." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/how-to-write-and-format-a-business-case-study-466324 (accessed December 5, 2022); Reddy, C. D. "Teaching Research Methodology: Everything's a Case." Electronic Journal of Business Research Methods 18 (December 2020): 178-188; Volpe, Guglielmo. "Case Teaching in Economics: History, Practice and Evidence." Cogent Economics and Finance 3 (December 2015). doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/23322039.2015.1120977.

Writing Tip

Ca se Study and Case Analysis Are Not the Same!

Confusion often exists between what it means to write a paper that uses a case study research design and writing a paper that analyzes a case; they are two different types of approaches to learning in the social and behavioral sciences. Professors as well as educational researchers contribute to this confusion because they often use the term "case study" when describing the subject of analysis for a case analysis paper. But you are not studying a case for the purpose of generating a comprehensive, multi-faceted understanding of a research problem. R ather, you are critically analyzing a specific scenario to argue logically for recommended solutions and courses of action that lead to optimal outcomes applicable to professional practice.

To avoid any confusion, here are twelve characteristics that delineate the differences between writing a paper using the case study research method and writing a case analysis paper:

  • Case study is a method of in-depth research and rigorous inquiry ; case analysis is a reliable method of teaching and learning . A case study is a modality of research that investigates a phenomenon for the purpose of creating new knowledge, solving a problem, or testing a hypothesis using empirical evidence derived from the case being studied. Often, the results are used to generalize about a larger population or within a wider context. The writing adheres to the traditional standards of a scholarly research study. A case analysis is a pedagogical tool used to teach students how to reflect and think critically about a practical, real-life problem in an organizational setting.
  • The researcher is responsible for identifying the case to study; a case analysis is assigned by your professor . As the researcher, you choose the case study to investigate in support of obtaining new knowledge and understanding about the research problem. The case in a case analysis assignment is almost always provided, and sometimes written, by your professor and either given to every student in class to analyze individually or to a small group of students, or students select a case to analyze from a predetermined list.
  • A case study is indeterminate and boundless; a case analysis is predetermined and confined . A case study can be almost anything [see item 9 below] as long as it relates directly to examining the research problem. This relationship is the only limit to what a researcher can choose as the subject of their case study. The content of a case analysis is determined by your professor and its parameters are well-defined and limited to elucidating insights of practical value applied to practice.
  • Case study is fact-based and describes actual events or situations; case analysis can be entirely fictional or adapted from an actual situation . The entire content of a case study must be grounded in reality to be a valid subject of investigation in an empirical research study. A case analysis only needs to set the stage for critically examining a situation in practice and, therefore, can be entirely fictional or adapted, all or in-part, from an actual situation.
  • Research using a case study method must adhere to principles of intellectual honesty and academic integrity; a case analysis scenario can include misleading or false information . A case study paper must report research objectively and factually to ensure that any findings are understood to be logically correct and trustworthy. A case analysis scenario may include misleading or false information intended to deliberately distract from the central issues of the case. The purpose is to teach students how to sort through conflicting or useless information in order to come up with the preferred solution. Any use of misleading or false information in academic research is considered unethical.
  • Case study is linked to a research problem; case analysis is linked to a practical situation or scenario . In the social sciences, the subject of an investigation is most often framed as a problem that must be researched in order to generate new knowledge leading to a solution. Case analysis narratives are grounded in real life scenarios for the purpose of examining the realities of decision-making behavior and processes within organizational settings. A case analysis assignments include a problem or set of problems to be analyzed. However, the goal is centered around the act of identifying and evaluating courses of action leading to best possible outcomes.
  • The purpose of a case study is to create new knowledge through research; the purpose of a case analysis is to teach new understanding . Case studies are a choice of methodological design intended to create new knowledge about resolving a research problem. A case analysis is a mode of teaching and learning intended to create new understanding and an awareness of uncertainty applied to practice through acts of critical thinking and reflection.
  • A case study seeks to identify the best possible solution to a research problem; case analysis can have an indeterminate set of solutions or outcomes . Your role in studying a case is to discover the most logical, evidence-based ways to address a research problem. A case analysis assignment rarely has a single correct answer because one of the goals is to force students to confront the real life dynamics of uncertainly, ambiguity, and missing or conflicting information within professional practice. Under these conditions, a perfect outcome or solution almost never exists.
  • Case study is unbounded and relies on gathering external information; case analysis is a self-contained subject of analysis . The scope of a case study chosen as a method of research is bounded. However, the researcher is free to gather whatever information and data is necessary to investigate its relevance to understanding the research problem. For a case analysis assignment, your professor will often ask you to examine solutions or recommended courses of action based solely on facts and information from the case.
  • Case study can be a person, place, object, issue, event, condition, or phenomenon; a case analysis is a carefully constructed synopsis of events, situations, and behaviors . The research problem dictates the type of case being studied and, therefore, the design can encompass almost anything tangible as long as it fulfills the objective of generating new knowledge and understanding. A case analysis is in the form of a narrative containing descriptions of facts, situations, processes, rules, and behaviors within a particular setting and under a specific set of circumstances.
  • Case study can represent an open-ended subject of inquiry; a case analysis is a narrative about something that has happened in the past . A case study is not restricted by time and can encompass an event or issue with no temporal limit or end. For example, the current war in Ukraine can be used as a case study of how medical personnel help civilians during a large military conflict, even though circumstances around this event are still evolving. A case analysis can be used to elicit critical thinking about current or future situations in practice, but the case itself is a narrative about something finite and that has taken place in the past.
  • Multiple case studies can be used in a research study; case analysis involves examining a single scenario . Case study research can use two or more cases to examine a problem, often for the purpose of conducting a comparative investigation intended to discover hidden relationships, document emerging trends, or determine variations among different examples. A case analysis assignment typically describes a stand-alone, self-contained situation and any comparisons among cases are conducted during in-class discussions and/or student presentations.

The Case Analysis . Fred Meijer Center for Writing and Michigan Authors. Grand Valley State University; Mills, Albert J. , Gabrielle Durepos, and Eiden Wiebe, editors. Encyclopedia of Case Study Research . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2010; Ramsey, V. J. and L. D. Dodge. "Case Analysis: A Structured Approach." Exchange: The Organizational Behavior Teaching Journal 6 (November 1981): 27-29; Yin, Robert K. Case Study Research and Applications: Design and Methods . 6th edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2017; Crowe, Sarah et al. “The Case Study Approach.” BMC Medical Research Methodology 11 (2011):  doi: 10.1186/1471-2288-11-100; Yin, Robert K. Case Study Research: Design and Methods . 4th edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishing; 1994.

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  • Open access
  • Published: 19 February 2024

Sustaining the collaborative chronic care model in outpatient mental health: a matrixed multiple case study

  • Bo Kim 1 , 2 ,
  • Jennifer L. Sullivan 3 , 4 ,
  • Madisen E. Brown 1 ,
  • Samantha L. Connolly 1 , 2 ,
  • Elizabeth G. Spitzer 1 , 5 ,
  • Hannah M. Bailey 1 ,
  • Lauren M. Sippel 6 , 7 ,
  • Kendra Weaver 8 &
  • Christopher J. Miller 1 , 2  

Implementation Science volume  19 , Article number:  16 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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Sustaining evidence-based practices (EBPs) is crucial to ensuring care quality and addressing health disparities. Approaches to identifying factors related to sustainability are critically needed. One such approach is Matrixed Multiple Case Study (MMCS), which identifies factors and their combinations that influence implementation. We applied MMCS to identify factors related to the sustainability of the evidence-based Collaborative Chronic Care Model (CCM) at nine Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) outpatient mental health clinics, 3–4 years after implementation support had concluded.

We conducted a directed content analysis of 30 provider interviews, using 6 CCM elements and 4 Integrated Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services (i-PARIHS) domains as codes. Based on CCM code summaries, we designated each site as high/medium/low sustainability. We used i-PARIHS code summaries to identify relevant factors for each site, the extent of their presence, and the type of influence they had on sustainability (enabling/neutral/hindering/unclear). We organized these data into a sortable matrix and assessed sustainability-related cross-site trends.

CCM sustainability status was distributed among the sites, with three sites each being high, medium, and low. Twenty-five factors were identified from the i-PARIHS code summaries, of which 3 exhibited strong trends by sustainability status (relevant i-PARIHS domain in square brackets): “Collaborativeness/Teamwork [Recipients],” “Staff/Leadership turnover [Recipients],” and “Having a consistent/strong internal facilitator [Facilitation]” during and after active implementation. At most high-sustainability sites only, (i) “Having a knowledgeable/helpful external facilitator [Facilitation]” was variably present and enabled sustainability when present, while (ii) “Clarity about what CCM comprises [Innovation],” “Interdisciplinary coordination [Recipients],” and “Adequate clinic space for CCM team members [Context]” were somewhat or less present with mixed influences on sustainability.

Conclusions

MMCS revealed that CCM sustainability in VA outpatient mental health clinics may be related most strongly to provider collaboration, knowledge retention during staff/leadership transitions, and availability of skilled internal facilitators. These findings have informed a subsequent CCM implementation trial that prospectively examines whether enhancing the above-mentioned factors within implementation facilitation improves sustainability. MMCS is a systematic approach to multi-site examination that can be used to investigate sustainability-related factors applicable to other EBPs and across multiple contexts.

Peer Review reports

Contributions to the literature

We examined the ways in which the sustainability of the evidence-based Collaborative Chronic Care Model differed across nine outpatient mental health clinics where it was implemented.

This work demonstrates a unique application of the Matrixed Multiple Case Study (MMCS) method, originally developed to identify factors and their combinations that influence implementation, to investigate the long-term sustainability of a previously implemented evidence-based practice.

Contextual influences on sustainability identified through this work, as well as the systematic approach to multi-site examination offered by MMCS, can inform future efforts to sustainably implement and methodically evaluate an evidence-based practice’s uptake and continued use in routine care.

The sustainability of evidence-based practices (EBPs) over time is crucial to maximize the public health impact of EBPs implemented into routine care. Implementation evaluators focus on sustainability as a central implementation outcome, and funders of implementation efforts seek sustained long-term returns on their investment. Furthermore, practitioners and leadership at implementation sites face the task of sustaining an EBP’s usage even after implementation funding, support, and associated evaluation efforts conclude. The circumstances and influences contributing to EBP sustainability are therefore of high interest to the field of implementation science.

Sustainability depends on the specific EBP being implemented, the individuals undergoing the implementation, the contexts in which the implementation takes place, and the facilitation of (i.e., support for) the implementation. Hence, universal conditions that invariably lead to sustainability are challenging to establish. Even if a set of conditions could be identified as being associated with high sustainability “on average,” its usefulness is questionable when most real-world implementation contexts may deviate from “average” on key implementation-relevant metrics.

Thus, when seeking a better understanding of EBP sustainability, there is a critical need for methods that examine the ways in which sustainability varies in diverse contexts. One such method is Matrixed Multiple Case Study (MMCS) [ 1 ], which is beginning to be applied in implementation research to identify factors related to implementation [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]. MMCS capitalizes on the many contextual variations and heterogeneous outcomes that are expected when an EBP is implemented across multiple sites. Specifically, MMCS provides a formalized sequence of steps for cross-site analysis by arranging data into an array of matrices, which are sorted and filtered to test for expected factors and identify less expected factors influencing an implementation outcome of interest.

Although the MMCS represents a promising method for systematically exploring the “black box” of the ways in which implementation is more or less successful, it has not yet been applied to investigate the long-term sustainability of implemented EBPs. Therefore, we applied MMCS to identify factors related to the sustainability of the evidence-based Collaborative Chronic Care Model (CCM), previously implemented using implementation facilitation [ 6 , 7 , 8 ], at nine VA medical centers’ outpatient general mental health clinics. An earlier interview-based investigation of CCM provider perspectives had identified key determinants of CCM sustainability at the sites, yet characteristics related to the ways in which CCM sustainability differed at the sites are still not well understood. For this reason, our objective was to apply MMCS to examine the interview data to determine factors associated with CCM sustainability at each site.

Clinical and implementation contexts

CCM-based care aims to ensure that patients are treated in a coordinated, patient-centered, and anticipatory manner. This project’s nine outpatient general mental health clinics had participated in a hybrid CCM effectiveness-implementation trial 3 to 4 years prior, which had resulted in improved clinical outcomes that were not universally maintained post-implementation (i.e., after implementation funding and associated evaluation efforts concluded) [ 7 , 9 ]. This lack of aggregate sustainability across the nine clinics is what prompted the earlier interview-based investigation of CCM provider perspectives that identified key determinants of CCM sustainability at the trial sites [ 10 ].

These prior works were conducted in VA outpatient mental health teams, known as Behavioral Health Interdisciplinary Program (BHIP) teams. While there was variability in the exact composition of each BHIP team, all teams consisted of a multidisciplinary set of frontline clinicians (e.g., psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nurses) and support staff, serving a panel of about 1000 patients each.

This current project applied MMCS to examine the data from the earlier interviews [ 10 ] for the ways in which CCM sustainability differed at the sites and the factors related to sustainability. The project was determined to be non-research by the VA Boston Research and Development Service, and therefore did not require oversight by the Institutional Review Board (IRB). Details regarding the procedures undertaken for the completed hybrid CCM effectiveness-implementation trial, which serves as the context for this project, have been previously published [ 6 , 7 ]. Similarly, details regarding data collection for the follow-up provider interviews have also been previously published [ 10 ]. We provide a brief overview of the steps that we took for data collection and describe the steps that we took for applying MMCS to analyze the interview data. Additional file  1 outlines our use of the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research (COREQ) Checklist [ 11 ].

Data collection

We recruited 30 outpatient mental health providers across the nine sites that had participated in the CCM implementation trial, including a multidisciplinary mix of mental health leaders and frontline staff. We recruited participants via email, and we obtained verbal informed consent from all participants. Each interview lasted between 30 and 60 min and focused on the degree to which the participant perceived care processes to have remained aligned to the CCM’s six core elements: work role redesign, patient self-management support, provider decision support, clinical information systems, linkages to community resources, and organizational/leadership support [ 12 , 13 , 14 ]. Interview questions also inquired about the participant’s perceived barriers and enablers influencing CCM sustainability, as well as about the latest status of CCM-based care practices. Interviews were digitally recorded and professionally transcribed. Additional details regarding data collection have been previously published [ 10 ].

Data analysis

We applied MMCS’ nine analytical steps [ 1 ] to the interview data. Each step described below was led by one designated member of the project team, with subsequent review by all project team members to reach a consensus on the examination conducted for each step.

We established the evaluation goal (step 1) to identify the ways in which sustainability differed across the sites and the factors related to sustainability, defining sustainability (step 2) as the continued existence of CCM-aligned care practices—namely, that care processes remained aligned with the six core CCM elements. Table  1 shows examples of care processes that align with each CCM element. As our prior works directly leading up to this project (i.e., design and evaluation of the CCM implementation trial that involved the very sites included in this project [ 6 , 15 , 16 ]) were guided by the Integrated Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services (i-PARIHS) framework [ 17 ] and i-PARIHS positions facilitation (the implementation strategy that our trial was testing) as the core ingredient that drives implementation [ 17 ], we selected i-PARIHS’ four domains—innovation, recipients, context, and facilitation—as relevant domains under which to examine factors influencing sustainability (step 3). i-PARIHS posits that the successful implementation of an innovation and its sustained use by recipients in a context is enabled by facilitation (both the individuals doing the facilitation and the process used for facilitation). We examined the data on both sustainability and potentially relevant i-PARIHS domains (step 4) by conducting directed content analysis [ 18 ] of the recorded and professionally transcribed interview data. We used the six CCM elements and the four i-PARIHS domains as a priori codes.

Additional file  2 provides an overview of data input, tasks performed, and analysis output for MMCS steps 5 through 9 described below. We assessed sustainability per site (step 5) by generating CCM code summaries per site, and reached a consensus on whether each site exhibited high, medium, or low sustainability relative to other sites based on the summary data. We assigned a higher sustainability level for sites that exhibited more CCM-aligned care processes, had more participants consistently mention those processes, and considered those processes more as “just the way things are done” at the site. Namely, (i) high sustainability sites had concrete examples of CCM-aligned care processes (such as the ones shown in Table  1 ) for many of the six CCM elements, which multiple participants mentioned as central to how they deliver care, (ii) low sustainability sites had only a few concrete examples of CCM-aligned care processes, mentioned by only a small subset of participants and/or inconsistently practiced, and (iii) medium sustainability sites matched neither of the high nor low sustainability cases, having several concrete examples of CCM-aligned care process for some of the CCM elements, varying in whether they are mentioned by multiple participants or how consistently they are a part of delivering care. For the CCM code summaries per site, one project team member initially reviewed the coded data to draft the summaries including exemplar quotes. Each summary and relevant exemplar quotes were then reviewed by and refined with input from all six project team members during recurring team meetings to finalize the high, medium, or low sustainability designation to use in the subsequent MMCS steps. Reviewing and refining the summaries for the nine sites took approximately four 60-min meetings of the six project team members, with each site’s CCM code summary taking approximately 20–35 min to discuss and reach consensus on. We referred to lists of specific examples of how the six core CCM elements were operationalized in our CCM implementation trial [ 19 , 20 ]. Refinements occurred mostly around familiarizing the newer members of the project team (i.e., those who had not participated in our prior CCM-related work) with the examples and definitions. We aligned to established qualitative analysis methods for consensus-reaching discussions [ 18 , 21 ]. Recognizing the common challenge faced by such discussions in adequately accounting for everyone’s interpretations of the data [ 22 ], we drew on Bens’ meeting facilitation techniques [ 23 ] that include setting ground rules, ensuring balanced participation from all project team members, and accurately recording decisions and action items.

We then identified influencing factors per site (step 6), by generating i-PARIHS code summaries per site and identifying distinct factors under each domain of i-PARIHS (e.g., Collaborativeness and teamwork as a factor under the Recipients domain). For the i-PARIHS code summaries per site, one project team member initially reviewed the coded data to draft the summaries including exemplar quotes. They elaborated on each i-PARIHS domain-specific summary by noting distinct factors that they deemed relevant to the summary, proposing descriptive wording to refer to each factor (e.g., “team members share a commitment to their patients” under the Recipients domain). Each summary, associated factor descriptions, and relevant exemplar quotes were then reviewed and refined with input from all six project team members during recurring team meetings to finalize the relevant factors to use in the subsequent MMCS steps. Finalizing the factors included deciding which similar proposed factor descriptions from different sites to consolidate into one factor and which wording to use to refer to the consolidated factor (e.g., “team members share a commitment to their patients,” “team members collaborate well,” and “team members know each other’s styles and what to expect” were consolidated into the Collaborativeness and teamwork factor under the Recipients domain). It took approximately four 60-min meetings of the six project team members to review and refine the summaries and factors for the nine sites, with each site’s i-PARIHS code summary and factors taking approximately 20–35 min to discuss and reach consensus on. We referred to lists of explicit definitions of i-PARIHS constructs that our team members had previously developed and published [ 16 , 24 ]. We once again aligned to established qualitative analysis methods for consensus-reaching discussions [ 18 , 21 ], drawing on Bens’ meeting facilitation techniques [ 23 ] to adequately account for everyone’s interpretations of the data [ 22 ].

We organized the examined data (i.e., the assessed sustainability and identified factors per site) into a sortable matrix (step 7) using Microsoft Excel [ 25 ], laid out by influencing factor (row), sustainability (column), and site (sheet). We conducted within-site analysis of the matrixed data (step 8), examining the data on each influencing factor and designating whether the factor (i) was present, somewhat present, or minimally present [based on aggregate reports from the site’s participants; used “minimally present” when, considering all available data from a site regarding a factor, the factor was predominantly weak (e.g., predominantly weak Ability to continue patient care during COVID at a medium sustainability site); used “somewhat present” when, considering all available data from a site regarding a factor, the factor was neither predominantly strong nor predominantly weak (e.g., neither predominantly strong nor predominantly weak Collaborativeness and teamwork at a low sustainability site)], and (ii) had an enabling, hindering, or neutral/unclear influence on sustainability (designated as “neutral” when, considering all available data from a site regarding a factor, the factor had neither a predominantly enabling nor a predominantly hindering influence on sustainability). These designations of factors’ presence and influence are conceptually representative of what is commonly referred to as magnitude and valence, respectively, by other efforts that construct scoring for qualitative data (e.g., [ 26 , 27 ]). Like the team-based consensus approach of earlier MMCS steps, factors’ presence and type of influence per site were initially proposed by one project team member after reviewing the matrix’s site-specific data, then refined with input from all project team members during recurring team meetings that reviewed the matrix. Accordingly, similar to the earlier MMCS steps, we aligned to established qualitative methods [ 18 , 21 ] and meeting facilitation techniques [ 23 ] for these consensus-reaching discussions.

We then conducted a cross-site analysis of the matrixed data (step 9), assessing whether factors and their combinations were (i) present across multiple sites, (ii) consistently associated with higher or lower sustainability, and (iii) emphasized at some sites more than others. We noted that any factor may have not come up during interviews with a site because either it is not pertinent or it is pertinent but still did not come up, although we asked an open-ended question at the end of each interview about whether there was anything else that the participant wanted to share regarding sustainability. To adequately account for these possibilities, we decided as a team to regard a factor or a combination of factors as being associated with high/medium/low sustainability if it was identified at a majority (i.e., even if not all) of the sites designated as high/medium/low sustainability (e.g., if the Collaborativeness and teamwork factor is identified at a majority, even if not all, of the high sustainability sites, we would find it to be associated with high sustainability). Like the team-based consensus approach of earlier MMCS steps, cross-site patterns were initially proposed by one project team member after reviewing the matrix’s cross-site data, then refined with input from all project team members during recurring team meetings that reviewed the matrix. Accordingly, similar to the earlier MMCS steps, we aligned to established qualitative methods [ 18 , 21 ] and meeting facilitation techniques [ 23 ] for these consensus-reaching discussions. We acknowledged the potential existence of additional factors influencing sustainability that may not have emerged during our interviews and also may vary substantially between sites. For example, adaptation of the CCM, characteristics of the patient population, and availability of continued funding, which are factors that extant literature reports as being relevant to sustainability [ 28 , 29 ], were not seen in our interview data. To maintain our analytic focus on the factors seen in our data, we did not add these factors to our analysis.

For the nine sites included in this project, we found the degree of CCM sustainability to be split evenly across the sites—three high-, three medium-, and three low-sustainability. Twenty-five total influencing factors were identified under the i-PARIHS domains of Innovation (6), Recipients (6), Context (8), and Facilitation (5). Table  2 shows these identified influencing factors by domain. Figure  1 shows 11 influencing factors that were identified for at least two sites within a group of high/medium/low sustainability sites—e.g., the factor “consistent and strong internal facilitator” is shown as being present at high sustainability sites with an enabling influence on sustainability, because it was identified as such at two or more of the high sustainability sites. Of these 11 influencing factors, four were identified only for sites with high CCM sustainability and two were identified only for sites with medium or low CCM sustainability.

figure 1

Influencing factors that were identified for at least two sites within a group of high/medium/low sustainability sites

Key trends in influencing factors associated with high, medium, and/or low CCM sustainability

Three factors across two i-PARIHS domains exhibited strong trends by sustainability status. They were the Collaborativeness and teamwork and Turnover of clinic staff and leadership factors under the Recipients domain, and the Having a consistent and strong internal facilitator factor under the Facilitation domain.

Recipients-related factors

Collaborativeness and teamwork was present with an enabling influence on CCM sustainability at most high and medium sustainability sites, while it was only somewhat present with a neutral influence on CCM sustainability at most low sustainability sites. When asked what had made their BHIP team work well, a participant from a high sustainability site said,

“Just a collaborative spirit.” (Participant 604)

A participant from a medium sustainability site said,

“We joke that [the BHIP teams] are even family, that the teams really do function pretty tightly and they each have their own personality.” (Participant 201)

At the low sustainability sites, willingness to work as a team varied across team members; a participant from a low sustainability site said,

“… I think it has to be the commitment of the people who are on the team. So those that are regularly attending, we get a lot more out of it than those that probably don't ever come [to team meetings].” (Participant 904)

Collaborativeness and teamwork of BHIP team members were often perceived as the highlight of pursuing interdisciplinary care.

Turnover of clinic staff and leadership was present with a hindering influence on CCM sustainability at most high, medium, and low sustainability sites.

“We’ve lost a lot of really, really good providers here in the time I’ve been here …,” (Participant 102)

said a participant from a low-sustainability site that had to reconfigure its BHIP teams due to clinic staff shortages. Turnover of mental health clinic leadership made it difficult to maintain CCM practices, especially beyond the teams that participated in the original CCM implementation trial. A participant from a medium sustainability site said,

“Probably about 90 percent of the things that we came up with have fallen by the wayside. Within our team, many of those remain but again, that hand off towards the other teams that I think partly is due to the turnover rate with program managers, supervisors, didn’t get fully implemented.” (Participant 703)

Although turnover was an issue for high sustainability sites as well, there was also indication of the situation improving in recent years; a participant from a high sustainability site said,

“… our attrition rollover rate has dropped quite a bit and I would really attribute that to [the CCM being] more functional and more sustainable and tolerable for the providers.” (Participant 502)

As such, staff and leadership turnover was deemed a major challenge for CCM sustainability for all sites regardless of the overall level of sustainability.

Facilitation-related factor

Having a consistent and strong internal facilitator was present with an enabling influence on CCM sustainability at high sustainability sites, not identified as an influencing factor at most of the medium sustainability sites, and variably present with a hindering, neutral, or unclear influence on CCM sustainability at low sustainability sites. Participants from a high sustainability site perceived that it was important for the internal facilitator to understand different BHIP team members’ personalities and know the clinic’s history. A participant from another high sustainability site shared that, as an internal facilitator themselves, they focused on recognizing and reinforcing the progress of team members:

“… I'm often the person who kind of [starts] off with, ‘Hey, look at what we've done in this location,’ ‘Hey look at what the team's done this month.’” (Participant 402)

A participant from a low sustainability site had also served as an internal facilitator and recounted the difficulty and importance of readying the BHIP team to function in the long run without their assistance:

“I should have been able to get out sooner, I think, to get it to have them running this themselves. And that was just a really difficult process.” (Participant 301)

Participants, especially from the high and low sustainability sites, attributed their BHIP teams’ successes and challenges to the skills of the internal facilitator.

Influencing factors identified only for sites with high CCM sustainability

Four factors across four i-PARIHS domains were identified for high sustainability sites and not for medium or low sustainability sites. They were the factors Details about the CCM being well understood (Innovation domain), Interdisciplinary coordination (Recipients domain), Having adequate clinic space for CCM team members (Context domain), and Having a knowledgeable and helpful external facilitator (Facilitation domain).

Innovation-related factor

Details about the CCM being well understood was minimal to somewhat present with an unclear influence on CCM sustainability.

“We’ve … been trying to help our providers see the benefit of team-based care and the episodes-of-care idea, and I would say that is something our folks really have continued to struggle with as well,” (Participant 401)

said a participant from a high sustainability site. “What is considered CCM-based care?” continued to be a question on providers’ minds. A participant from a high sustainability site asked during the interview,

“Is there kind of a clearing house of some of the best practices for [CCM] that you guys have … or some other collection of resources that we could draw from?” (Participant 601)

Although such references are indeed accessible online organization-wide, participants were not always aware of those resources or what exactly CCM entails.

Recipients-related factor

Interdisciplinary coordination was somewhat present with a hindering, neutral, or unclear influence on CCM sustainability. Coordination between psychotherapy and psychiatry providers was deemed difficult by participants from high-sustainability sites. A participant said,

“We were initially kind of top heavy on the psychiatry so just making sure we have … therapy staff balancing that out [has been important].” (Participant 501)

Another participant perceived that BHIP teams were helpful in managing.

… ‘sibling rivalry’ between different disciplines … because [CCM] puts us all in one team and we communicate.” (Participant 505)

Interdisciplinary coordination was understood by the participants as being necessary for effective CCM-based care yet difficult to achieve.

Context-related factor

Having adequate clinic space for CCM team members was minimal to somewhat present with a hindering, neutral, or unclear influence on CCM sustainability. COVID-19 led to changes in how clinic space was used/assigned. A participant from a high sustainability site remarked,

“Pre-COVID everything was in a room instead of online. And now all our meetings are online and so it's actually really easy for the supervisors to be able to rotate through them and then, you know, they can answer programmatic questions ….” (Participant 402)

Participants from another high sustainability site found that issues regarding limited clinic space were both exacerbated and alleviated by COVID, with the mental health service losing space to vaccine clinics but more mental health clinicians teleworking and in less need of clinic space. Virtual connections were seen to alleviate some physical workspace-related concerns.

Having a knowledgeable and helpful external facilitator was variably present; when present, it had an enabling influence on CCM sustainability. Participants from a high sustainability site noted how many of the external facilitator’s efforts to change the BHIP team’s work processes very much remained over time. An example of a change was to have team meetings be structured to meet evolving patient needs. Team members came to meetings with the shared knowledge and expectation that,

“… we need to touch on folks who are coming out of the hospital, we need to touch on folks with higher acuity needs.” (Participant 402)

Implementation support that sites received from their external facilitator mostly occurred during the time period of the original CCM implementation trial; correspondence with the external facilitator after that trial time period was not common for sites. Participants still largely found the external facilitator to provide helpful guidance and advice on delivering CCM-based care.

Influencing factors identified only for sites with medium or low CCM sustainability

Two factors were identified for medium or low sustainability sites and not for high sustainability sites. They were the factors Ability to continue patient care during COVID and Adequate resources/capacity for care delivery . These factors were both under i-PARIHS’ Context domain, unlike the influencing factors above that were identified only for high sustainability sites, which spanned all four i-PARIHS domains.

Context-related factors

Ability to continue patient care during COVID had a hindering influence on CCM sustainability when minimally present. Participants felt that their CCM work was challenged when delivering care through telehealth was made difficult—e.g., at a medium sustainability site, site policies during the pandemic required a higher number of in-person services than the BHIP team providers expected or desired to deliver. On the other hand, this factor had an enabling influence on CCM sustainability when present. A participant at a low sustainability site mentioned the effect of telehealth on being able to follow up more easily with patients who did not show up for their appointments:

“… my no-show rate has dropped dramatically because if people don’t log on after a couple minutes, I call them. They're like ‘oh, I forgot, let me pop right on,’ whereas, you know, in the face-to-face space, you know, you wait 15 minutes, you call them, it’s too late for them to come in so then they're no shows.” (Participant 102)

The advantages of virtual care delivery, as well as the challenges of getting approvals to pursue it to varying extents, were well recognized by the participants.

Adequate resources/capacity for care delivery was minimally present at medium sustainability sites with a hindering influence on CCM sustainability. At a medium sustainability site, although leadership was supportive of CCM, resources were being used to keep clinics operational (especially during COVID) rather than investing in building new CCM-based care delivery processes.

“I think that if my boss came to me, [and asked] what could I do for [the clinics] … I would say even more staff,” (Participant 202)

said a participant from a medium sustainability site. At the same time, the participant, as many others we interviewed, understood and emphasized the need for BHIP teams to proceed with care delivery even when resources were limited:

“… when you’re already dealing with a very busy clinic, short staff and then you’re hit with a pandemic you handle it the best that you can.” (Participant 202)

Participants felt the need for basic resource requirements to be met in order for CCM-based care to be feasible.

In this project, we examined factors influencing the sustainability of CCM-aligned care practices at general mental health clinics within nine VA medical centers that previously participated in a CCM implementation trial. Guided by the core CCM elements and i-PARIHS domains, we conducted and analyzed CCM provider interviews. Using MMCS, we found CCM sustainability to be split evenly across the nine sites (three high, three medium, and three low), and that sustainability may be related most strongly to provider collaboration, knowledge retention during staff/leadership transitions, and availability of skilled internal facilitators.

In comparison to most high sustainability sites, participants from most medium or low sustainability sites did not mention a knowledgeable and helpful external facilitator who enabled sustainability. Participants at the high sustainability sites also emphasized the need for clarity about what CCM-based care comprises, interdisciplinary coordination in delivering CCM-aligned care, and adequate clinic space for BHIP team members to connect and collaborate. In contrast, in comparison to participants at most high sustainability sites, participants at most medium or low sustainability sites emphasized the need for better continuity of patient-facing activities during the COVID-19 pandemic and more resources/capacity for care delivery. A notable difference between these two groups of influencing factors is that the ones emphasized at most high sustainability sites are more CCM-specific (e.g., external facilitator with CCM expertise, knowledge, and structures to support delivery of CCM-aligned care), while the ones emphasized at most medium or low sustainability sites are factors that certainly relate to CCM sustainability but are focused on care delivery operations beyond CCM-aligned care (e.g., COVID’s widespread impacts, limited staff availability). In short, an emphasis on immediate, short-term clinical needs in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and staffing challenges appeared to sap sites’ enthusiasm for sustaining more collaborative, CCM-consistent care processes.

Our previous qualitative analysis of these interview data suggested that in order to achieve sustainability, it is important to establish appropriate infrastructure, organizational readiness, and mental health service- or department-wide coordination for CCM implementation [ 10 ]. The findings from the current project augment these previous findings by highlighting the specific factors associated with higher and lower CCM sustainability across the project sites. This additional knowledge provides two important insights into what CCM implementation efforts should prioritize with regard to the previously recommended appropriate infrastructure, readiness, and coordination. First, for knowledge retention and coordination during personnel changes (including any changes in internal facilitators through and following implementation), care processes and their specific procedures should be established and documented in order to bring new personnel up to speed on those care processes. Management sciences, as applied to health care and other fields, suggest that such organizational knowledge retention can be maximized when there are (i) structures set up to formally recognize/praise staff when they share key knowledge, (ii) succession plans to be applied in the event of staff turnover, (iii) opportunities for mentoring and shadowing, and (iv) after action reviews of conducted care processes, which allow staff to learn about and shape the processes themselves [ 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 ]. Future CCM implementation efforts may thus benefit from enacting these suggestions alongside establishing and documenting CCM-based care processes and associated procedures.

Second, efforts to implement CCM-aligned practices into routine care should account for the extent to which sites’ more fundamental operational needs are met or being addressed. That information can be used to appropriately scope the plan, expectations, and timeline for implementation. For instance, ongoing critical staffing shortages or high turnover [ 34 ] at a site are unlikely to be resolved through a few months of CCM implementation. In fact, in that situation, it is possible that CCM implementation efforts could lead to reduced team effectiveness in the short term, given the effort required to establish more collaborative and coordinated care processes [ 35 ]. Should CCM implementation move forward at a given site, implementation goals ought to be set on making progress in realms that are within the implementation effort’s control (e.g., designing CCM-aligned practices that take staffing challenges into consideration) [ 36 , 37 ] rather than on factors outside of the effort’s control (e.g., staffing shortages). As healthcare systems determine how to deploy support (e.g., facilitators) to sites for CCM implementation, they would benefit from considering whether it is primarily CCM expertise that the site needs at the moment, or more foundational organizational resources (e.g., mental health staffing, clinical space, leadership enhancement) [ 38 ] to first reach an operational state that can most benefit from CCM implementation efforts at a later point in time. There is growing consensus across the field that the readiness of a healthcare organization to innovate is a prerequisite to successful innovation (e.g., CCM implementation) regardless of the specific innovation [ 39 , 40 ]. Several promising strategies specifically target these organizational considerations for implementing evidence-based practices (e.g., [ 41 , 42 ]). Further, recent works have begun to more clearly delineate leadership-related, climate-related, and other contextual factors that contribute to organizations’ innovation readiness [ 43 ], which can inform healthcare systems’ future decisions regarding preparatory work leading to, and timing of, CCM implementation at their sites.

These considerations informed by MMCS may have useful implications for implementation strategy selection and tailoring for future CCM implementation efforts, especially in delineating the target level (e.g., system, organizational, clinic, individual) and timeline of implementation strategies to be deployed. For instance, of the three factors found to most notably trend with CCM sustainability, Collaborativeness and teamwork may be strengthened through shorter-term team-building interventions at the organizational and/or clinic levels [ 38 ], Turnover of clinic staff and leadership may be mitigated by aiming for longer-term culture/climate change at the system and/or organizational levels [ 44 , 45 , 46 ], and Having a consistent and strong internal facilitator may be ensured more immediately by selecting an individual with fitting expertise/characteristics to serve in the role [ 15 ] and imparting innovation/facilitation knowledge to them [ 47 ]. Which of these factors to focus on, and through what specific strategies, can be decided in partnership with an implementation site—for instance, candidate strategies can be identified based on ones that literature points to for addressing these factors [ 48 ], systematic selection of the strategies to move forward can happen with close input from site personnel [ 49 ], and explicit further specification of those strategies [ 50 ] can also happen in collaboration with site personnel to amply account for site-specific contexts [ 51 ].

As is common for implementation projects, the findings of this project are highly context-dependent. It involves the implementation of a specific evidence-based practice (the CCM) using a specific implementation strategy (implementation facilitation) at specific sites (BHIP teams within general mental health clinics at nine VA medical centers). For such context-dependent findings to be transferable [ 52 , 53 ] to meaningfully inform future implementation efforts, sources of variation in the findings and how the findings were reached must be documented and traceable. This means being explicit about each step and decision that led up to cross-site analysis, as MMCS encourages, so that future implementation efforts can accurately view and consider why and how findings might be transferable to their own work. For instance, beyond the finding that Turnover of clinic staff and leadership was a factor present at most of the examined sites, MMCS’ traceable documentation of qualitative data associated with this factor at high sustainability sites also allowed highlighting the perception that CCM implementation is contributing to mitigating turnover of providers in the clinic over time, which may be a crucial piece of information that fuels future CCM implementation efforts.

Furthermore, to compare findings and interpretations across projects, consistent procedures for setting up and conducting these multi-site investigations are indispensable [ 54 , 55 , 56 ]. Although many projects involve multiple sites and assess variations across the sites, it is less common to have clearly delineated protocols for conducting such assessments. MMCS is meant to target this very gap, by offering a formalized sequence of steps that prompt specification of analytical procedures and decisions that are often interpretive and left less specified. MMCS uses a concrete data structure (the matrix) to traceably organize information and knowledge gained from a project, and the matrix can accommodate various data sources and conceptual groundings (e.g., guiding theories, models, and frameworks) that may differ from project to project – for instance, although our application of MMCS aligned to i-PARIHS, other projects applying MMCS [ 2 , 5 ] use different conceptual guides (e.g., Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research [ 57 ], Theoretical Domains Framework [ 58 ]). Therefore, as more projects align to the MMCS steps [ 1 ] to identify factors related to implementation and sustainability, better comparisons, consolidations, and transfers of knowledge between projects may become possible.

This project has several limitations. First, the high, medium, and low sustainability assigned to the sites were based on the sites’ CCM sustainability relative to one another, rather than based on an external metric of sustainability. As measures of sustainability such as the Program Sustainability Assessment Tool [ 59 , 60 ] and the Sustainment Measurement System Scale [ 61 ] become increasingly developed and tested, future projects may consider the feasibility of incorporating such measures to assess each site’s sustainability. In our case, we worked on addressing this limitation by using a consensus approach within our project team to assign sustainability levels to sites, as well as by confirming that the sites that we designated as high sustainability exhibited CCM elements that we had previously observed at the end of their participation in the original CCM implementation trial [ 19 ]. Second, we did not assign strict thresholds above/below which the counts or proportions of data regarding a factor would automatically indicate whether the factor (i) was present, somewhat present, or minimally present and (ii) had an enabling, hindering, or neutral/unclear influence on sustainability. This follows widely accepted qualitative analytical guidance that discourages characterizing findings solely based on the frequency with which a notion is mentioned by participants [ 62 , 63 , 64 ], in order to prevent unsubstantiated inferences or conclusions. We sought to address this limitation in two ways: We carefully documented the project team’s rationale for each consensus reached, and we reviewed all consensuses reached in their entirety to ensure that any two factors with the same designation (e.g., “minimally present”) do not have associated rationale that conflict across those factors. These endeavors we undertook closely adhere to established case study research methods [ 65 ], which MMCS builds on, that emphasize strengthening the validity and reliability of findings through documenting a detailed analytic protocol, as well as reviewing data to ensure that patterns match across analytic units (e.g., factors, interviewees, sites). Third, our findings are based on three sites each for high/medium/low sustainability, and although we identified single factors associated with sustainability, we found no specific combinations of factors’ presence and influence that were repeatedly existent at a majority of the sites designated as high/medium/low sustainability. Examining additional sites on the factors identified through this work (as we will for our subsequent CCM implementation trial described below) will allow more opportunities for repeated combinations and other factors to emerge, making possible firmer conclusions regarding the extent to which the currently identified factors and absence of identified combinations are applicable beyond the sites included in this study. Fourth, the identified influencing factor “leadership support for CCM” (under the Context domain of the i-PARIHS framework) substantially overlaps in concept with the core “organizational/leadership support” element of the CCM. To avoid circular reasoning, we used leadership support-related data to inform our assignment of sites’ high, medium, or low CCM sustainability, rather than as a reason for the sites’ CCM sustainability. In reality, strong leadership support may both result from and contribute to implementation and sustainability [ 16 , 66 ], and thus causal relationships between the i-PARIHS-aligned influencing factors and the CCM elements (possibly with feedback loops) warrant further examination to most appropriately use leadership support-related data in future analyses of CCM sustainability. Fifth, findings may be subject to both social desirability bias in participants providing more positive than negative evidence of sustainability (especially participants who are responsible for implementing and sustaining CCM-aligned care at their site) and the project team members’ bias in interpreting the findings to align to their expectations of further effort being necessary to sustainably implement the CCM. To help mitigate this challenge, the project interviewers strove to elicit from participants both positive and negative perceptions and experiences related to CCM-based care delivery, both of which were present in the examined interview data.

Future work stemming from this project is twofold. Regarding CCM implementation, we will conduct a subsequent CCM implementation trial involving eight new sites to prospectively examine how implementation facilitation with an enhanced focus on these findings affects CCM sustainability. We started planning for sustainability prior to implementation, looking to this work for indicators of specific modifications needed to the previous way in which we used implementation facilitation to promote the uptake of CCM-based care [ 67 ]. Findings from this work suggest that sustainability may be related most strongly to (i) provider collaboration, (ii) knowledge retention during staff/leadership transitions, and (iii) availability of skilled internal facilitators. Hence, we will accordingly prioritize developing procedures for (i) regular CCM-related information exchange amongst BHIP team members, as well as between the BHIP team and clinic leadership, (ii) both translating knowledge to and keeping knowledge documented at the site, and (iii) supporting the sites’ own personnel to take the lead in driving CCM implementation.

Regarding MMCS, we will continuously refine and improve the method by learning from other projects applying, testing, and critiquing MMCS. Outside of our CCM-related projects, examinations of implementation data using MMCS are actively underway for various implementation efforts including that of a data dashboard for decision support on transitioning psychiatrically stable patients from specialty mental health to primary care [ 2 ], a peer-led healthy lifestyle intervention for individuals with serious mental illness [ 3 ], screening programs for intimate partner violence [ 4 ], and a policy- and organization-based health system strengthening intervention to improve health systems in sub-Saharan Africa [ 5 ]. As MMCS is used by more projects that differ from one another in their specific outcome of interest, and especially in light of our MMCS application that examines factors related to sustainability, we are curious whether certain proximal to distal outcomes are more subject to heterogeneity in influencing factors than other outcomes. For instance, sustainability outcomes, which are tracked following a longer passage of time than some other outcomes, may be subject to more contextual variations that occur over time and thus could particularly benefit from being examined using MMCS. We will also explore MMCS’ complementarity with coincidence analysis and other configurational analytical approaches [ 68 ] for examining implementation phenomena. We are excited about both the step-by-step traceability that MMCS can bring to such methods and those methods’ computational algorithms that can be beneficial to incorporate into MMCS for projects with larger numbers of sites. For example, Salvati and colleagues [ 69 ] described both the inspiration that MMCS provided in structuring their data as well as how they addressed MMCS’ visualization shortcomings through their innovative data matrix heat mapping, which led to their selection of specific factors to include in their subsequent coincidence analysis. Coincidence analysis is an enhancement to qualitative comparative analysis and other configurational analytical methods, in that it is formulated specifically for causal inference [ 70 ]. Thus, in considering improved reformulations of MMCS’ steps to better characterize examined factors as explicit causes to the outcomes of interest, we are inspired by and can draw on coincidence analysis’ approach to building and evaluating causal chains that link factors to outcomes. Relatedly, we have begun to actively consider the potential contribution that MMCS can make to hypothesis generation and theory development for implementation science. As efforts to understand the mechanisms through which implementation strategies work are gaining momentum [ 71 , 72 , 73 ], there is an increased need for methods that help decompose our understanding of factors that influence the mechanistic pathways from strategies to outcomes [ 74 ]. Implementation science is facing the need to develop theories, beyond frameworks, which delineate hypotheses for observed implementation phenomena that can be subsequently tested [ 75 ]. The methodical approach that MMCS offers can aid this important endeavor, by enabling data curation and examination of pertinent factors in a consistent way that allows meaningful synthesis of findings across sites and studies. We see these future directions as concrete steps toward elucidating the factors related to sustainable implementation of EBPs, especially leveraging data from projects where the number of sites is much smaller than the number of factors that may matter—which is indeed the case for most implementation projects.

Using MMCS, we found that provider collaboration, knowledge retention during staff/leadership transitions, and availability of skilled internal facilitators may be most strongly related to CCM sustainability in VA outpatient mental health clinics. Informed by these findings, we have a subsequent CCM implementation trial underway to prospectively test whether increasing the aforementioned factors within implementation facilitation enhances sustainability. The MMCS steps used here for systematic multi-site examination can also be applied to determining sustainability-related factors relevant to various other EBPs and implementation contexts.

Availability of data and materials

The data analyzed during the current project are not publicly available because participant privacy could be compromised.

Abbreviations

Behavioral Health Interdisciplinary Program

Collaborative Chronic Care Model

Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research

coronavirus disease

evidence-based practice

Institutional Review Board

Integrated Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services

Matrixed Multiple Case Study

United States Department of Veterans Affairs

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Acknowledgements

The authors sincerely thank the project participants for their time, as well as the project team members for their guidance and support. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Department of Veterans Affairs or the United States government.

This project was funded by VA grant QUE 20–026 and was designed and conducted in partnership with the VA Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention.

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Concept and design: BK, JS, and CM. Acquisition, analysis, and/or interpretation of data: BK, JS, MB, SC, ES, and CM. Initial drafting of the manuscript: BK. Critical revisions of the manuscript for important intellectual content: JS, MB, SC, ES, HB, LS, KW, and CM. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Additional file 1..

COREQ (COnsolidated criteria for REporting Qualitative research) Checklist.

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Data input, tasks performed, and analysis output for MMCS Steps 5 through 9.

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Kim, B., Sullivan, J.L., Brown, M.E. et al. Sustaining the collaborative chronic care model in outpatient mental health: a matrixed multiple case study. Implementation Sci 19 , 16 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13012-024-01342-2

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College of Law

The Boyd Law Building on a sunny day with a yellow heart graphic overlayed on top for valentine's day.

Finding Love in Law: Alums share their stories and best advice

In addition to educating the next generation of lawyers, Iowa Law has played cupid from time to time, helping students find love amidst the rigors of law school. 

Students come to Iowa Law with the expectation of earning a top-notch law degrees but don't always expect to find their perfect match or best friend. Through classroom interactions as 1Ls to attending the same study groups or working on a grueling case in the Legal Clinic, lasting relationships are formed. 

We convinced a few Iowa Law couples to share their love story and advice for others. 

Kameron Reed and Will Dix

Kameron Reed and Will Dix, both third-year law students, crossed paths during their first semester of law school, sharing classes and attending the same study group. Becoming quick friends, the two began dating by the end of their first semester. Neither Will nor Kameron were looking for Love when they came to Iowa, but their chemistry was hard to deny.

3L's Kameron and Will cheering on the hawks on a warm day.

“The more time we spent with each other, though, the clearer it was that there was something serious there we couldn't pass by. Fortunately, being involved in similar activities and having the similar life goals made it much more natural to balance the load of law school while still having time for our relationship,” said Kameron. 

During their 1L summer, the couple stayed near each other, both working for firms in Des Moines. During their 2L summer, they applied for and received an offer at the same Milwaukee firm, Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren . After graduation they plan to move back to Milwaukee, with Will joining the firm's corporate department while Kameron will be clerking for Iowa Alum, Federal Magistrate Judge Duffin before returning to the firm.

The couple recently got engaged in December while decorating their Christmas tree. “We have been so blessed in the ways our paths aligned—bringing us both to Iowa Law at the same time and allowing our career goals to align so nicely. We knew we were serious about each other for quite a while, but early this fall Will picked out a ring.” 

Although Will and Kameron came to Iowa Law looking to focus on academics, the two found each other. Kameron shares some advice saying, “It's hard to think of advice for specifically "looking for Love at Iowa Law" because we weren't looking, and I think the best things are the ones that happen that you could never plan for. Iowa Law is, however, a great place to find like-minded individuals with similar goals.”

Corey Stone and Anahita Sotoohi

Corey Stone and Anahita Sotoohi (18JD) first crossed paths at a bar review event during their first year of law school and quickly

Corey and Anahita at law prom in 2016

 bonded over their shared interest for public interest law. They began dating soon after, but Corey recalls the first time he set eyes on Anahita.

“I remember the first time I saw Anahita. It was our first semester. She was standing on one of the large concrete "railings" outside of Boyd (the one on your left as you enter).” 

During their third year in law school, they got engaged. Since marrying, they have moved from Iowa to Colorado and are now settled in Maine where Anahita works for the ACLU. 

When asked what advice they would give to others looking for love at Iowa Law, the couple responded, “Our advice to finding love is similar to our advice for practicing law, you'll have the most success at your most authentic.”

Meghan and Sean O’Callaghan

Meghan and Sean O’Callaghan (05JD) met during their first week of law school when they were placed in the same small section. They had a lot in common as they were neighbors, played on their small section’s flag football team, and had identical class schedules that allowed them to study together at the library, leading them to develop a relationship. 

“Although Sean preferred studying silently and I liked more collaborative studying, we learned we worked well together. Eventually our study arrangement turned into a friendship which turned into a relationship,” said Meghan. 

Alums Megan and Sean O'Connor pose with their two children outside a ornate wooden door.

Throughout law school, they continued their relationship, working together, writing for the law review, and participating on the same moot court team. Upon graduation, they studied for and passed the Illinois bar exam. 

“After law school, we studied for the Illinois bar exam. I will never know if I would have passed without Sean’s instance on reviewing flashcards every moment of every day leading up to the exam,” said Meghan. 

Post-graduation, they pursued different legal paths but remained connected through their shared passion for law, discussing law daily. “To many, that is too much law; for us, it works. We like being able to talk through arguments or legal theories. And we continue to be a good legal team,” said Meghan. 

Currently the couple reside in the Chicago area with their two children. “The only downside to having a two-lawyer household is that our kids are skilled negotiators and excellent at interpreting rules to suit their needs,” said Meghan. 

Indiatimes

UPSC Aspirants Share 'Realistic Study Tables' Before Prelims 2024

W idely recognised as one of the toughest examinations, UPSC Civil Services Examination not only evaluates knowledge but also demands a profound understanding of diverse subjects. 

Embarking on the journey to crack the UPSC exam is a formidable challenge, as aspirants have to navigate through a rigorous and demanding path. 

Lately, a viral social media post highlighted the challenge by showcasing 'realistic study tables'.

Sharing comfortable study setups 

"Let's share our realistic study tables": the caption from a Reddit post stated. 

The caption added, "Just to feel that we all are working, all are struggling. Not just in upsc but in every aspect in life, no matter how good it seems from outside, everyone have their own share of struggles." 

From cups, water bottles, and body lotions to pads, laptops, and maps of India - the showcased study tables included everything needed for creating a comfortable environment during extended study sessions. 

Leave Reddit & start studying, netizens say 

The Reddit thread's comments lived up to expectations, offering entertainment and insight as is often the case. 

One participant humorously remarked, "Are bhai ye sab mat post karo, mai to chauki pe baith ke padhta hu. Edit:- ye sab AC etc dekh ke gnd jal rahi hai." 

Another adopted a countdown approach, urging fellow participants, "5,4,3,2,1 start studying leave reddit." 

"Aree yrr tm logo ke room dekh ke mujhe meri gareebi yaad aa gyii," quipped one. 

 Y et another delivered a straightforward message, simply stating, "Padh lo behen." 

The UPSC CSE Prelims 2024 exam notification will be released on 14 February 2024, and the Prelims exam is scheduled for 26 May 2024. 

As aspirants gear up for this challenging journey, the shared camaraderie and relatable experiences depicted in the study tables continue to resonate within the UPSC community. Together, they forge a sense of unity and determination as candidates prepare to face the upcoming examination.

For more on news and current affairs from around the world, please visit  Indiatimes News .     

 UPSC Aspirants Share 'Realistic Study Tables' Before Prelims 2024

Read the Latest on Page Six

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Covid vaccines linked to slight increases in heart, brain, blood disorders: study.

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COVID vaccines from companies like Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca have been linked to rare occurrences of heart, brain and blood disorders, according to the largest vaccine study to date.

Researchers from the  Global Vaccine Data Network analyzed 99 million people who received jabs in eight countries and monitored for increases in 13 medical conditions, Bloomberg News reported .

The study, which was published in the journal Vaccine last week, found the vaccines were linked to a slight spike in neurological, blood and heart-related medical conditions.

COVID shot

Rare cases of myocarditis — inflammation of the heart muscle — were found in the first, second and third doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines.

Another heart condition, ​pericarditis, the inflammation of the cardiac muscle, had a 6.9-fold increased risk in those who received a third dose of AstraZeneca’s viral-vector shot, the study found.

Meanwhile, a first and fourth dose of Moderna’s jab had a 1.7-fold and 2.6-fold increased risk, respectively.

An increased risk also was identified of a type of blood clot in the brain from viral-vector shots such as the one developed by the University of Oxford and manufactured by AstraZeneca, Bloomberg said.

There was a 2.5 times greater risk of developing Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare neurological disorder in which the immune system attacks the nerves, among people who received AstraZeneca’s jab, according to the study.

More than 13.5 billion doses have been administered worldwide since the start of the pandemic.

Possible safety signals for ​transverse myelitis, a spinal cord inflammation, were identified after viral-vector vaccines, as was acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, the inflammation and swelling in the brain and spinal cord, after both viral-vector and mRNA vaccines, the researchers found.

The experts at GVDV in New Zealand — a research arm of the World Health Organization — examined 13 medical conditions that they considered “adverse events of special interest” among the subjects, aiming to identify higher-than-expected cases after a vaccine.  

More than 13.5 billion doses have been administered worldwide since the start of the pandemic. A small proportion of those immunized were harmed by the shots, stoking debate about the benefits of the jabs versus the risks.

“The size of the population in this study increased the possibility of identifying rare potential vaccine safety signals,” lead author Kristýna Faksová of the Department of Epidemiology Research, Statens Serum Institut in Denmark, said in a release.

best social case study

“Single sites or regions are unlikely to have a large enough population to detect very rare signals,” she added.

One expert who was not involved in the study maintained that the benefits of the vaccines outweigh the risks.

“The odds of all of these adverse events is still much, much higher when infected with SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), so getting vaccinated is still by far the safer choice,” Jacob Glanville, CEO of biotech company Centivax, told Forbes .

Dr. Marc Siegel, clinical professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center, shared a similar conclusion.

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“The massive study and review of the data reveals some rare association of the mRNA vaccines and myocarditis, especially after the second shot, as well as an association between the Oxford Astra Zeneca adenovirus vector vaccines and Guillain-Barre syndrome,” Siegel, who was not involved in the study, told Fox News Digital . “But these risks are rare and other studies show that the vaccine decreases the risk of myocarditis from COVID itself dramatically,” he said, adding that all vaccines have side effects.

“It always comes down to a risk/benefit analysis of what you are more afraid of — the vaccine’s side effects or the virus itself, which can have long-term side effects in terms of brain fog, fatigue, cough, and also heart issues,” Siegel said. “Denying or exaggerating a vaccine’s side effects is not good science — nor is underestimating the risks of the virus, especially in high-risk groups,” Siegel added.

Pfizer told The Post in a statement that while it “was not involved in this study, we welcome independent research and academic discourse to advance the study of COVID-19. 

“Safety is a top concern for all of us and Pfizer and BioNTech take reports of side effects that are potentially associated with our COVID-19 vaccine very seriously,” it said in the email.

“Since its initial authorization for use in December 2020, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine has been administered to more than 1.5 billion people, has demonstrated a favorable safety profile in all age groups, and has helped protect against severe COVID-19 outcomes, including hospitalization and death,” the company added.

Moderna and AstraZeneca did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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    2. Less is More. Social media is not about quantity but quality. Starbucks follows the "less is more" principle to maintain the quality standards, even in the caption. Spamming followers' feeds with constant posting is a big no-no. Starbucks shares 5-6 posts per week on Instagram and 3-4 weekly posts on Facebook.

  3. 20 Best Social Media Marketing Case Study Examples

    25+ TikTok Social Campaign Results - Chatdesk Social Media Case Study. If you're looking for the best social media case studies for TikTok, then this list by Chatdesk is an excellent resource. It includes more than 25 examples from big brands like Starbucks, Redbull, Spikeball, Crocs, Guess Jeans, and Gym Shark.

  4. How to write a social media case study (with template)

    Social media case studies are often used as part of a sales funnel: the potential client sees themselves in the case study and signs up because they want the same or better results. ... Once you've started developing case studies, find out the best ways to promote them alongside all your other content with our free social media content mix ...

  5. Inspiring Social Media Case Studies from Reputable Brands and Digital

    Spark Social Agency. Spark Social Agency works with a variety of well-known brands from a selection of different industries, one of them being Johnson&Johnson. Spark is a boutique social media marketing agency. This enables Spark to provide J&J with fast turnaround and greater impact than larger agencies they've traditionally worked with.

  6. Case Study Methodology of Qualitative Research: Key Attributes and

    A case study is one of the most commonly used methodologies of social research. This article attempts to look into the various dimensions of a case study research strategy, the different epistemological strands which determine the particular case study type and approach adopted in the field, discusses the factors which can enhance the effectiveness of a case study research, and the debate ...

  7. Writing a Case Study

    A case study is a research method that involves an in-depth analysis of a real-life phenomenon or situation. Learn how to write a case study for your social sciences research assignments with this helpful guide from USC Library. Find out how to define the case, select the data sources, analyze the evidence, and report the results.

  8. 2023 Social Work Case Planning Guide

    2023 Guide on Case Work in Social Work & Social Case Work Examples. This case work and case planning social work guide has been published to equip social workers to empower individuals and promote positive change through social casework. We will explore what is social case work, the models and theories of social case work, social work case ...

  9. How to Create Social Media Case Studies (Template & Example)

    The importance of social media case studies The ingredients for a perfect case study 1. Detailed and full of data 2. A complete, compelling story 3. Compelling visuals Relatable to your target audience Different ways to deliver a social media marketing case study 3 winning social media marketing case study examples 1.

  10. How to Write a Case Study (+10 Examples & Free Template!)

    Most resources tell you that a case study should be 500-1500 words. We also encourage you to have a prominent snapshot section of 100 words or less. The results and benefits section should take the bulk of the word count. Don't use more words than you need. Let your data, images, and customers quotes do the talking.

  11. Social Issue Articles, Research, & Case Studies

    The pressure to do more, to be more, is fueling its own silent epidemic. Lauren Cohen discusses the common misperceptions that get in the way of supporting employees' well-being, drawing on case studies about people who have been deeply affected by mental illness. 01 Jun 2023. HBS Case.

  12. What Is a Case Study?

    Revised on November 20, 2023. A case study is a detailed study of a specific subject, such as a person, group, place, event, organization, or phenomenon. Case studies are commonly used in social, educational, clinical, and business research. A case study research design usually involves qualitative methods, but quantitative methods are ...

  13. Social Enterprise Case Studies

    PSE case studies are available for individual download at no charge. ... In 2000, Charles Best (Yale College '98), a social studies teacher at an alternative public high school in the South Bronx, found himself frustrated because his school did not have access to many of the resources available in other New York City public schools. Best and ...

  14. Case Study: Definition, Examples, Types, and How to Write

    A case study is an in-depth study of one person, group, or event. In a case study, nearly every aspect of the subject's life and history is analyzed to seek patterns and causes of behavior. Case studies can be used in many different fields, including psychology, medicine, education, anthropology, political science, and social work.

  15. PDF The SAGE Handbook of Applied Social Research Methods

    The first case study is about an average American city, but the framework highlights a significant development in American history—the transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy and how it occurred in the average American city (Lynd & Lynd, 1957). The second case study is about the discovery of a social class structure within the

  16. A Case for the Case Study: How and Why They Matter

    As you read case studies across the disciplines, you will find that patterns emerge in the framing and production of cases. The paradigmatic approach in social work and psychology connects a specific clinical theory—e.g., psychodynamic, family systems, cognitive-behavioral—to specific client contexts or outcomes. The humanistic approach offers first-person practitioner accounts of ...

  17. Social commerce case studies to inspire your brand

    Top 3 social commerce case studies. Let's take a look at three unique social commerce case studies we've seen for some killer UGC strategies. 1. Iconic London. The makeup and beauty industry especially is all about reviews and recommendations, especially on social media.

  18. 28 Case Study Examples Every Marketer Should See

    Include a call-to-action at the bottom that takes the reader to a page that most relates to them. 26. " Bringing an Operator to the Game ," by Redapt. This case study example by Redapt is another great demonstration of the power of summarizing your case study's takeaways right at the start of the study.

  19. 5 outstanding social media marketing case studies

    1.Mercedes Benz - Repeated, successful social media marketing campaigns. Mercedes Benz seem to win every time with their social media campaigns. The one that stands out to me was back in 2013 when they created what I still believe to be one of the best Instagram marketing campaigns to date. Mercedes wanted to reach out to the younger audience ...

  20. 20 Best Social Media Case Studies

    In this article, we'll go through the 20 best social media case studies that thrived and aided companies to get global recognition by generating a lot of involvement from their audiences. Wanna talk about it? - Netflix. In 2020, most of the social media advertising will be focused on the coronavirus outbreak that has ground the globe to a halt.

  21. Case Study

    The definitions of case study evolved over a period of time. Case study is defined as "a systematic inquiry into an event or a set of related events which aims to describe and explain the phenomenon of interest" (Bromley, 1990).Stoecker defined a case study as an "intensive research in which interpretations are given based on observable concrete interconnections between actual properties ...

  22. Case Study

    Case studies are widely used in social sciences to examine human behavior, social phenomena, and cultural practices. Case studies can help researchers to develop theories, test hypotheses, and gain insights into complex social issues. ... Practical application: Case study research can inform practice or policy by identifying best practices, ...

  23. Writing a Case Analysis Paper

    Case study is fact-based and describes actual events or situations; ... In the social sciences, the subject of an investigation is most often framed as a problem that must be researched in order to generate new knowledge leading to a solution. ... A case study seeks to identify the best possible solution to a research problem; case analysis can ...

  24. What Makes A Great User-Generated Content Creator Portfolio?

    This is the best form of social proof for your business. Creating a diverse portfolio is good, but having a portfolio with a few, well-done case studies is top notch.

  25. Sustaining the collaborative chronic care model in outpatient mental

    Sustaining evidence-based practices (EBPs) is crucial to ensuring care quality and addressing health disparities. Approaches to identifying factors related to sustainability are critically needed. One such approach is Matrixed Multiple Case Study (MMCS), which identifies factors and their combinations that influence implementation. We applied MMCS to identify factors related to the ...

  26. Finding Love in Law: Alums share their stories and best advice

    Students come to Iowa Law with the expectation of earning a top-notch law degree but don't always expect to find their perfect match or best friend. Through classroom interactions as 1Ls to attending the same study groups or working on a grueling case in the Legal Clinic, lasting relationships are

  27. Best Master Of Social Work Online Programs Of 2024

    You can become a social worker with a Bachelor of Social Work, but many social worker roles require a Master of Social Work (M.S.W.). In most states, you need an M.S.W. to pursue clinical social ...

  28. UPSC Aspirants Share 'Realistic Study Tables' Before Prelims 2024

    Lately, a viral social media post highlighted the challenge by showcasing 'realistic study tables'. Sharing comfortable study setups "Let's share our realistic study tables": the caption from a ...

  29. COVID vaccines linked to slight increases in heart, brain, blood

    COVID vaccines have been linked to rare occurrences of heart, brain and blood disorders, the new study shows. Getty Images. Rare cases of myocarditis — inflammation of the heart muscle — were ...