Methodological Memo? Analytical? Or Just Plain Arguing With Data?

Recently I read Redesigning for Collaboration in Higher Education by Kezar (2009). Kezar used the case study methodology to consider collaboration in higher education and writes "case study methodology was chosen in order to explore exemplary institutions that had developed an organizational context to support collaboration. This methodology is often used when a unique phenomenon can be identified and examples investigated in detail to describe and articulate the issues.)

Kezar's reason for selecting case study made me give more thought to my own study and my reason for selecting the phenomenological approach.  Creswell (2007) writes "a phenomenological study describes the meaning for several individuals of their lived experiences of a concept or a phenomenon" (p. 57). Creswell suggest that a phenomenological study's goal is to describe the very essentiality or soul of an experiences.

So I ask myself:  what's the difference?  Isn't case study the description of several individuals' experience?  

I returned to Creswell for guidance and he didn't let me down. Creswell explains that a case study is actually "detailed, in-depth data collection involving multiple sources of information (e.g., observations, interviews, audiovisual material, and documents and reports), and reports a case description" (p. 73).  This helped me grasp the difference between the two approaches. In my study, I'm using one source of information:  interviews. And it seems that I will attempt to drill down into one thing, the experience of these individuals which is a strengths-based philosophy. My goal is to feel what they felt in short so that the "phenomenon" can be described in the writing.

In Kezar's work she explored collaboration and used the multiple sources for case study but there is a feeling of broadness to learning about collaboration. My study seems to be more specific and less bounded. Kezar used multiple universities who excel at a collaborative style but she could have just focused on one university. I am focusing on the experience of multiple folks and they do not have to have been in a same setting. Creswell's example is that all may have experienced grief. Grief is the shared phenomenon similar to my strengths-based philosophy.

Argument completed-Elizabeth wins!