Researching Care with Case Studies

Researching Care with Case Studies offers a fresh perspective on the universe of care practices, using case studies to illuminate their stretch and complexities.

Building on Robert Stake’s foundational work with qualitative methods and Merel Visse’s integrating insights from care studies, this book offers a comprehensive approach to understanding care across various fields. It bridges the gap between research methodology and professional and personal realities and concerns of care. Readers will benefit from insights derived from care ethics and theory, which highlight relationality, shared responsibility, intersubjectivity, and vulnerability in dynamic interactions within care settings, extending beyond healthcare altogether. This practical approach offers an inclusive and adaptable understanding of care case studies. Here, ’care’ is broadly defined as encompassing all that is done to enhance personal and other well-being, including shared responsibilities, responsiveness to evolving needs, and the ongoing negotiation of optimal solutions.

Step by step, this book guides both novice and experienced researchers in prioritizing issues and concerns, context, specific details, relationships, the richness of lived experiences, and personal narratives when studying and advancing care. It provides insights into the strengths of case studies in learning about care and supports a more nuanced, responsive approach to research in everyday, ordinary practices.

Robert Stake is a widely known educational researcher and Professor Emeritus of Education at the University of Illinois, USA. He has been a prominent figure in the field of program evaluation, having made more than a few contributions to its theory and practice. With Merel, together they work on various studies and services.

Merel Visse is a scholar, artist, editor, and educator who, for three decades, successfully initiated various grant-funded, innovative, cross-disciplinary programs around care and the arts with civic and academic impact. As of now, she holds faculty positions at Drew University’s Caspersen School of Graduate Studies, USA, where she chairs a Health and Medical Humanities Program, and at the University of Humanistic Studies, in The Netherlands.