ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Case study research

Case study research is like playing with toys but instead of toys, you look at a particular thing in real life like a company or a person. You look at this thing very closely and try to understand everything about it, like how it works, what it does, and why it does things a certain way.

Imagine you have a toy car, and you want to learn how it works. You take it apart, look at all the parts, and think about how they all fit together. With case study research, you do the same thing but with real-life things like companies or people.

You might ask a lot of questions to the people who work with the thing you’re studying. You might also read documents or look at other things to learn about it, like pictures or videos.

After you learn about everything that you can, you then try to explain what you found in simple words so that other people can understand it too. It’s like teaching somebody how to play with your toy car. With case study research, you teach people what you learned about the thing you studied.