An appropriate case for a case study?

I was unaware until doing this week’s readings that there is such a controversy around case studies. I’m interested to see what the discussion will be around this issue on Monday in class. The distinction between answering a question and simply telling a story was one that I found compelling, as it seems like it would be a very easy trap to fall into while conducting case studies. Yin offers the idea of compiling your notes as answers to questions rather than as a narrative, to allow easier analysis. I think that this could work in certain situations, but in others the data and responses might not come up in an organized enough fashion to categorize the information as it is collected. In such a case I would imagine that the narrative approach would be a better way to begin and then analyse and separate out the data after. 

After the peer review exercise this week, it is also evident that case studies are not generalizable, and thus can only function to provide insight into one group/case. This severely limits the research situations in which case studies would be an advisable method to choose. I agree with Yin that the use of case studies is not as dire as Miles has made it seem, but I can also recognize his causes for concern. It appears that stronger guidelines for case studies might mitigate some of this confusion and frustration.