Case study and phenomenology are the two qualitative designs most often named in educational administration theses. A case study examines a bounded unit, such as a school, a district office or a reform programme, in depth and in its real setting. Phenomenology asks what a particular experience is like for the people who live through it: becoming a first-year principal, being inspected, leading a school after an earthquake. Both rely heavily on interviews, which is exactly why they are so often confused. This guide sets out what each design commits you to, and what examiners and reviewers will look for.
When to use it
A qualitative design fits when your question is about how or why something happens, or about what it means to those involved, rather than how much or how strongly variables are related. “To what extent does instructional leadership predict teacher self-efficacy?” is a survey question. “How do principals in a centralised system interpret the instructional leadership role?” is a qualitative one.
Choose a case study when the context is part of the explanation. Yin (2018) recommends it for contemporary events that the researcher cannot control, where the boundary between the phenomenon and its setting is blurred. A study of how one school implemented a new timetable, drawing on interviews, documents, minutes and observation, is a natural case study.
Choose phenomenology when the experience itself is the object of study and you want to describe its essential structure or interpret its meaning. The question should name a lived experience, not a topic. “Principals’ views on parental involvement” is a topic; “the experience of being publicly criticised by parents as a principal” is a phenomenon.
If neither fits neatly, Merriam and Tisdell (2016) describe the basic qualitative study: interviews analysed for recurring patterns, without the philosophical commitments of phenomenology or the bounded-unit logic of a case study. Many theses would be more honest under this label.
Key concepts
| Concept | Case study | Phenomenology |
|---|---|---|
| Unit of analysis | A bounded system (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016): school, programme, policy episode | A lived experience shared by participants |
| Main variants | Yin: single or multiple, holistic or embedded; Stake: intrinsic, instrumental, collective | Descriptive (Husserlian) or interpretive/hermeneutic (van Manen; IPA) |
| Typical data | Interviews, documents, observation, archival records | In-depth, mostly unstructured interviews; sometimes written accounts |
| Sample logic | Selection of cases, then participants within cases | Small, fairly homogeneous group who have lived the experience |
| Analytic output | Within-case and cross-case explanation | Essential structure or interpretive account of the experience |
Step by step
Define the case or the phenomenon
For a case study, state the boundaries: which school, which period, which people and documents fall inside the case. Yin (2018) crosses two decisions. A single-case design needs a rationale, and Yin names five: the case is critical, unusual, common, revelatory or longitudinal. A multiple-case design follows replication logic, with cases chosen either to predict similar results or contrasting results for reasons you can anticipate. Separately, a holistic design treats the case as one unit, while an embedded design studies sub-units, for example departments within a school. Stake (1995) frames the choice by purpose: an intrinsic case is studied for its own sake, an instrumental case to understand a wider issue, and a collective case study combines several instrumental cases.
For phenomenology, decide which tradition you follow. Descriptive phenomenology, rooted in Husserl, aims to set aside (bracket) the researcher’s assumptions and describe the invariant structure of an experience. Interpretive or hermeneutic phenomenology, rooted in Heidegger, accepts that the researcher cannot step outside their own understanding. Van Manen’s (1990) human science approach, developed in and for education, belongs here. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA; Smith et al., 2022) is also interpretive, with an idiographic focus: each participant’s account is analysed in detail before patterns across participants are sought, and the researcher is described as making sense of participants making sense of their experience.
Select participants
Qualitative sampling is purposive: you select information-rich cases deliberately. Criterion sampling selects people who meet a defined condition (for instance, principals with at least three years in post at schools that were inspected in the last year). Maximum variation sampling deliberately spreads participants across relevant differences, such as school level, region or gender, so that shared patterns are not artefacts of a narrow group. Phenomenological studies and IPA usually prefer homogeneous samples, because the aim is depth on one experience.
Decide when you have enough data
Data saturation, usually understood as the point where new interviews produce no new codes, is the most common justification for sample size in theses. It is also contested. Some researchers have tried to estimate empirically how many interviews are needed before new codes stop appearing, while others question the concept itself. Braun and Clarke (2021) argue that saturation sits more comfortably with approaches which treat themes as already present in the data, waiting to be found, than with reflexive thematic analysis, where meaning is generated through interpretation. In their view, deciding when to stop is a situated judgement that cannot be fixed fully in advance. Whichever position you take, explain your reasoning rather than simply asserting that “saturation was reached”.
Analyse the data
Thematic analysis is widely used in both designs. Braun and Clarke’s (2006) paper set out six phases, and their later account of reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022) renames them: familiarising yourself with the dataset; coding; generating initial themes; developing and reviewing themes; refining, defining and naming themes; and writing up. The phases are recursive, not a checklist. They also stress that a theme is a pattern of shared meaning organised around a central idea, not a summary of everything participants said about an interview question.
Case studies add within-case description followed, in multiple-case designs, by cross-case comparison. Phenomenological studies follow their tradition’s procedures, for example IPA’s case-by-case analysis or van Manen’s thematic and writing-based reflection.
Build trustworthiness and reflexivity
Lincoln and Guba (1985) proposed four criteria in place of validity and reliability. Credibility is supported by prolonged engagement, triangulation, peer debriefing, negative case analysis and member checking. Transferability depends on thick description so that readers can judge fit with their own settings. Dependability and confirmability are supported by an audit trail that shows how raw data became findings. Reflexivity runs through all of this: keep a reflexive journal and state your position. A former teacher interviewing principals in their own province, or an inspector interviewing inspectors, brings access and blind spots that the reader needs to know about.
Handle ethics
Educational administration samples are small and identifiable. In a single-district study, “a female secondary principal with 20 years’ experience” may point to one person. Obtain ethics committee approval and institutional permissions, mask schools and roles where necessary, store recordings securely, and consider whether quotations could expose participants to their superiors.
What to report
Two checklists are widely used. COREQ (Tong et al., 2007) has 32 items across three domains: the research team and reflexivity, study design, and analysis and findings. SRQR (O’Brien et al., 2014) has 21 items and covers qualitative approaches more broadly. Both originated in health research, but they work well as a self-check for education theses. At minimum, report:
- the named design and tradition, with a justification linked to the research question
- the case boundaries or the phenomenon, and the sampling strategy and criteria
- the interview protocol, its development and any piloting
- who conducted the interviews, their relationship to participants and their positionality
- the analytic approach in enough detail to follow, including whether software was used
- the trustworthiness strategies actually carried out, not a list copied from a textbook
- participant quotations that are attributed with codes and spread across participants
Common mistakes
- Calling any interview study “phenomenology”. If the questions ask for opinions about a topic, the analysis is content-based frequency counting and there is no reference to a phenomenological tradition, the design is not phenomenological.
- Naming a case study without identifying the case. Interviewing 15 teachers from 15 schools is not a case study unless you can say what the bounded unit is.
- Mixing traditions: claiming bracketing (descriptive) and IPA (interpretive) in the same study.
- Reporting themes that are simply the interview questions restated.
- Counting coders’ agreement percentages in reflexive thematic analysis, which treats the researcher’s subjectivity as a resource rather than a source of error.
- Listing every Lincoln and Guba technique without showing evidence that any of them was used.
- Reporting “saturation” with no description of how it was judged.
Examples from Turkish research
In Turkey, the qualitative methods textbook by Yıldırım and Şimşek (2013), reprinted in many editions, has shaped how a generation of graduate students uses the terms olgubilim (phenomenology) and durum çalışması (case study). Published studies in educational administration show both designs in use; see also our pages on instructional leadership and the glossary.
- Öztekin Bayır and Dönmez (2020), in Educational Administration: Theory and Practice, used a phenomenological design with 10 women principals selected through maximum variation sampling, examining how they came into the role and the obstacles they met in a male-dominated field.
- Kılınç et al. (2025), in the Journal of Qualitative Research in Education (Eğitimde Nitel Araştırmalar Dergisi), conducted a single-case study of a primary school in a disadvantaged area, interviewing the principal, two assistant principals and eight teachers about leadership strategies that support teacher well-being.
Key takeaways
- Match the design to the question: a bounded unit in context suggests a case study; a named lived experience suggests phenomenology; neither may mean a basic qualitative study.
- Specify the variant: single or multiple, holistic or embedded case; descriptive or interpretive phenomenology.
- Justify sample size with reasoning, and be aware that saturation is a disputed concept, especially for reflexive thematic analysis.
- Show trustworthiness and reflexivity through evidence, and use COREQ or SRQR to check your reporting.
References
- Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa
- Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2021). To saturate or not to saturate? Questioning data saturation as a useful concept for thematic analysis and sample-size rationales. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 13(2), 201–216. https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676X.2019.1704846
- Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2022). Thematic analysis: A practical guide. SAGE.
- Kılınç, A. Ç., Savaş, G., Atmaca, T., Dolapçı, E., & Çevik, S. (2025). Exploring school principals’ leadership strategies to enhance teacher well-being: A case study of a disadvantaged school in Türkiye. Journal of Qualitative Research in Education, (44). https://doi.org/10.14689/enad.44.0006
- Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. SAGE.
- Merriam, S. B., & Tisdell, E. J. (2016). Qualitative research: A guide to design and implementation (4th ed.). Jossey-Bass.
- O’Brien, B. C., Harris, I. B., Beckman, T. J., Reed, D. A., & Cook, D. A. (2014). Standards for reporting qualitative research: A synthesis of recommendations. Academic Medicine, 89(9), 1245–1251. https://doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0000000000000388
- Öztekin Bayır, Ö., & Dönmez, A. (2020). Being a woman school principal in Turkey. Educational Administration: Theory and Practice, 26(1), 163–202.
- Smith, J. A., Flowers, P., & Larkin, M. (2022). Interpretative phenomenological analysis: Theory, method and research (2nd ed.). SAGE.
- Stake, R. E. (1995). The art of case study research. SAGE.
- Tong, A., Sainsbury, P., & Craig, J. (2007). Consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research (COREQ): A 32-item checklist for interviews and focus groups. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 19(6), 349–357. https://doi.org/10.1093/intqhc/mzm042
- van Manen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. State University of New York Press.
- Yıldırım, A., & Şimşek, H. (2013). Sosyal bilimlerde nitel araştırma yöntemleri (Expanded 9th ed.). Seçkin.
- Yin, R. K. (2018). Case study research and applications: Design and methods (6th ed.). SAGE.
Last reviewed: October 2026