Case Studies
A disciplined way to examine real events without allowing anecdote to become unsupported generalization: begin with an experience, build the factual and authoritative record, identify the system question, distinguish fact from claim and inference, and test what the case can responsibly teach.
One experience can reveal a system question. It does not, by itself, establish a system-wide conclusion.
Experience begins the inquiry. The record determines what the case can responsibly establish. A case study should preserve the difference between what a person experienced, what the available record establishes, what remains disputed or unknown, and what—if anything—the case supports concluding about a broader system.
Build the boundary before building the conclusion.
Every case study should make its evidentiary and analytical limits visible enough for another reader to understand what the case does and does not establish.
Case Boundary
Define the event, time period, institutions, decisions, questions, jurisdictions, people, and propositions the study is and is not attempting to examine.
Source Record
Connect each material proposition to the authority, facts and records, standards, practices, decision materials, or other source capable of supporting it.
Competing Accounts
Present material conflicting accounts and explanations, identify the source of each, and preserve questions the available record cannot resolve.
Decision Trace
Show how the consequential result was produced and which information, people, roles, duties, workflows, approvals, reviews, or omissions contributed.
System Relevance
Explain why the case may illuminate a broader workflow or structure while distinguishing individual conduct from an established recurring system practice.
Learning Value
Identify what citizens, institutions, researchers, courts, policymakers, or other participants can learn without asking the case to establish more than the record supports.
From experience to informed conclusion.
The case begins with lived experience, but disciplined examination requires a source trail, governing authority, a defined system question, and explicit separation between what is established and what remains unresolved.
Three different levels of conclusion must remain separate.
One of the most important safeguards in case-study work is refusing to let a finding at one level silently become a conclusion at another.
What does the available record responsibly establish about what happened in this particular event or encounter?
What does the available record establish about how this particular institutional decision was produced, reviewed, explained, or corrected?
What recurring practice, structural feature, incentive, policy, workflow, or pattern—if any—is supported by evidence beyond the individual event?
State the maturity of the case study separately from the status of its propositions.
Case Study Publication Status describes the maturity and use of the study as a publication. It does not convert every proposition within that study into a verified proposition.
The underlying experience has been identified and the record is being assembled.
Major sources exist, but material factual, legal, system, or interpretive questions remain under examination.
The study's central factual and source propositions have been checked against the available record within stated limits.
Multiple cases are examined together to identify similarities, differences, recurring practices, or structural questions.
Material new authority, records, decisions, corrections, or system developments have been incorporated into the published analysis.
The study is retained for historical or educational value but is no longer presented as a current account of a living system without additional verification.
Publication status is not proposition status. A published or verified case study may still contain propositions properly labeled DISPUTED, UNRESOLVED, ALLEGATION, INFERENCE, or PROPOSED.
Protect the case study from overclaiming.
Case Study Discipline
- Distinguish a participant's account from facts that have been independently established where verification is reasonably possible.
- Connect consequential propositions to the source capable of supporting them.
- Present material contrary records, explanations, and competing interpretations.
- Preserve missing records, genuine uncertainty, and unresolved questions.
- State jurisdictional, evidentiary, source, privacy, and temporal limitations when they materially constrain the analysis.
Protection Against Overclaiming
- Do not convert one person's account into an established fact merely because the account is detailed or compelling.
- Do not convert one institutional error into proof of a system-wide practice without evidence of recurrence, policy, workflow, incentive, structure, or pattern.
- Do not omit contrary evidence merely because it weakens the preferred explanation.
- Do not confuse a reasonable inference with the underlying facts from which the inference was drawn.
- Do not imply that Awake Foundation has certified a person or institution as trustworthy, untrustworthy, fair, corrupt, or otherwise conclusively characterized beyond what the record supports.
A person should not become merely an exhibit in a system critique. Case studies should preserve human dignity, relevant privacy, fairness to people whose conduct is being examined, and the distinction between accountability and unnecessary exposure.
Learn what governs. Examine the relevant facts. Distinguish what is known from what remains unresolved. Test the system to reach informed conclusions. Decide where trust is justified, then choose an informed path forward.