Interpret in context: Generalizing from the single case in evaluation

Helen Simons University of Southampton, UK Abstract This article presents an argument for how to generalize from a single case study evaluation of a social programme or policy, focusing on two essential elements of case study – context and particularity. Taking an interpretivist perspective and drawing on artistic and humanistic ways of understanding, it examines both different ways of generalizing from the case that retain a connection with the context in which they first arose and how we generalize by direct encounter with the particular. This argument is not new. It has its origins in earlier centuries and, in contemporary evaluation, dating back to the 1970s. However, in a political climate that privileges evaluation approaches stemming from large sample studies and experimental designs, it seems timely to restate the value of generalizing from the single case. Grounded in the reality of programme experience and retaining that connection with context and particulars in the case facilitates the use of evaluation knowledge. Simons, H. (2015). Interpret in context: Generalizing from the single case in evaluation. Evaluation, 21(2), 173–188. https://doi.org/10.1177/1356389015577512

Panopticon - it's as creepy as it sounds

The Architecture of Surveillance: The Panopticon Prison Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon. via Wikimedia Commons

The panopticon is an architectural design for a prison, used by Foucault (1977), a French social historian, to explore how discipline was utilised by the state in mid-nineteenth-century France (Hope, 2013; Flyvberg, 2006). Foucault (1977) drew upon the design, originally published by Jeremy Bentham in 1791, as a powerful model for social analysis, suggesting that constant surveillance could encourage individuals to monitor and adjust their own behavior. Foucault discusses surveillance as only one aspect of panopticism, as part of a much wider discourse of “disciplinary technology”, regimes of control, labelling of individuals, and keeping of records.

The Wolfman - Sigmund Freud

Freud (1856-1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, who, in 1918, wrote an in-depth, longitudinal case study about a patient – Sergei Pankejeff, aka, The Wolfman (From the History of an Infantile Neurosis). Freud had developed a theory that the unconscious is the largest part of our minds and therefore has the greatest influence on our development. This particular case study informed more specifically the development of his theory of psychosexual development. He used case studies, gathering data from psychoanalytic sessions with patients to try to uncover unconscious wishes, thoughts, desires, and fears. Much of Freud’s analysis of The Wolfman centred on a dream that the patient had as a young child, a representation of which Pankejeff sketched.

Sergei Pankejeff, 1965. © Freud Museum London

View The Wolf Man’s Dream by Sergei Pankejeff

As with all Freud’s works, the Wolfman case study and the resultant analysis, has been heavily criticized, even by the subject himself. Nevertheless, Freud’s theory development based on case studies has informed the psychoanalytic community and discourse to this day.

Sergei Pankejeff: Who Was the Wolf Man?