Gauging the Rigor of Qualitative Case Studies in Comparative Lobbying Research. A Framework and Guideline for Research and Analysis

• Published date: 01 November 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1832
• Date: 01 November 2018

ACADEMIC PAPER

Gauging the Rigor of Qualitative Case Studies in Comparative

Lobbying Research. A Framework and Guideline for Research

and Analysis

Irina Lock

1

|Peter Seele

2

1

University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam School

of Communication Research (ASCoR),

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

2

Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano,

Switzerland

Correspondence

Irina Lock, University of Amsterdam,

Amsterdam School of Communication

Research (ASCoR), Nieuwe Achtergracht 166,

Amsterdam 1018WV, The Netherlands.

Email: i.j.lock@uva.nl

Engaging in comparative lobbying research is a challenging task, because public affairs

is complex and highly context‐dependent. Thus, qualitative case studies have been

researchers' primary choice. However, the case method has been subject to much

debate surrounding its rigor, in terms of reliability, internal validity, and generalizabil-

ity, and particularly its potential for theory building. To propose a framework for

researchers conducting lobbying case studies as well as for reviewers receiving such

work, we apply a positivistic approach on case study rigor from management studies

and expand the framework to tackle the specific challenges of comparative qualitative

lobbying research. Thus, we expand the research framework by a set of variables spe-

cific to public affairs: We add enrichment for internal validity, contextuality, and com-

parability for external validity, interdisciplinarity for construct validity, and hypertext‐

searchable databases for reliability. Thereby, we aim to transfer the lessons learned

from management studies in terms of rigorous qualitative case studies to public affairs

to help build novel and explanatory theory in the field and to provide guidance to

researchers how to design a rigorous case study.

1|INTRODUCTION: THE IMPORTANCE OF

CASE STUDIES FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS

RESEARCH

Research in public affairs covers a diversity of issues and contexts, such

as public sector advocacy in Kenya (Irwin & Waweru, 2017), issues man-

agement in the U.S. forest industry (Panwar & Hansen, 2009), political

marketing in the United Kingdom (Ormrod, Henneberg, Forward, Miller,

& Tymms, 2007), or the corporate fight against regulation at the

European Union level (Lock & Seele, 2017a). Thus, knowledge genera-

tion is influenced by various contexts and research disciplines, and the-

ory is often built from single cases. Generating insights on an aggregate

level, say public affairs in companies, in general, thus remains difficult,

because research must account for political systems, current develop-

ments, and contingent contextual factors that influence each case.

Therefore, past public affairs research has very much relied on

case studies “that illustrate the broad scope of contemporary public

affairs practice”(Moss & Tonge, 2009, p. 166) to understand and

describe the corporate policy cycle (Schuler, 2001). Although such

illustrative cases often provide a convincing narrative for examples

of public affairs (see, e.g., the special issue on case studies in this

journal, 2009, Volume 9, Issue 3 or Moss, 2017) and set the stage

for empirical research in terms of surveys (e.g., Murphy, Hogan, &

Chari, 2011), interviews (e.g., Fairbanks, Plowman, & Rawlins,

2007), content analyses (e.g., Olatunji & Adekunle Akinjogbin,

2011), focus groups (e.g., Heinze, Schneider, & Ferié, 2013), or mixed

approaches (Marland & Giasson, 2013), they are not apt to build the-

ory. Instead, to generate theory, an empirical case study approach is

needed (Yin, 2013) that draws from different empirical data sources

and analyses.

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This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any

medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

© 2018 The Authors. Journal of Public Affairs Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Received: 9 April 2018 Accepted: 28 April 2018

DOI: 10.1002/pa.1832

J Public Affairs. 2018;18:e1832.

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1832

wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1of5