Theoretical Constraints in the First Phase of a Multisite Case Study of Health Services

Abstract

This article illuminates the difficulties involved in conducting a multisite case study of different health services. It confines itself to describing the initial phase of such an inquiry. It argues that both the methodological and the content-related complexity of such research places great theoretical constraints on the researcher. Such constraints should not be resolved by simply applying some pregiven theory. It is shown how theoretical constraints arise in the need to formulate some notion of comparability for the different sites under investigation. Because such comparability is conceptualized mainly in a confrontation with the empirical data, the description of the process contains several reformulations of the research problem, taking note of various pitfalls and stumbling blocks. Finally, the general results of the pilot study are reported.