How to determine the topic of your case study

Students are often assigned to create a case study in order to relay information to a class and even some people in business have to develop case studies which illustrate a trend or the value of something. In the academic world, these case studies are generally research oriented and designed to determine the relativity of any trend or topic with a real life application. These case studies are researched and then reported in a format that others can learn from. Choosing a topic for the case study may be the most difficult aspect of creating this project. There are some simple things that a student can do in order to make this choice much easier to handle.

Follow Your Passion

One of the easiest ways to determine the topic for your case study is to choose something that you love doing. In the course of all your studying there are going to be a whole list of specific topics that you found particularly interesting as you learned and studied. These should be the topics that made you want to know more and were interesting. In most cases you simply choose something that you would be interested in knowing more about if there was no assignment. Once this list is built, then you can start to rough out what the case studies would look like. Which would be easy, what would the potential roadblocks be?

Start your Research

Once you have a list of topics then the next step is to start your research. This should include building on your initial topics and determining what the cumulative look of your report is going to be. Now is the time to start to delve into the problem by going to your library or more simply using the internet to develop more about the project. This will provide evidence that will determine what the case study is going to reveal. As you find it easy to gather information on a particular topic that should probably be the focus of your research project.

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

As you go through the initial stages of research it is important to find out what questions have been answered already about your topic. This can guide a scholar toward a specific question that needs to be answered. It will also bring you to relevant information that already exists which could be interesting for a researcher to read. Questions that need to be answered might just jump out at you so that a great topic will display itself quite naturally. When you determine the topic of your case study and see the relevant information to help understand a problem or solve an issue. This should provide the motivation that is needed in order to finish the research and share all of your findings.