Top Tips for Case Studies

Here are our top tips that might help when putting together your case study.

• Focus: your case study should be a good example of participation or supporting person-centred care. How did you involve patients, carers, communities or service users in planning or delivering the service? How did you ensure their needs were met?
• Process: a good case study describes the journey you took: where you started from, what you wanted to change and what prompted this work. It acknowledges the key challenges and identifies how you overcame them.
• Outcomes: what difference did your work make? In what ways did this participation bring about a positive change? How do you know?
• Practical and specific: would the information you have provided enable others to replicate your approach? What advice would you give someone who was considering a similar piece of work?
• Presentation: is your case study concise and does it engage the reader? Have you included enough detail to make it interesting, but not too much? Around 150-200 words for each section is probably sufficient. Quotations from participants help bring a case study to life, and a photo creates visual impact.
• Lifespan: is the information in your case study accurate and reliable? Is it still current, or ongoing? Ideally the events you describe will have occurred within the last 12 months, but it is fine to include older information as long as it is not out-dated.
• Consent: do you have permission to share the information and any photographs you included? Are you willing to be contacted by others who may be inspired by your work?
• Links: have you included additional information that gives more detail if people require it? You can attach files such as reports or newsletters, and also recommend links to other websites.

See also our quick guides to What makes a good case study? and The National Standards for Community Engagement.