Table 1.

Strategies for Assuring Rigor of the Case Study Design

Confirmability—freedom from unrecognized researcher biases

• Meeting with research team members to review data collection and analysis procedures

• Review of data collection and analysis by team members to assess for study biases

• Research team member continuously ensure that rival hypotheses or conclusions are considered

Dependability—the process of the study is consistent across researchers and settings

• Case study protocols were used to ensure comparable procedures by data collectors and analyzers

• Code book used to provide for consistency across data analyzers

• Coding checks to assess level of agreement; disagreements were resolved through discussion

• An audit trail was established

• Investigators assessed connectedness of the study to the guiding conceptual framework.

Credibility—authenticity and plausibility, or truth value of the results

• Analysis triangulation between multiple forms of data to strengthen inferences

• Findings compared with current adaptive leadership literature

Transferability—usefulness beyond the individual participants in the study

• Rich detail of data to facilitate comparison of findings in other contexts

• Explicit criteria for the case selection provides for comparisons with other samples

• Rich descriptions in the data to facilitate judgments about potential transferability