Study or Case Study? 85
To arrive at a narrative, it helps to have an understanding of how your project
might be characterized. A way of thinking about this is to consider projects as being
measured in several dimensions. As examples, let me explore two dimensions on
which projects can be described: observation versus innovation, and study versus
case study. Another useful dimension, which is more or less self-explanatory, is
theoretical versus practical; or, in some disciplines, mathematical versus empirical.
Another is principled versus pragmatic. In some cases, it may not make sense to
even ask where on a particular dimension the research lies—a literary analysis may
be neither theoretical nor practical, for example. But in general your description of
your contribution needs to be informed by what kind of research you are doing, and
this needs to be communicated to the examiner.
Observation or Innovation?
Several of the research topics listed above concern description of phenomena in one
form or another: for example, the correlation between advertising and diet; mascu-
linity in literature; diet in Camanderra; and even the (presumably highly mathemati-
cal) physics-based atomic models of metabolism. These theses can be seen as based
on observation, in that they propose a description of observed phenomena and then
proceed to evaluate whether the description is valid. In these theses, the description
is, or forms part of, the hypothesis.
Other research topics concern construction or invention: a storage plastic, a sal-
monella test, an energy accountancy method, or a health message design. These the-
ses can be seen as based on innovation, in that they involve creation of something
new as well as evaluation of it. The description of the innovation may, in some cas-
es, consume a substantial fraction of the thesis. There also needs to be a discussion
of the properties that the innovation is expected to have (that is, what is it predicted
to do?) and of criteria that it is intended to meet. These components together form a
hypothesis, but one that is very different in form to that in an observational thesis.
Other topics are neither one nor the other, such as the food wastage model. A
model is by its nature descriptive, but may involve innovative mathematical con-
structs. Indeed, it is a simplification to regard any topic as purely observational or
innovative—no topic is truly at these extremes—but it is a handy simplification,
and helps us to understand how different thesis structures arise.
Study or Case Study?
A particular phenomenon can be studied in its own right or to provide information
on a broad range of similar phenomena. For example, we might study the farming,
processing, and distribution of potatoes because we wish to determine how to bet-
ter manage particular aspects of bringing this vegetable to the consumer. In this