Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 October 2026
How can quantitative methods support case studies in general? One common task in case-study research is presenting audiences with a large collection of texts. Text-as-data methods may facilitate this task by summarizing the overall collection more quickly and understandably than we can usually do ourselves, and by locating individual documents within the collection. We offer an application, showing how text-as-data methods effectively summarize the large collection of legal documents available regarding defendants in cases related to the January 6th invasion and facilitate case-study exploration and understanding of specific individuals. We also discuss how mixed-method approaches may save time and resources as a way of moving across levels of analysis within a case-study design. We wind up the chapter by raising a note of caution regarding common attempts to use statistics as a test of generalizability for case studies and regarding the somewhat less common but still recurrent designs that mix game theory and qualitative research. Both of these approaches can work, and can offer insights, but both are harder than they may initially appear.
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