The Case Study Method in Organic Research

This paper argues that the systematic complexity of agriculture requires a methodological pluralism, and that case studies, used hitherto as an ad hoc and exploratory approach, might be developed as a rigorous and appropriate investigational tool in their own right, with particular relevance for the organic sector. It provides a review of the main outlines of the approach and illustrates its application in the context of marketing initiatives and their impact on rural development processes. It concludes that important insights into how and why policies work can be obtained from a comparative case study framework, which cannot be wholly obtained from other approaches

Spline-based self-controlled case series method

The self-controlled case series (SCCS) method is an alternative to study designs such as cohort and case control methods and is used to investigate potential associations between the timing of vaccine or other drug exposures and adverse events. It requires information only on cases, individuals who have experienced the adverse event at least once, and automatically controls all fixed confounding variables that could modify the true association between exposure and adverse event. Time-varying confounders such as age, on the other hand, are not automatically controlled and must be allowed for explicitly. The original SCCS method used step functions to represent risk periods (windows of exposed time) and age effects. Hence, exposure risk periods and/or age groups have to be prespecified a priori, but a poor choice of group boundaries may lead to biased estimates. In this paper, we propose a nonparametric SCCS method in which both age and exposure effects are represented by spline functions at the same time. To avoid a numerical integration of the product of these two spline functions in the likelihood function of the SCCS method, we defined the first, second, and third integrals of I-splines based on the definition of integrals of M-splines. Simulation studies showed that the new method performs well. This new method is applied to data on pediatric vaccines

Extreme Programming Study Method Case Study on Designing of Accounting Term Dictionary

Extreme Programming (XP) is a software development method that is simple and includes one of the agile methods pioneered by Kent Beck, Ron Jeffries, and Ward Cunningham. The main purpose of the Extreme Programming method is to reduce the cost of software changes, in traditional systems development methodologies, system requirements specified in the first phase of the project development and it is not changed. This means that the cost to the needs of the change that occurs in the later stages will be very expensive. The Results of this study are to determine how the weaknesses and strengths of the XP method of making an application accounting terms dictionary on a Smartphone

The Case Study Method and The Methodology of Business History

In this brief paper I place the case study method within the methodology of business history and in a broader perspectiveof researching business and management. I also illustrate the sue of case studies as a pedagogical tool and itsimplications for the teaching of MBAs in Latin America.Keywords: Business history, method, case study, MBA, Latin Americ

Direct contour deformation with arbitrary masses in the loop

We present a method, which constructs a suitable deformation vector in loop momentum space, when the loop integration is done numerically with the help of the subtraction method. The method presented here extends previously discussed techniques from the massless case to the general case of arbitrary masses in the loop.Comment: 18 pages, version to be publishe

Management of multi-method engineering design research: a case study

There is a need for a research management methodology that will utilise research methods on an individual basis and when combined in a multi-method approach. An agreed methodology would enable rapid progress in achieving agreement on the main issues within engineering design research. Researchers at the University of Glasgow have developed a conceptual management methodology, testing it on three engineering design research projects. This paper describes the methodology and presents results indicating its ability to enable rigorous triangulation of research results obtained via different methods and across different research projects forming the basis of an effective management tool

Hybrid method for understanding black-hole mergers: Inspiralling case

We adapt a method of matching post-Newtonian and black-hole-perturbation theories on a timelike surface (which proved useful for understanding head-on black-hole-binary collisions) to treat equal-mass, inspiralling black-hole binaries. We first introduce a radiation-reaction potential into this method, and we show that it leads to a self-consistent set of equations that describe the simultaneous evolution of the waveform and of the timelike matching surface. This allows us to produce a full inspiral-merger-ringdown waveform of the l=2, m=±2 modes of the gravitational waveform of an equal-mass black-hole-binary inspiral. These modes match those of numerical-relativity simulations well in phase, though less well in amplitude for the inspiral. As a second application of this method, we study a merger of black holes with spins antialigned in the orbital plane (the superkick configuration). During the ringdown of the superkick, the phases of the mass- and current-quadrupole radiation become locked together, because they evolve at the same quasinormal-mode frequencies. We argue that this locking begins during the merger, and we show that if the spins of the black holes evolve via geodetic precession in the perturbed black-hole spacetime of our model, then the spins precess at the orbital frequency during the merger. In turn, this gives rise to the correct behavior of the radiation, and produces a kick similar to that observed in numerical simulations