limitation case study

How to Write Limitations of the Study (with examples)

This blog emphasizes the importance of recognizing and effectively writing about limitations in research. It discusses the types of limitations, their significance, and provides guidelines for writing about them, highlighting their role in advancing scholarly research.

Updated on August 24, 2023

a group of researchers writing their limitation of their study

No matter how well thought out, every research endeavor encounters challenges. There is simply no way to predict all possible variances throughout the process.

These uncharted boundaries and abrupt constraints are known as limitations in research . Identifying and acknowledging limitations is crucial for conducting rigorous studies. Limitations provide context and shed light on gaps in the prevailing inquiry and literature.

This article explores the importance of recognizing limitations and discusses how to write them effectively. By interpreting limitations in research and considering prevalent examples, we aim to reframe the perception from shameful mistakes to respectable revelations.

What are limitations in research?

In the clearest terms, research limitations are the practical or theoretical shortcomings of a study that are often outside of the researcher’s control . While these weaknesses limit the generalizability of a study’s conclusions, they also present a foundation for future research.

Sometimes limitations arise from tangible circumstances like time and funding constraints, or equipment and participant availability. Other times the rationale is more obscure and buried within the research design. Common types of limitations and their ramifications include:

Theoretical: limits the scope, depth, or applicability of a study.
Methodological: limits the quality, quantity, or diversity of the data.
Empirical: limits the representativeness, validity, or reliability of the data.
Analytical: limits the accuracy, completeness, or significance of the findings.
Ethical: limits the access, consent, or confidentiality of the data.

Regardless of how, when, or why they arise, limitations are a natural part of the research process and should never be ignored . Like all other aspects, they are vital in their own purpose.

Why is identifying limitations important?

Whether to seek acceptance or avoid struggle, humans often instinctively hide flaws and mistakes. Merging this thought process into research by attempting to hide limitations, however, is a bad idea. It has the potential to negate the validity of outcomes and damage the reputation of scholars.

By identifying and addressing limitations throughout a project, researchers strengthen their arguments and curtail the chance of peer censure based on overlooked mistakes. Pointing out these flaws shows an understanding of variable limits and a scrupulous research process.

Showing awareness of and taking responsibility for a project’s boundaries and challenges validates the integrity and transparency of a researcher. It further demonstrates the researchers understand the applicable literature and have thoroughly evaluated their chosen research methods.

Presenting limitations also benefits the readers by providing context for research findings. It guides them to interpret the project’s conclusions only within the scope of very specific conditions. By allowing for an appropriate generalization of the findings that is accurately confined by research boundaries and is not too broad, limitations boost a study’s credibility .

Limitations are true assets to the research process. They highlight opportunities for future research. When researchers identify the limitations of their particular approach to a study question, they enable precise transferability and improve chances for reproducibility.

Simply stating a project’s limitations is not adequate for spurring further research, though. To spark the interest of other researchers, these acknowledgements must come with thorough explanations regarding how the limitations affected the current study and how they can potentially be overcome with amended methods.

How to write limitations

Typically, the information about a study’s limitations is situated either at the beginning of the discussion section to provide context for readers or at the conclusion of the discussion section to acknowledge the need for further research. However, it varies depending upon the target journal or publication guidelines.

Don’t hide your limitations

It is also important to not bury a limitation in the body of the paper unless it has a unique connection to a topic in that section. If so, it needs to be reiterated with the other limitations or at the conclusion of the discussion section. Wherever it is included in the manuscript, ensure that the limitations section is prominently positioned and clearly introduced.

While maintaining transparency by disclosing limitations means taking a comprehensive approach, it is not necessary to discuss everything that could have potentially gone wrong during the research study. If there is no commitment to investigation in the introduction, it is unnecessary to consider the issue a limitation to the research. Wholly consider the term ‘limitations’ and ask, “Did it significantly change or limit the possible outcomes?” Then, qualify the occurrence as either a limitation to include in the current manuscript or as an idea to note for other projects.

Writing limitations

Once the limitations are concretely identified and it is decided where they will be included in the paper, researchers are ready for the writing task. Including only what is pertinent, keeping explanations detailed but concise, and employing the following guidelines is key for crafting valuable limitations:

1) Identify and describe the limitations : Clearly introduce the limitation by classifying its form and specifying its origin. For example:

An unintentional bias encountered during data collection
An intentional use of unplanned post-hoc data analysis

2) Explain the implications : Describe how the limitation potentially influences the study’s findings and how the validity and generalizability are subsequently impacted. Provide examples and evidence to support claims of the limitations’ effects without making excuses or exaggerating their impact. Overall, be transparent and objective in presenting the limitations, without undermining the significance of the research.

3) Provide alternative approaches for future studies : Offer specific suggestions for potential improvements or avenues for further investigation. Demonstrate a proactive approach by encouraging future research that addresses the identified gaps and, therefore, expands the knowledge base.

Whether presenting limitations as an individual section within the manuscript or as a subtopic in the discussion area, authors should use clear headings and straightforward language to facilitate readability. There is no need to complicate limitations with jargon, computations, or complex datasets.

Examples of common limitations

Limitations are generally grouped into two categories , methodology and research process .

Methodology limitations

Methodology may include limitations due to:

Sample size
Lack of available or reliable data
Lack of prior research studies on the topic
Measure used to collect the data
Self-reported data

The researcher is addressing how the large sample size requires a reassessment of the measures used to collect and analyze the data.

Research process limitations

Limitations during the research process may arise from:

Access to information
Longitudinal effects
Cultural and other biases
Language fluency
Time constraints

The author is pointing out that the model’s estimates are based on potentially biased observational studies.

Final thoughts

Successfully proving theories and touting great achievements are only two very narrow goals of scholarly research. The true passion and greatest efforts of researchers comes more in the form of confronting assumptions and exploring the obscure.

In many ways, recognizing and sharing the limitations of a research study both allows for and encourages this type of discovery that continuously pushes research forward. By using limitations to provide a transparent account of the project's boundaries and to contextualize the findings, researchers pave the way for even more robust and impactful research in the future.

Charla Viera, MS

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Case Study Research Method in Psychology

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

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Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

On This Page:

Case studies are in-depth investigations of a person, group, event, or community. Typically, data is gathered from various sources using several methods (e.g., observations & interviews).

The case study research method originated in clinical medicine (the case history, i.e., the patient’s personal history). In psychology, case studies are often confined to the study of a particular individual.

The information is mainly biographical and relates to events in the individual’s past (i.e., retrospective), as well as to significant events that are currently occurring in his or her everyday life.

The case study is not a research method, but researchers select methods of data collection and analysis that will generate material suitable for case studies.

Freud (1909a, 1909b) conducted very detailed investigations into the private lives of his patients in an attempt to both understand and help them overcome their illnesses.

This makes it clear that the case study is a method that should only be used by a psychologist, therapist, or psychiatrist, i.e., someone with a professional qualification.

There is an ethical issue of competence. Only someone qualified to diagnose and treat a person can conduct a formal case study relating to atypical (i.e., abnormal) behavior or atypical development.

Famous Case Studies

Anna O – One of the most famous case studies, documenting psychoanalyst Josef Breuer’s treatment of “Anna O” (real name Bertha Pappenheim) for hysteria in the late 1800s using early psychoanalytic theory.
Little Hans – A child psychoanalysis case study published by Sigmund Freud in 1909 analyzing his five-year-old patient Herbert Graf’s house phobia as related to the Oedipus complex.
Bruce/Brenda – Gender identity case of the boy (Bruce) whose botched circumcision led psychologist John Money to advise gender reassignment and raise him as a girl (Brenda) in the 1960s.
Genie Wiley – Linguistics/psychological development case of the victim of extreme isolation abuse who was studied in 1970s California for effects of early language deprivation on acquiring speech later in life.
Phineas Gage – One of the most famous neuropsychology case studies analyzes personality changes in railroad worker Phineas Gage after an 1848 brain injury involving a tamping iron piercing his skull.

Clinical Case Studies

Studying the effectiveness of psychotherapy approaches with an individual patient
Assessing and treating mental illnesses like depression, anxiety disorders, PTSD
Neuropsychological cases investigating brain injuries or disorders

Child Psychology Case Studies

Studying psychological development from birth through adolescence
Cases of learning disabilities, autism spectrum disorders, ADHD
Effects of trauma, abuse, deprivation on development

Types of Case Studies

Explanatory case studies : Used to explore causation in order to find underlying principles. Helpful for doing qualitative analysis to explain presumed causal links.
Exploratory case studies : Used to explore situations where an intervention being evaluated has no clear set of outcomes. It helps define questions and hypotheses for future research.
Descriptive case studies : Describe an intervention or phenomenon and the real-life context in which it occurred. It is helpful for illustrating certain topics within an evaluation.
Multiple-case studies : Used to explore differences between cases and replicate findings across cases. Helpful for comparing and contrasting specific cases.
Intrinsic : Used to gain a better understanding of a particular case. Helpful for capturing the complexity of a single case.
Collective : Used to explore a general phenomenon using multiple case studies. Helpful for jointly studying a group of cases in order to inquire into the phenomenon.

Where Do You Find Data for a Case Study?

There are several places to find data for a case study. The key is to gather data from multiple sources to get a complete picture of the case and corroborate facts or findings through triangulation of evidence. Most of this information is likely qualitative (i.e., verbal description rather than measurement), but the psychologist might also collect numerical data.

1. Primary sources

Interviews – Interviewing key people related to the case to get their perspectives and insights. The interview is an extremely effective procedure for obtaining information about an individual, and it may be used to collect comments from the person’s friends, parents, employer, workmates, and others who have a good knowledge of the person, as well as to obtain facts from the person him or herself.
Observations – Observing behaviors, interactions, processes, etc., related to the case as they unfold in real-time.
Documents & Records – Reviewing private documents, diaries, public records, correspondence, meeting minutes, etc., relevant to the case.

2. Secondary sources

News/Media – News coverage of events related to the case study.
Academic articles – Journal articles, dissertations etc. that discuss the case.
Government reports – Official data and records related to the case context.
Books/films – Books, documentaries or films discussing the case.

3. Archival records

Searching historical archives, museum collections and databases to find relevant documents, visual/audio records related to the case history and context.

Public archives like newspapers, organizational records, photographic collections could all include potentially relevant pieces of information to shed light on attitudes, cultural perspectives, common practices and historical contexts related to psychology.

4. Organizational records

Organizational records offer the advantage of often having large datasets collected over time that can reveal or confirm psychological insights.

Of course, privacy and ethical concerns regarding confidential data must be navigated carefully.

However, with proper protocols, organizational records can provide invaluable context and empirical depth to qualitative case studies exploring the intersection of psychology and organizations.

Organizational/industrial psychology research : Organizational records like employee surveys, turnover/retention data, policies, incident reports etc. may provide insight into topics like job satisfaction, workplace culture and dynamics, leadership issues, employee behaviors etc.
Clinical psychology : Therapists/hospitals may grant access to anonymized medical records to study aspects like assessments, diagnoses, treatment plans etc. This could shed light on clinical practices.
School psychology : Studies could utilize anonymized student records like test scores, grades, disciplinary issues, and counseling referrals to study child development, learning barriers, effectiveness of support programs, and more.

How do I Write a Case Study in Psychology?

Follow specified case study guidelines provided by a journal or your psychology tutor. General components of clinical case studies include: background, symptoms, assessments, diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes. Interpreting the information means the researcher decides what to include or leave out. A good case study should always clarify which information is the factual description and which is an inference or the researcher’s opinion.

1. Introduction

Provide background on the case context and why it is of interest, presenting background information like demographics, relevant history, and presenting problem.
Compare briefly to similar published cases if applicable. Clearly state the focus/importance of the case.

2. Case Presentation

Describe the presenting problem in detail, including symptoms, duration,and impact on daily life.
Include client demographics like age and gender, information about social relationships, and mental health history.
Describe all physical, emotional, and/or sensory symptoms reported by the client.
Use patient quotes to describe the initial complaint verbatim. Follow with full-sentence summaries of relevant history details gathered, including key components that led to a working diagnosis.
Summarize clinical exam results, namely orthopedic/neurological tests, imaging, lab tests, etc. Note actual results rather than subjective conclusions. Provide images if clearly reproducible/anonymized.
Clearly state the working diagnosis or clinical impression before transitioning to management.

3. Management and Outcome

Indicate the total duration of care and number of treatments given over what timeframe. Use specific names/descriptions for any therapies/interventions applied.
Present the results of the intervention,including any quantitative or qualitative data collected.
For outcomes, utilize visual analog scales for pain, medication usage logs, etc., if possible. Include patient self-reports of improvement/worsening of symptoms. Note the reason for discharge/end of care.

4. Discussion

Analyze the case, exploring contributing factors, limitations of the study, and connections to existing research.
Analyze the effectiveness of the intervention,considering factors like participant adherence, limitations of the study, and potential alternative explanations for the results.
Identify any questions raised in the case analysis and relate insights to established theories and current research if applicable. Avoid definitive claims about physiological explanations.
Offer clinical implications, and suggest future research directions.

5. Additional Items

Thank specific assistants for writing support only. No patient acknowledgments.
References should directly support any key claims or quotes included.
Use tables/figures/images only if substantially informative. Include permissions and legends/explanatory notes.
Provides detailed (rich qualitative) information.
Provides insight for further research.
Permitting investigation of otherwise impractical (or unethical) situations.

Case studies allow a researcher to investigate a topic in far more detail than might be possible if they were trying to deal with a large number of research participants (nomothetic approach) with the aim of ‘averaging’.

Because of their in-depth, multi-sided approach, case studies often shed light on aspects of human thinking and behavior that would be unethical or impractical to study in other ways.

Research that only looks into the measurable aspects of human behavior is not likely to give us insights into the subjective dimension of experience, which is important to psychoanalytic and humanistic psychologists.

Case studies are often used in exploratory research. They can help us generate new ideas (that might be tested by other methods). They are an important way of illustrating theories and can help show how different aspects of a person’s life are related to each other.

The method is, therefore, important for psychologists who adopt a holistic point of view (i.e., humanistic psychologists ).

Limitations

Lacking scientific rigor and providing little basis for generalization of results to the wider population.
Researchers’ own subjective feelings may influence the case study (researcher bias).
Difficult to replicate.
Time-consuming and expensive.
The volume of data, together with the time restrictions in place, impacted the depth of analysis that was possible within the available resources.

Because a case study deals with only one person/event/group, we can never be sure if the case study investigated is representative of the wider body of “similar” instances. This means the conclusions drawn from a particular case may not be transferable to other settings.

Because case studies are based on the analysis of qualitative (i.e., descriptive) data , a lot depends on the psychologist’s interpretation of the information she has acquired.

This means that there is a lot of scope for Anna O , and it could be that the subjective opinions of the psychologist intrude in the assessment of what the data means.

For example, Freud has been criticized for producing case studies in which the information was sometimes distorted to fit particular behavioral theories (e.g., Little Hans ).

This is also true of Money’s interpretation of the Bruce/Brenda case study (Diamond, 1997) when he ignored evidence that went against his theory.

Breuer, J., & Freud, S. (1895). Studies on hysteria . Standard Edition 2: London.

Curtiss, S. (1981). Genie: The case of a modern wild child .

Diamond, M., & Sigmundson, K. (1997). Sex Reassignment at Birth: Long-term Review and Clinical Implications. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine , 151(3), 298-304

Freud, S. (1909a). Analysis of a phobia of a five year old boy. In The Pelican Freud Library (1977), Vol 8, Case Histories 1, pages 169-306

Freud, S. (1909b). Bemerkungen über einen Fall von Zwangsneurose (Der “Rattenmann”). Jb. psychoanal. psychopathol. Forsch ., I, p. 357-421; GW, VII, p. 379-463; Notes upon a case of obsessional neurosis, SE , 10: 151-318.

Harlow J. M. (1848). Passage of an iron rod through the head. Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 39 , 389–393.

Harlow, J. M. (1868). Recovery from the Passage of an Iron Bar through the Head . Publications of the Massachusetts Medical Society. 2 (3), 327-347.

Money, J., & Ehrhardt, A. A. (1972). Man & Woman, Boy & Girl : The Differentiation and Dimorphism of Gender Identity from Conception to Maturity. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Money, J., & Tucker, P. (1975). Sexual signatures: On being a man or a woman.

Further Information

Case Study Approach
Case Study Method
Enhancing the Quality of Case Studies in Health Services Research
“We do things together” A case study of “couplehood” in dementia
Using mixed methods for evaluating an integrative approach to cancer care: a case study

10 Case Study Advantages and Disadvantages

case study advantages and disadvantages, explained below

A case study in academic research is a detailed and in-depth examination of a specific instance or event, generally conducted through a qualitative approach to data.

The most common case study definition that I come across is is Robert K. Yin’s (2003, p. 13) quote provided below:

“An empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident.”

Researchers conduct case studies for a number of reasons, such as to explore complex phenomena within their real-life context, to look at a particularly interesting instance of a situation, or to dig deeper into something of interest identified in a wider-scale project.

While case studies render extremely interesting data, they have many limitations and are not suitable for all studies. One key limitation is that a case study’s findings are not usually generalizable to broader populations because one instance cannot be used to infer trends across populations.

Case Study Advantages and Disadvantages

1. in-depth analysis of complex phenomena.

Case study design allows researchers to delve deeply into intricate issues and situations.

By focusing on a specific instance or event, researchers can uncover nuanced details and layers of understanding that might be missed with other research methods, especially large-scale survey studies.

As Lee and Saunders (2017) argue,

“It allows that particular event to be studies in detail so that its unique qualities may be identified.”

This depth of analysis can provide rich insights into the underlying factors and dynamics of the studied phenomenon.

2. Holistic Understanding

Building on the above point, case studies can help us to understand a topic holistically and from multiple angles.

This means the researcher isn’t restricted to just examining a topic by using a pre-determined set of questions, as with questionnaires. Instead, researchers can use qualitative methods to delve into the many different angles, perspectives, and contextual factors related to the case study.

We can turn to Lee and Saunders (2017) again, who notes that case study researchers “develop a deep, holistic understanding of a particular phenomenon” with the intent of deeply understanding the phenomenon.

3. Examination of rare and Unusual Phenomena

We need to use case study methods when we stumble upon “rare and unusual” (Lee & Saunders, 2017) phenomena that would tend to be seen as mere outliers in population studies.

Take, for example, a child genius. A population study of all children of that child’s age would merely see this child as an outlier in the dataset, and this child may even be removed in order to predict overall trends.

So, to truly come to an understanding of this child and get insights into the environmental conditions that led to this child’s remarkable cognitive development, we need to do an in-depth study of this child specifically – so, we’d use a case study.

4. Helps Reveal the Experiences of Marginalzied Groups

Just as rare and unsual cases can be overlooked in population studies, so too can the experiences, beliefs, and perspectives of marginalized groups.

As Lee and Saunders (2017) argue, “case studies are also extremely useful in helping the expression of the voices of people whose interests are often ignored.”

Take, for example, the experiences of minority populations as they navigate healthcare systems. This was for many years a “hidden” phenomenon, not examined by researchers. It took case study designs to truly reveal this phenomenon, which helped to raise practitioners’ awareness of the importance of cultural sensitivity in medicine.

5. Ideal in Situations where Researchers cannot Control the Variables

Experimental designs – where a study takes place in a lab or controlled environment – are excellent for determining cause and effect . But not all studies can take place in controlled environments (Tetnowski, 2015).

When we’re out in the field doing observational studies or similar fieldwork, we don’t have the freedom to isolate dependent and independent variables. We need to use alternate methods.

Case studies are ideal in such situations.

A case study design will allow researchers to deeply immerse themselves in a setting (potentially combining it with methods such as ethnography or researcher observation) in order to see how phenomena take place in real-life settings.

6. Supports the generation of new theories or hypotheses

While large-scale quantitative studies such as cross-sectional designs and population surveys are excellent at testing theories and hypotheses on a large scale, they need a hypothesis to start off with!

This is where case studies – in the form of grounded research – come in. Often, a case study doesn’t start with a hypothesis. Instead, it ends with a hypothesis based upon the findings within a singular setting.

The deep analysis allows for hypotheses to emerge, which can then be taken to larger-scale studies in order to conduct further, more generalizable, testing of the hypothesis or theory.

7. Reveals the Unexpected

When a largescale quantitative research project has a clear hypothesis that it will test, it often becomes very rigid and has tunnel-vision on just exploring the hypothesis.

Of course, a structured scientific examination of the effects of specific interventions targeted at specific variables is extermely valuable.

But narrowly-focused studies often fail to shine a spotlight on unexpected and emergent data. Here, case studies come in very useful. Oftentimes, researchers set their eyes on a phenomenon and, when examining it closely with case studies, identify data and come to conclusions that are unprecedented, unforeseen, and outright surprising.

As Lars Meier (2009, p. 975) marvels, “where else can we become a part of foreign social worlds and have the chance to become aware of the unexpected?”

Disadvantages

1. not usually generalizable.

Case studies are not generalizable because they tend not to look at a broad enough corpus of data to be able to infer that there is a trend across a population.

As Yang (2022) argues, “by definition, case studies can make no claims to be typical.”

Case studies focus on one specific instance of a phenomenon. They explore the context, nuances, and situational factors that have come to bear on the case study. This is really useful for bringing to light important, new, and surprising information, as I’ve already covered.

But , it’s not often useful for generating data that has validity beyond the specific case study being examined.

2. Subjectivity in interpretation

Case studies usually (but not always) use qualitative data which helps to get deep into a topic and explain it in human terms, finding insights unattainable by quantitative data.

But qualitative data in case studies relies heavily on researcher interpretation. While researchers can be trained and work hard to focus on minimizing subjectivity (through methods like triangulation), it often emerges – some might argue it’s innevitable in qualitative studies.

So, a criticism of case studies could be that they’re more prone to subjectivity – and researchers need to take strides to address this in their studies.

3. Difficulty in replicating results

Case study research is often non-replicable because the study takes place in complex real-world settings where variables are not controlled.

So, when returning to a setting to re-do or attempt to replicate a study, we often find that the variables have changed to such an extent that replication is difficult. Furthermore, new researchers (with new subjective eyes) may catch things that the other readers overlooked.

Replication is even harder when researchers attempt to replicate a case study design in a new setting or with different participants.

Comprehension Quiz for Students

Question 1: What benefit do case studies offer when exploring the experiences of marginalized groups?

a) They provide generalizable data. b) They help express the voices of often-ignored individuals. c) They control all variables for the study. d) They always start with a clear hypothesis.

Question 2: Why might case studies be considered ideal for situations where researchers cannot control all variables?

a) They provide a structured scientific examination. b) They allow for generalizability across populations. c) They focus on one specific instance of a phenomenon. d) They allow for deep immersion in real-life settings.

Question 3: What is a primary disadvantage of case studies in terms of data applicability?

a) They always focus on the unexpected. b) They are not usually generalizable. c) They support the generation of new theories. d) They provide a holistic understanding.

Question 4: Why might case studies be considered more prone to subjectivity?

a) They always use quantitative data. b) They heavily rely on researcher interpretation, especially with qualitative data. c) They are always replicable. d) They look at a broad corpus of data.

Question 5: In what situations are experimental designs, such as those conducted in labs, most valuable?

a) When there’s a need to study rare and unusual phenomena. b) When a holistic understanding is required. c) When determining cause-and-effect relationships. d) When the study focuses on marginalized groups.

Question 6: Why is replication challenging in case study research?

a) Because they always use qualitative data. b) Because they tend to focus on a broad corpus of data. c) Due to the changing variables in complex real-world settings. d) Because they always start with a hypothesis.

Lee, B., & Saunders, M. N. K. (2017). Conducting Case Study Research for Business and Management Students. SAGE Publications.

Meir, L. (2009). Feasting on the Benefits of Case Study Research. In Mills, A. J., Wiebe, E., & Durepos, G. (Eds.). Encyclopedia of Case Study Research (Vol. 2). London: SAGE Publications.

Tetnowski, J. (2015). Qualitative case study research design. Perspectives on fluency and fluency disorders , 25 (1), 39-45. ( Source )

Yang, S. L. (2022). The War on Corruption in China: Local Reform and Innovation . Taylor & Francis.

Yin, R. (2003). Case Study research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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What Is a Case Study?

Weighing the pros and cons of this method of research

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Cara Lustik is a fact-checker and copywriter.

Verywell / Colleen Tighe

Pros and Cons

What Types of Case Studies Are Out There?

Where do you find data for a case study, how do i write a psychology case study.

A case study is an in-depth study of one person, group, or event. In a case study, nearly every aspect of the subject's life and history is analyzed to seek patterns and causes of behavior. Case studies can be used in many different fields, including psychology, medicine, education, anthropology, political science, and social work.

The point of a case study is to learn as much as possible about an individual or group so that the information can be generalized to many others. Unfortunately, case studies tend to be highly subjective, and it is sometimes difficult to generalize results to a larger population.

While case studies focus on a single individual or group, they follow a format similar to other types of psychology writing. If you are writing a case study, we got you—here are some rules of APA format to reference.

At a Glance

A case study, or an in-depth study of a person, group, or event, can be a useful research tool when used wisely. In many cases, case studies are best used in situations where it would be difficult or impossible for you to conduct an experiment. They are helpful for looking at unique situations and allow researchers to gather a lot of˜ information about a specific individual or group of people. However, it's important to be cautious of any bias we draw from them as they are highly subjective.

What Are the Benefits and Limitations of Case Studies?

A case study can have its strengths and weaknesses. Researchers must consider these pros and cons before deciding if this type of study is appropriate for their needs.

One of the greatest advantages of a case study is that it allows researchers to investigate things that are often difficult or impossible to replicate in a lab. Some other benefits of a case study:

Allows researchers to capture information on the 'how,' 'what,' and 'why,' of something that's implemented
Gives researchers the chance to collect information on why one strategy might be chosen over another
Permits researchers to develop hypotheses that can be explored in experimental research

On the other hand, a case study can have some drawbacks:

It cannot necessarily be generalized to the larger population
Cannot demonstrate cause and effect
It may not be scientifically rigorous
It can lead to bias

Researchers may choose to perform a case study if they want to explore a unique or recently discovered phenomenon. Through their insights, researchers develop additional ideas and study questions that might be explored in future studies.

It's important to remember that the insights from case studies cannot be used to determine cause-and-effect relationships between variables. However, case studies may be used to develop hypotheses that can then be addressed in experimental research.

Case Study Examples

There have been a number of notable case studies in the history of psychology. Much of Freud's work and theories were developed through individual case studies. Some great examples of case studies in psychology include:

Anna O : Anna O. was a pseudonym of a woman named Bertha Pappenheim, a patient of a physician named Josef Breuer. While she was never a patient of Freud's, Freud and Breuer discussed her case extensively. The woman was experiencing symptoms of a condition that was then known as hysteria and found that talking about her problems helped relieve her symptoms. Her case played an important part in the development of talk therapy as an approach to mental health treatment.
Phineas Gage : Phineas Gage was a railroad employee who experienced a terrible accident in which an explosion sent a metal rod through his skull, damaging important portions of his brain. Gage recovered from his accident but was left with serious changes in both personality and behavior.
Genie : Genie was a young girl subjected to horrific abuse and isolation. The case study of Genie allowed researchers to study whether language learning was possible, even after missing critical periods for language development. Her case also served as an example of how scientific research may interfere with treatment and lead to further abuse of vulnerable individuals.

Such cases demonstrate how case research can be used to study things that researchers could not replicate in experimental settings. In Genie's case, her horrific abuse denied her the opportunity to learn a language at critical points in her development.

This is clearly not something researchers could ethically replicate, but conducting a case study on Genie allowed researchers to study phenomena that are otherwise impossible to reproduce.

There are a few different types of case studies that psychologists and other researchers might use:

Collective case studies : These involve studying a group of individuals. Researchers might study a group of people in a certain setting or look at an entire community. For example, psychologists might explore how access to resources in a community has affected the collective mental well-being of those who live there.
Descriptive case studies : These involve starting with a descriptive theory. The subjects are then observed, and the information gathered is compared to the pre-existing theory.
Explanatory case studies : These are often used to do causal investigations. In other words, researchers are interested in looking at factors that may have caused certain things to occur.
Exploratory case studies : These are sometimes used as a prelude to further, more in-depth research. This allows researchers to gather more information before developing their research questions and hypotheses .
Instrumental case studies : These occur when the individual or group allows researchers to understand more than what is initially obvious to observers.
Intrinsic case studies : This type of case study is when the researcher has a personal interest in the case. Jean Piaget's observations of his own children are good examples of how an intrinsic case study can contribute to the development of a psychological theory.

The three main case study types often used are intrinsic, instrumental, and collective. Intrinsic case studies are useful for learning about unique cases. Instrumental case studies help look at an individual to learn more about a broader issue. A collective case study can be useful for looking at several cases simultaneously.

The type of case study that psychology researchers use depends on the unique characteristics of the situation and the case itself.

There are a number of different sources and methods that researchers can use to gather information about an individual or group. Six major sources that have been identified by researchers are:

Archival records : Census records, survey records, and name lists are examples of archival records.
Direct observation : This strategy involves observing the subject, often in a natural setting . While an individual observer is sometimes used, it is more common to utilize a group of observers.
Documents : Letters, newspaper articles, administrative records, etc., are the types of documents often used as sources.
Interviews : Interviews are one of the most important methods for gathering information in case studies. An interview can involve structured survey questions or more open-ended questions.
Participant observation : When the researcher serves as a participant in events and observes the actions and outcomes, it is called participant observation.
Physical artifacts : Tools, objects, instruments, and other artifacts are often observed during a direct observation of the subject.

If you have been directed to write a case study for a psychology course, be sure to check with your instructor for any specific guidelines you need to follow. If you are writing your case study for a professional publication, check with the publisher for their specific guidelines for submitting a case study.

Here is a general outline of what should be included in a case study.

Section 1: A Case History

This section will have the following structure and content:

Background information : The first section of your paper will present your client's background. Include factors such as age, gender, work, health status, family mental health history, family and social relationships, drug and alcohol history, life difficulties, goals, and coping skills and weaknesses.

Description of the presenting problem : In the next section of your case study, you will describe the problem or symptoms that the client presented with.

Describe any physical, emotional, or sensory symptoms reported by the client. Thoughts, feelings, and perceptions related to the symptoms should also be noted. Any screening or diagnostic assessments that are used should also be described in detail and all scores reported.

Your diagnosis : Provide your diagnosis and give the appropriate Diagnostic and Statistical Manual code. Explain how you reached your diagnosis, how the client's symptoms fit the diagnostic criteria for the disorder(s), or any possible difficulties in reaching a diagnosis.

Section 2: Treatment Plan

This portion of the paper will address the chosen treatment for the condition. This might also include the theoretical basis for the chosen treatment or any other evidence that might exist to support why this approach was chosen.

Cognitive behavioral approach : Explain how a cognitive behavioral therapist would approach treatment. Offer background information on cognitive behavioral therapy and describe the treatment sessions, client response, and outcome of this type of treatment. Make note of any difficulties or successes encountered by your client during treatment.
Humanistic approach : Describe a humanistic approach that could be used to treat your client, such as client-centered therapy . Provide information on the type of treatment you chose, the client's reaction to the treatment, and the end result of this approach. Explain why the treatment was successful or unsuccessful.
Psychoanalytic approach : Describe how a psychoanalytic therapist would view the client's problem. Provide some background on the psychoanalytic approach and cite relevant references. Explain how psychoanalytic therapy would be used to treat the client, how the client would respond to therapy, and the effectiveness of this treatment approach.
Pharmacological approach : If treatment primarily involves the use of medications, explain which medications were used and why. Provide background on the effectiveness of these medications and how monotherapy may compare with an approach that combines medications with therapy or other treatments.

This section of a case study should also include information about the treatment goals, process, and outcomes.

When you are writing a case study, you should also include a section where you discuss the case study itself, including the strengths and limitiations of the study. You should note how the findings of your case study might support previous research.

In your discussion section, you should also describe some of the implications of your case study. What ideas or findings might require further exploration? How might researchers go about exploring some of these questions in additional studies?

Need More Tips?

Here are a few additional pointers to keep in mind when formatting your case study:

Never refer to the subject of your case study as "the client." Instead, use their name or a pseudonym.
Read examples of case studies to gain an idea about the style and format.
Remember to use APA format when citing references .

Crowe S, Cresswell K, Robertson A, Huby G, Avery A, Sheikh A. The case study approach . BMC Med Res Methodol . 2011;11:100.

Crowe S, Cresswell K, Robertson A, Huby G, Avery A, Sheikh A. The case study approach . BMC Med Res Methodol . 2011 Jun 27;11:100. doi:10.1186/1471-2288-11-100

Gagnon, Yves-Chantal. The Case Study as Research Method: A Practical Handbook . Canada, Chicago Review Press Incorporated DBA Independent Pub Group, 2010.

Yin, Robert K. Case Study Research and Applications: Design and Methods . United States, SAGE Publications, 2017.

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

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The Strengths and Limitations of Case Study Research

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Writing Limitations of Research Study — 4 Reasons Why It Is Important!

It is not unusual for researchers to come across the term limitations of research during their academic paper writing. More often this is interpreted as something terrible. However, when it comes to research study, limitations can help structure the research study better. Therefore, do not underestimate significance of limitations of research study.

Allow us to take you through the context of how to evaluate the limits of your research and conclude an impactful relevance to your results.

Table of Contents

What Are the Limitations of a Research Study?

Every research has its limit and these limitations arise due to restrictions in methodology or research design. This could impact your entire research or the research paper you wish to publish. Unfortunately, most researchers choose not to discuss their limitations of research fearing it will affect the value of their article in the eyes of readers.

However, it is very important to discuss your study limitations and show it to your target audience (other researchers, journal editors, peer reviewers etc.). It is very important that you provide an explanation of how your research limitations may affect the conclusions and opinions drawn from your research. Moreover, when as an author you state the limitations of research, it shows that you have investigated all the weaknesses of your study and have a deep understanding of the subject. Being honest could impress your readers and mark your study as a sincere effort in research.

Why and Where Should You Include the Research Limitations?

The main goal of your research is to address your research objectives. Conduct experiments, get results and explain those results, and finally justify your research question . It is best to mention the limitations of research in the discussion paragraph of your research article.

At the very beginning of this paragraph, immediately after highlighting the strengths of the research methodology, you should write down your limitations. You can discuss specific points from your research limitations as suggestions for further research in the conclusion of your thesis.

1. Common Limitations of the Researchers

Limitations that are related to the researcher must be mentioned. This will help you gain transparency with your readers. Furthermore, you could provide suggestions on decreasing these limitations in you and your future studies.

2. Limited Access to Information

Your work may involve some institutions and individuals in research, and sometimes you may have problems accessing these institutions. Therefore, you need to redesign and rewrite your work. You must explain your readers the reason for limited access.

3. Limited Time

All researchers are bound by their deadlines when it comes to completing their studies. Sometimes, time constraints can affect your research negatively. However, the best practice is to acknowledge it and mention a requirement for future study to solve the research problem in a better way.

4. Conflict over Biased Views and Personal Issues

Biased views can affect the research. In fact, researchers end up choosing only those results and data that support their main argument, keeping aside the other loose ends of the research.

Types of Limitations of Research

Before beginning your research study, know that there are certain limitations to what you are testing or possible research results. There are different types that researchers may encounter, and they all have unique characteristics, such as:

1. Research Design Limitations

Certain restrictions on your research or available procedures may affect your final results or research outputs. You may have formulated research goals and objectives too broadly. However, this can help you understand how you can narrow down the formulation of research goals and objectives, thereby increasing the focus of your study.

2. Impact Limitations

Even if your research has excellent statistics and a strong design, it can suffer from the influence of the following factors:

Presence of increasing findings as researched
Being population specific
A strong regional focus.

3. Data or statistical limitations

In some cases, it is impossible to collect sufficient data for research or very difficult to get access to the data. This could lead to incomplete conclusion to your study. Moreover, this insufficiency in data could be the outcome of your study design. The unclear, shabby research outline could produce more problems in interpreting your findings.

How to Correctly Structure Your Research Limitations?

There are strict guidelines for narrowing down research questions, wherein you could justify and explain potential weaknesses of your academic paper. You could go through these basic steps to get a well-structured clarity of research limitations:

Declare that you wish to identify your limitations of research and explain their importance,
Provide the necessary depth, explain their nature, and justify your study choices.
Write how you are suggesting that it is possible to overcome them in the future.

In this section, your readers will see that you are aware of the potential weaknesses in your business, understand them and offer effective solutions, and it will positively strengthen your article as you clarify all limitations of research to your target audience.

Know that you cannot be perfect and there is no individual without flaws. You could use the limitations of research as a great opportunity to take on a new challenge and improve the future of research. In a typical academic paper, research limitations may relate to:

1. Formulating your goals and objectives

If you formulate goals and objectives too broadly, your work will have some shortcomings. In this case, specify effective methods or ways to narrow down the formula of goals and aim to increase your level of study focus.

2. Application of your data collection methods in research

If you do not have experience in primary data collection, there is a risk that there will be flaws in the implementation of your methods. It is necessary to accept this, and learn and educate yourself to understand data collection methods.

3. Sample sizes

This depends on the nature of problem you choose. Sample size is of a greater importance in quantitative studies as opposed to qualitative ones. If your sample size is too small, statistical tests cannot identify significant relationships or connections within a given data set.

You could point out that other researchers should base the same study on a larger sample size to get more accurate results.

4. The absence of previous studies in the field you have chosen

Writing a literature review is an important step in any scientific study because it helps researchers determine the scope of current work in the chosen field. It is a major foundation for any researcher who must use them to achieve a set of specific goals or objectives.

However, if you are focused on the most current and evolving research problem or a very narrow research problem, there may be very little prior research on your topic. For example, if you chose to explore the role of Bitcoin as the currency of the future, you may not find tons of scientific papers addressing the research problem as Bitcoins are only a new phenomenon.

It is important that you learn to identify research limitations examples at each step. Whatever field you choose, feel free to add the shortcoming of your work. This is mainly because you do not have many years of experience writing scientific papers or completing complex work. Therefore, the depth and scope of your discussions may be compromised at different levels compared to academics with a lot of expertise. Include specific points from limitations of research. Use them as suggestions for the future.

Have you ever faced a challenge of writing the limitations of research study in your paper? How did you overcome it? What ways did you follow? Were they beneficial? Let us know in the comments below!

Frequently Asked Questions

Setting limitations in our study helps to clarify the outcomes drawn from our research and enhance understanding of the subject. Moreover, it shows that the author has investigated all the weaknesses in the study.

Scope is the range and limitations of a research project which are set to define the boundaries of a project. Limitations are the impacts on the overall study due to the constraints on the research design.

Limitation in research is an impact of a constraint on the research design in the overall study. They are the flaws or weaknesses in the study, which may influence the outcome of the research.

1. Limitations in research can be written as follows: Formulate your goals and objectives 2. Analyze the chosen data collection method and the sample sizes 3. Identify your limitations of research and explain their importance 4. Provide the necessary depth, explain their nature, and justify your study choices 5. Write how you are suggesting that it is possible to overcome them in the future

Excellent article ,,,it has helped me big

This is very helpful information. It has given me an insight on how to go about my study limitations.

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The limitations of the study are those characteristics of design or methodology that impacted or influenced the interpretation of the findings from your research. Study limitations are the constraints placed on the ability to generalize from the results, to further describe applications to practice, and/or related to the utility of findings that are the result of the ways in which you initially chose to design the study or the method used to establish internal and external validity or the result of unanticipated challenges that emerged during the study.

Price, James H. and Judy Murnan. “Research Limitations and the Necessity of Reporting Them.” American Journal of Health Education 35 (2004): 66-67; Theofanidis, Dimitrios and Antigoni Fountouki. "Limitations and Delimitations in the Research Process." Perioperative Nursing 7 (September-December 2018): 155-163. .

Importance of...

Always acknowledge a study's limitations. It is far better that you identify and acknowledge your study’s limitations than to have them pointed out by your professor and have your grade lowered because you appeared to have ignored them or didn't realize they existed.

Keep in mind that acknowledgment of a study's limitations is an opportunity to make suggestions for further research. If you do connect your study's limitations to suggestions for further research, be sure to explain the ways in which these unanswered questions may become more focused because of your study.

Acknowledgment of a study's limitations also provides you with opportunities to demonstrate that you have thought critically about the research problem, understood the relevant literature published about it, and correctly assessed the methods chosen for studying the problem. A key objective of the research process is not only discovering new knowledge but also to confront assumptions and explore what we don't know.

Claiming limitations is a subjective process because you must evaluate the impact of those limitations . Don't just list key weaknesses and the magnitude of a study's limitations. To do so diminishes the validity of your research because it leaves the reader wondering whether, or in what ways, limitation(s) in your study may have impacted the results and conclusions. Limitations require a critical, overall appraisal and interpretation of their impact. You should answer the question: do these problems with errors, methods, validity, etc. eventually matter and, if so, to what extent?

Price, James H. and Judy Murnan. “Research Limitations and the Necessity of Reporting Them.” American Journal of Health Education 35 (2004): 66-67; Structure: How to Structure the Research Limitations Section of Your Dissertation. Dissertations and Theses: An Online Textbook. Laerd.com.

Descriptions of Possible Limitations

All studies have limitations . However, it is important that you restrict your discussion to limitations related to the research problem under investigation. For example, if a meta-analysis of existing literature is not a stated purpose of your research, it should not be discussed as a limitation. Do not apologize for not addressing issues that you did not promise to investigate in the introduction of your paper.

Here are examples of limitations related to methodology and the research process you may need to describe and discuss how they possibly impacted your results. Note that descriptions of limitations should be stated in the past tense because they were discovered after you completed your research.

Possible Methodological Limitations

Sample size -- the number of the units of analysis you use in your study is dictated by the type of research problem you are investigating. Note that, if your sample size is too small, it will be difficult to find significant relationships from the data, as statistical tests normally require a larger sample size to ensure a representative distribution of the population and to be considered representative of groups of people to whom results will be generalized or transferred. Note that sample size is generally less relevant in qualitative research if explained in the context of the research problem.
Lack of available and/or reliable data -- a lack of data or of reliable data will likely require you to limit the scope of your analysis, the size of your sample, or it can be a significant obstacle in finding a trend and a meaningful relationship. You need to not only describe these limitations but provide cogent reasons why you believe data is missing or is unreliable. However, don’t just throw up your hands in frustration; use this as an opportunity to describe a need for future research based on designing a different method for gathering data.
Lack of prior research studies on the topic -- citing prior research studies forms the basis of your literature review and helps lay a foundation for understanding the research problem you are investigating. Depending on the currency or scope of your research topic, there may be little, if any, prior research on your topic. Before assuming this to be true, though, consult with a librarian! In cases when a librarian has confirmed that there is little or no prior research, you may be required to develop an entirely new research typology [for example, using an exploratory rather than an explanatory research design ]. Note again that discovering a limitation can serve as an important opportunity to identify new gaps in the literature and to describe the need for further research.
Measure used to collect the data -- sometimes it is the case that, after completing your interpretation of the findings, you discover that the way in which you gathered data inhibited your ability to conduct a thorough analysis of the results. For example, you regret not including a specific question in a survey that, in retrospect, could have helped address a particular issue that emerged later in the study. Acknowledge the deficiency by stating a need for future researchers to revise the specific method for gathering data.
Self-reported data -- whether you are relying on pre-existing data or you are conducting a qualitative research study and gathering the data yourself, self-reported data is limited by the fact that it rarely can be independently verified. In other words, you have to the accuracy of what people say, whether in interviews, focus groups, or on questionnaires, at face value. However, self-reported data can contain several potential sources of bias that you should be alert to and note as limitations. These biases become apparent if they are incongruent with data from other sources. These are: (1) selective memory [remembering or not remembering experiences or events that occurred at some point in the past]; (2) telescoping [recalling events that occurred at one time as if they occurred at another time]; (3) attribution [the act of attributing positive events and outcomes to one's own agency, but attributing negative events and outcomes to external forces]; and, (4) exaggeration [the act of representing outcomes or embellishing events as more significant than is actually suggested from other data].

Possible Limitations of the Researcher

Access -- if your study depends on having access to people, organizations, data, or documents and, for whatever reason, access is denied or limited in some way, the reasons for this needs to be described. Also, include an explanation why being denied or limited access did not prevent you from following through on your study.
Longitudinal effects -- unlike your professor, who can literally devote years [even a lifetime] to studying a single topic, the time available to investigate a research problem and to measure change or stability over time is constrained by the due date of your assignment. Be sure to choose a research problem that does not require an excessive amount of time to complete the literature review, apply the methodology, and gather and interpret the results. If you're unsure whether you can complete your research within the confines of the assignment's due date, talk to your professor.
Cultural and other type of bias -- we all have biases, whether we are conscience of them or not. Bias is when a person, place, event, or thing is viewed or shown in a consistently inaccurate way. Bias is usually negative, though one can have a positive bias as well, especially if that bias reflects your reliance on research that only support your hypothesis. When proof-reading your paper, be especially critical in reviewing how you have stated a problem, selected the data to be studied, what may have been omitted, the manner in which you have ordered events, people, or places, how you have chosen to represent a person, place, or thing, to name a phenomenon, or to use possible words with a positive or negative connotation. NOTE : If you detect bias in prior research, it must be acknowledged and you should explain what measures were taken to avoid perpetuating that bias. For example, if a previous study only used boys to examine how music education supports effective math skills, describe how your research expands the study to include girls.
Fluency in a language -- if your research focuses , for example, on measuring the perceived value of after-school tutoring among Mexican-American ESL [English as a Second Language] students and you are not fluent in Spanish, you are limited in being able to read and interpret Spanish language research studies on the topic or to speak with these students in their primary language. This deficiency should be acknowledged.

Structure and Writing Style

Information about the limitations of your study are generally placed either at the beginning of the discussion section of your paper so the reader knows and understands the limitations before reading the rest of your analysis of the findings, or, the limitations are outlined at the conclusion of the discussion section as an acknowledgement of the need for further study. Statements about a study's limitations should not be buried in the body [middle] of the discussion section unless a limitation is specific to something covered in that part of the paper. If this is the case, though, the limitation should be reiterated at the conclusion of the section.

If you determine that your study is seriously flawed due to important limitations , such as, an inability to acquire critical data, consider reframing it as an exploratory study intended to lay the groundwork for a more complete research study in the future. Be sure, though, to specifically explain the ways that these flaws can be successfully overcome in a new study.

But, do not use this as an excuse for not developing a thorough research paper! Review the tab in this guide for developing a research topic . If serious limitations exist, it generally indicates a likelihood that your research problem is too narrowly defined or that the issue or event under study is too recent and, thus, very little research has been written about it. If serious limitations do emerge, consult with your professor about possible ways to overcome them or how to revise your study.

When discussing the limitations of your research, be sure to:

Describe each limitation in detailed but concise terms;
Explain why each limitation exists;
Provide the reasons why each limitation could not be overcome using the method(s) chosen to acquire or gather the data [cite to other studies that had similar problems when possible];
Assess the impact of each limitation in relation to the overall findings and conclusions of your study; and,
If appropriate, describe how these limitations could point to the need for further research.

Remember that the method you chose may be the source of a significant limitation that has emerged during your interpretation of the results [for example, you didn't interview a group of people that you later wish you had]. If this is the case, don't panic. Acknowledge it, and explain how applying a different or more robust methodology might address the research problem more effectively in a future study. A underlying goal of scholarly research is not only to show what works, but to demonstrate what doesn't work or what needs further clarification.

Aguinis, Hermam and Jeffrey R. Edwards. “Methodological Wishes for the Next Decade and How to Make Wishes Come True.” Journal of Management Studies 51 (January 2014): 143-174; Brutus, Stéphane et al. "Self-Reported Limitations and Future Directions in Scholarly Reports: Analysis and Recommendations." Journal of Management 39 (January 2013): 48-75; Ioannidis, John P.A. "Limitations are not Properly Acknowledged in the Scientific Literature." Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 60 (2007): 324-329; Pasek, Josh. Writing the Empirical Social Science Research Paper: A Guide for the Perplexed. January 24, 2012. Academia.edu; Structure: How to Structure the Research Limitations Section of Your Dissertation. Dissertations and Theses: An Online Textbook. Laerd.com; What Is an Academic Paper? Institute for Writing Rhetoric. Dartmouth College; Writing the Experimental Report: Methods, Results, and Discussion. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University.

Writing Tip

Don't Inflate the Importance of Your Findings!

After all the hard work and long hours devoted to writing your research paper, it is easy to get carried away with attributing unwarranted importance to what you’ve done. We all want our academic work to be viewed as excellent and worthy of a good grade, but it is important that you understand and openly acknowledge the limitations of your study. Inflating the importance of your study's findings could be perceived by your readers as an attempt hide its flaws or encourage a biased interpretation of the results. A small measure of humility goes a long way!

Another Writing Tip

Negative Results are Not a Limitation!

Negative evidence refers to findings that unexpectedly challenge rather than support your hypothesis. If you didn't get the results you anticipated, it may mean your hypothesis was incorrect and needs to be reformulated. Or, perhaps you have stumbled onto something unexpected that warrants further study. Moreover, the absence of an effect may be very telling in many situations, particularly in experimental research designs. In any case, your results may very well be of importance to others even though they did not support your hypothesis. Do not fall into the trap of thinking that results contrary to what you expected is a limitation to your study. If you carried out the research well, they are simply your results and only require additional interpretation.

Lewis, George H. and Jonathan F. Lewis. “The Dog in the Night-Time: Negative Evidence in Social Research.” The British Journal of Sociology 31 (December 1980): 544-558.

Yet Another Writing Tip

Sample Size Limitations in Qualitative Research

Sample sizes are typically smaller in qualitative research because, as the study goes on, acquiring more data does not necessarily lead to more information. This is because one occurrence of a piece of data, or a code, is all that is necessary to ensure that it becomes part of the analysis framework. However, it remains true that sample sizes that are too small cannot adequately support claims of having achieved valid conclusions and sample sizes that are too large do not permit the deep, naturalistic, and inductive analysis that defines qualitative inquiry. Determining adequate sample size in qualitative research is ultimately a matter of judgment and experience in evaluating the quality of the information collected against the uses to which it will be applied and the particular research method and purposeful sampling strategy employed. If the sample size is found to be a limitation, it may reflect your judgment about the methodological technique chosen [e.g., single life history study versus focus group interviews] rather than the number of respondents used.

Boddy, Clive Roland. "Sample Size for Qualitative Research." Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal 19 (2016): 426-432; Huberman, A. Michael and Matthew B. Miles. "Data Management and Analysis Methods." In Handbook of Qualitative Research . Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, eds. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994), pp. 428-444; Blaikie, Norman. "Confounding Issues Related to Determining Sample Size in Qualitative Research." International Journal of Social Research Methodology 21 (2018): 635-641; Oppong, Steward Harrison. "The Problem of Sampling in qualitative Research." Asian Journal of Management Sciences and Education 2 (2013): 202-210.

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Strengths and Weaknesses of Case Studies

There is no doubt that case studies are a valuable and important form of research for all of the industries and fields that use them. However, along with all their advantages, they also have some disadvantages. In this article we are going to look at both.

Advantages of Case Studies

Intensive Study

Case study method is responsible for intensive study of a unit. It is the investigation and exploration of an event thoroughly and deeply. You get a very detailed and in-depth study of a person or event. This is especially the case with subjects that cannot be physically or ethically recreated.

This is one of the biggest advantages of the Genie case. You cannot lock up a child for 13 years and deprive them of everything. That would be morally and ethically wrong in every single way. So when the opportunity presented itself, researchers could not look away. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to learn about feral children.

Genie was a feral child. She was raised in completed isolation, with little human contact. Because of the abuse she withstood, she was unable to develop cognitively. From infancy she was strapped to a potty chair, and therefore never acquired the physicality needed for walking, running and jumping.

If Genie made a noise, her father beat her. Therefore, she learned to not make a noise. Once she was found, researchers studied her language skills, and attempted to find ways to get her to communicate. They were successful. While she never gained the ability to speak, she did develop other ways to communicate. However, the public soon lost interest in her case, and with that, the funds to conduct the study.

However, her case was extremely important to child development psychology and linguistic theory. Because of her, we know that mental stimulation is needed for proper development. We also now know that there is a "critical period" for the learning of language.

Developing New Research

Case studies are one of the best ways to stimulate new research. A case study can be completed, and if the findings are valuable, they can lead to new and advanced research in the field. There has been a great deal of research done that wouldn't have been possible without case studies.

An example of this is the sociological study Nickel and Dimed. Nickel and Dimed is a book and study done by Barbara Ehrenreich. She wanted to study poverty in America, and did so by living and working as a person living on minimum wage.

Through her experiment, she discovered that poverty was almost inescapable. As soon as she saved a little money, she was hit with a crisis. She might get sick, or her car might break down, all occurrences that can be destructive when a person doesn't have a safety net to fall back on.

It didn't matter where she lived or what she did. Working a minimum wage job gave her no chances for advancement or improvement whatsoever. And she did the experiment as a woman with no children to support.

This study opened a lot of eyes to the problem of the working poor in America. By living and working as the experiment, Ehrenreich was able to show first-hand data regarding the issues surrounding poverty. The book didn't end with any solutions, just suggestions for the reader and points for them to think about.

Using this case study information, new studies could be organized to learn better ways to help people who are fighting poverty, or better ways to help the working poor.

Contradicting Established Ideas or Theories

Oftentimes there are theories that may be questioned with case studies. For example, in the John/John case study, it was believed that gender and sexual identity were a construct of nurture, not nature.

John-John focused on a set of twin boys, both of whom were circumcised at the age of 6 months. One of the twin's circumcisions failed, causing irreparable damage to the penis. His parents were concerned about the sexual health of their son, so they contacted Dr. John Money for a solution.

Dr. Money believed that sexuality came from nurture, not nature, and that the injured baby, Bruce, could be raised as a girl. His penis was removed and he was sexually reassigned to become a girl. Bruce's name was changed to Brenda, and his parents decided to raise him as a girl.

In this case, Dr. Money was dishonest. He believed that gender could be changed, which has since been proven false. Brenda's parents were also dishonest, stating that the surgery was a success, when in fact that wasn't the case.

As Brenda grew up, she always acted masculine and was teased for it at school. She did not socialize as a girl, and did not identify as a female. When Brenda was 13 she learned the truth, and was incredibly relieved. She changed her name to David, and lived the rest of her life as a male.

This case proved that the general theory was wrong, and is still valuable, even though the study author was dishonest.

Giving New Insight

Case studies have the ability to give insight into phenomena that cannot be learned in any other way. An example of this is the case study about Sidney Bradford. Bradford was blind from the age of 10 months old, and regained his sight at the age of 52 from a corneal transplant.

This unique situation allowed researchers to better learn how perception and motion changes when suddenly given sight. They were able to better understand how colors and dimensions affect the human process. For what it is worth, Bradford continued to live and work with his eyes closed, as he found sight too stimulating.

Another famous study was the sociological study of Milgram.

Stanley Milgram did a study from 1960 to 1974 in which he studied the effects of social pressure. The study was set up as an independent laboratory. A random person would walk in, and agree to be a part of the study. He was told to act as a teacher, and ask questions to another volunteer, who was the learner.

The teacher would ask the learner questions, and whenever he answered incorrectly, the teacher was instructed to give the learner an electric shock. Each time the learner was wrong, the shock would be increased by 15 volts. What the teacher didn't know was that the learner was a part of the experiment, and that no shocks were being given. However, the learner did act as if they were being shocked.

If the teachers tried to quit, they were strongly pushed to continue. The goal of the experiment was to see whether or not any of the teachers would go up to the highest voltage. As it turned out, 65% of the teachers did.

This study opened eyes when it comes to social pressure. If someone tells you it is okay to hurt someone, at what point will the person back off and say "this is not ok!" And in this study, the results were the same, regardless of income, race, gender or ethnicity.

This study opened up the sociological world of understanding the divide between social pressure and morality.

Disadvantages of Case Studies

Inability to Replicate

As demonstrated with the Genie case study, many studies cannot be replicated, and therefore, cannot be corroborated. Because the studies cannot be replicated, it means the data and results are only valid for that one person. Now, one could infer that that results of the Genie study would be the same with other feral children, without additional studies we can never be 100% certain.

Also, Genie was a white, American female. We do not know whether someone with a different gender, race or ethnicity would have a different result.

Key Term! Hawthorne Effect

The effect in which people change their behavior when they are aware they are being observed.

Researcher Bias

When conducting a case study, it is very possible for the author to form a bias. This bias can be for the subject; the form of data collection, or the way the data is interpreted. This is very common, since it is normal for humans to be subjective. It is well known that Sigmund Freud, the father of psychology, was often biased in his case histories and interpretations.

The researcher can become close to a study participant, or may learn to identify with the subject. When this happens the researcher loses their perspective as an outsider.

No Classification

Any classification is not possible due to studying a small unit. This generalization of results is limited, since the study is only focusing on one small group. However, this isn't always a problem, especially if generalization is not one of the study's goals.

Time Intensive

Case studies can be very time consuming. The data collection process can be very intensive and long, and this is something new researchers are not familiar with. It takes a long period of time to develop a case study, and develop a detailed analysis.

Many studies also require the authors to immerse themselves in the case. For example, in the Genie case, the lead researchers spent an abnormal amount of time with Genie, since so few people knew how to handle her. David Rigler, one of the lead researchers, actually had Genie live with him and his family for years. Because of this attachment, many questioned the veracity of the study data.

Possibility of Errors

Case study method may have errors of memory or judgment. Since reconstructing case history is based on memory, this can lead to errors. Also, how one person perceived the past could be different for another person, and this can and does lead to errors.

When considering various aspects of their lives, people tend to focus on issues that they find most important. This allows them to form a prejudice and can make them unaware of other possible options.

Ethical Issues

With small studies, there is always the question of ethics. At what point does a study become unethical? The Genie case was riddled with accusations of being unethical, and people still debate about it today.

Was it ethical to study Genie as deeply as she was studied?

Did Genie deserve to live out her life unbothered by researchers and academics trying to use her case to potentially further their careers?

At what point does the pursuit of scientific knowledge outweigh the right to a life free from research?

Also, because the researchers became so invested in the study, people questioned whether a researcher would report unethical behavior if they witnessed it.

Advantages and Disadvantages in Real-Life Studies

Two of these case studies are the Tylenol Scandal and the Genie language study.

Let's look at the advantages and disadvantages of these two studies.

Genie – Advantages

Uniqueness of study – Being able to study a feral child is a rare occurrence.

Genie – Disadvantages

Ethics - The lead researcher David Rigler provided a home for Genie, and was paid for being a foster parent. This is often seen as unethical, since Rigler had a financial interest in Genie and her case.

Tylenol – Advantages

Uniqueness of study – What happened to Tylenol was very unique and rare. While companies face crisis all the time, a public health crisis of this magnitude is very unique.

Tylenol – Disadvantages

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What are the limitations of case studies?

Case studies are in-depth analyses of a particular person, group, circumstance, or civilization. Data is frequently obtained from several sources and in various methods (e.g. observations & interviews). The patient’s medical history or personal case study is where the case study research methodology started, and case studies frequently look into one person in their investigations.

The content is mostly biographical and pertains to noteworthy events in the person’s past (i.e., retrospective) and current events in their day-to-day lives. The case study is not a research method in and of itself; rather, researchers select methods for data collection and analysis that will result in case study-worthy data.

Limitations of Case Studies

There is insufficient scientific rigour and no basis for extending findings to a broader population.
The researchers could inject their personal opinions into the case study (researcher bias).
It is challenging to repeat.
It’s expensive and time-consuming.
The amount of analysis done with the instruments was constrained by the data and the time limits imposed.

It is hard to determine whether a case study represents a larger body of “similar” events because it only examines one individual, event, or group. As a result, the findings drawn in one instance might not apply in another. Since case studies are based on qualitative (descriptive) data, the psychologist’s interpretation is essential.

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Case Study Method – 18 Advantages and Disadvantages

The case study method uses investigatory research as a way to collect data about specific demographics. This approach can apply to individuals, businesses, groups, or events. Each participant receives an equal amount of participation, offering information for collection that can then find new insights into specific trends, ideas, of hypotheses.

Interviews and research observation are the two standard methods of data collection used when following the case study method.

Researchers initially developed the case study method to develop and support hypotheses in clinical medicine. The benefits found in these efforts led the approach to transition to other industries, allowing for the examination of results through proposed decisions, processes, or outcomes. Its unique approach to information makes it possible for others to glean specific points of wisdom that encourage growth.

Several case study method advantages and disadvantages can appear when researchers take this approach.

List of the Advantages of the Case Study Method

1. It requires an intensive study of a specific unit. Researchers must document verifiable data from direct observations when using the case study method. This work offers information about the input processes that go into the hypothesis under consideration. A casual approach to data-gathering work is not effective if a definitive outcome is desired. Each behavior, choice, or comment is a critical component that can verify or dispute the ideas being considered.

Intensive programs can require a significant amount of work for researchers, but it can also promote an improvement in the data collected. That means a hypothesis can receive immediate verification in some situations.

2. No sampling is required when following the case study method. This research method studies social units in their entire perspective instead of pulling individual data points out to analyze them. That means there is no sampling work required when using the case study method. The hypothesis under consideration receives support because it works to turn opinions into facts, verifying or denying the proposals that outside observers can use in the future.

Although researchers might pay attention to specific incidents or outcomes based on generalized behaviors or ideas, the study itself won’t sample those situations. It takes a look at the “bigger vision” instead.

3. This method offers a continuous analysis of the facts. The case study method will look at the facts continuously for the social group being studied by researchers. That means there aren’t interruptions in the process that could limit the validity of the data being collected through this work. This advantage reduces the need to use assumptions when drawing conclusions from the information, adding validity to the outcome of the study over time. That means the outcome becomes relevant to both sides of the equation as it can prove specific suppositions or invalidate a hypothesis under consideration.

This advantage can lead to inefficiencies because of the amount of data being studied by researchers. It is up to the individuals involved in the process to sort out what is useful and meaningful and what is not.

4. It is a useful approach to take when formulating a hypothesis. Researchers will use the case study method advantages to verify a hypothesis under consideration. It is not unusual for the collected data to lead people toward the formulation of new ideas after completing this work. This process encourages further study because it allows concepts to evolve as people do in social or physical environments. That means a complete data set can be gathered based on the skills of the researcher and the honesty of the individuals involved in the study itself.

Although this approach won’t develop a societal-level evaluation of a hypothesis, it can look at how specific groups will react in various circumstances. That information can lead to a better decision-making process in the future for everyone involved.

5. It provides an increase in knowledge. The case study method provides everyone with analytical power to increase knowledge. This advantage is possible because it uses a variety of methodologies to collect information while evaluating a hypothesis. Researchers prefer to use direct observation and interviews to complete their work, but it can also advantage through the use of questionnaires. Participants might need to fill out a journal or diary about their experiences that can be used to study behaviors or choices.

Some researchers incorporate memory tests and experimental tasks to determine how social groups will interact or respond in specific situations. All of this data then works to verify the possibilities that a hypothesis proposes.

6. The case study method allows for comparisons. The human experience is one that is built on individual observations from group situations. Specific demographics might think, act, or respond in particular ways to stimuli, but each person in that group will also contribute a small part to the whole. You could say that people are sponges that collect data from one another every day to create individual outcomes.

The case study method allows researchers to take the information from each demographic for comparison purposes. This information can then lead to proposals that support a hypothesis or lead to its disruption.

7. Data generalization is possible using the case study method. The case study method provides a foundation for data generalization, allowing researches to illustrate their statistical findings in meaningful ways. It puts the information into a usable format that almost anyone can use if they have the need to evaluate the hypothesis under consideration. This process makes it easier to discover unusual features, unique outcomes, or find conclusions that wouldn’t be available without this method. It does an excellent job of identifying specific concepts that relate to the proposed ideas that researchers were verifying through their work.

Generalization does not apply to a larger population group with the case study method. What researchers can do with this information is to suggest a predictable outcome when similar groups are placed in an equal situation.

8. It offers a comprehensive approach to research. Nothing gets ignored when using the case study method to collect information. Every person, place, or thing involved in the research receives the complete attention of those seeking data. The interactions are equal, which means the data is comprehensive and directly reflective of the group being observed.

This advantage means that there are fewer outliers to worry about when researching an idea, leading to a higher level of accuracy in the conclusions drawn by the researchers.

9. The identification of deviant cases is possible with this method. The case study method of research makes it easier to identify deviant cases that occur in each social group. These incidents are units (people) that behave in ways that go against the hypothesis under consideration. Instead of ignoring them like other options do when collecting data, this approach incorporates the “rogue” behavior to understand why it exists in the first place.

This advantage makes the eventual data and conclusions gathered more reliable because it incorporates the “alternative opinion” that exists. One might say that the case study method places as much emphasis on the yin as it does the yang so that the whole picture becomes available to the outside observer.

10. Questionnaire development is possible with the case study method. Interviews and direct observation are the preferred methods of implementing the case study method because it is cheap and done remotely. The information gathered by researchers can also lead to farming questionnaires that can farm additional data from those being studied. When all of the data resources come together, it is easier to formulate a conclusion that accurately reflects the demographics.

Some people in the case study method may try to manipulate the results for personal reasons, but this advantage makes it possible to identify this information readily. Then researchers can look into the thinking that goes into the dishonest behaviors observed.

List of the Disadvantages of the Case Study Method

1. The case study method offers limited representation. The usefulness of the case study method is limited to a specific group of representatives. Researchers are looking at a specific demographic when using this option. That means it is impossible to create any generalization that applies to the rest of society, an organization, or a larger community with this work. The findings can only apply to other groups caught in similar circumstances with the same experiences.

It is useful to use the case study method when attempting to discover the specific reasons why some people behave in a specific way. If researchers need something more generalized, then a different method must be used.

2. No classification is possible with the case study method. This disadvantage is also due to the sample size in the case study method. No classification is possible because researchers are studying such a small unit, group, or demographic. It can be an inefficient process since the skills of the researcher help to determine the quality of the data being collected to verify the validity of a hypothesis. Some participants may be unwilling to answer or participate, while others might try to guess at the outcome to support it.

Researchers can get trapped in a place where they explore more tangents than the actual hypothesis with this option. Classification can occur within the units being studied, but this data cannot extrapolate to other demographics.

3. The case study method still offers the possibility of errors. Each person has an unconscious bias that influences their behaviors and choices. The case study method can find outliers that oppose a hypothesis fairly easily thanks to its emphasis on finding facts, but it is up to the researchers to determine what information qualifies for this designation. If the results from the case study method are surprising or go against the opinion of participating individuals, then there is still the possibility that the information will not be 100% accurate.

Researchers must have controls in place that dictate how data gathering work occurs. Without this limitation in place, the results of the study cannot be guaranteed because of the presence of bias.

4. It is a subjective method to use for research. Although the purpose of the case study method of research is to gather facts, the foundation of what gets gathered is still based on opinion. It uses the subjective method instead of the objective one when evaluating data, which means there can be another layer of errors in the information to consider.

Imagine that a researcher interprets someone’s response as “angry” when performing direct observation, but the individual was feeling “shame” because of a decision they made. The difference between those two emotions is profound, and it could lead to information disruptions that could be problematic to the eventual work of hypothesis verification.

5. The processes required by the case study method are not useful for everyone. The case study method uses a person’s memories, explanations, and records from photographs and diaries to identify interactions on influences on psychological processes. People are given the chance to describe what happens in the world around them as a way for researchers to gather data. This process can be an advantage in some industries, but it can also be a worthless approach to some groups.

If the social group under study doesn’t have the information, knowledge, or wisdom to provide meaningful data, then the processes are no longer useful. Researchers must weigh the advantages and disadvantages of the case study method before starting their work to determine if the possibility of value exists. If it does not, then a different method may be necessary.

6. It is possible for bias to form in the data. It’s not just an unconscious bias that can form in the data when using the case study method. The narrow study approach can lead to outright discrimination in the data. Researchers can decide to ignore outliers or any other information that doesn’t support their hypothesis when using this method. The subjective nature of this approach makes it difficult to challenge the conclusions that get drawn from this work, and the limited pool of units (people) means that duplication is almost impossible.

That means unethical people can manipulate the results gathered by the case study method to their own advantage without much accountability in the process.

7. This method has no fixed limits to it. This method of research is highly dependent on situational circumstances rather than overarching societal or corporate truths. That means the researcher has no fixed limits of investigation. Even when controls are in place to limit bias or recommend specific activities, the case study method has enough flexibility built into its structures to allow for additional exploration. That means it is possible for this work to continue indefinitely, gathering data that never becomes useful.

Scientists began to track the health of 268 sophomores at Harvard in 1938. The Great Depression was in its final years at that point, so the study hoped to reveal clues that lead to happy and healthy lives. It continues still today, now incorporating the children of the original participants, providing over 80 years of information to sort through for conclusions.

8. The case study method is time-consuming and expensive. The case study method can be affordable in some situations, but the lack of fixed limits and the ability to pursue tangents can make it a costly process in most situations. It takes time to gather the data in the first place, and then researchers must interpret the information received so that they can use it for hypothesis evaluation. There are other methods of data collection that can be less expensive and provide results faster.

That doesn’t mean the case study method is useless. The individualization of results can help the decision-making process advance in a variety of industries successfully. It just takes more time to reach the appropriate conclusion, and that might be a resource that isn’t available.

The advantages and disadvantages of the case study method suggest that the helpfulness of this research option depends on the specific hypothesis under consideration. When researchers have the correct skills and mindset to gather data accurately, then it can lead to supportive data that can verify ideas with tremendous accuracy.

This research method can also be used unethically to produce specific results that can be difficult to challenge.

When bias enters into the structure of the case study method, the processes become inefficient, inaccurate, and harmful to the hypothesis. That’s why great care must be taken when designing a study with this approach. It might be a labor-intensive way to develop conclusions, but the outcomes are often worth the investments needed.

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How to Present the Limitations of the Study Examples

What are the limitations of a study?

The limitations of a study are the elements of methodology or study design that impact the interpretation of your research results. The limitations essentially detail any flaws or shortcomings in your study. Study limitations can exist due to constraints on research design, methodology, materials, etc., and these factors may impact the findings of your study. However, researchers are often reluctant to discuss the limitations of their study in their papers, feeling that bringing up limitations may undermine its research value in the eyes of readers and reviewers.

In spite of the impact it might have (and perhaps because of it) you should clearly acknowledge any limitations in your research paper in order to show readers—whether journal editors, other researchers, or the general public—that you are aware of these limitations and to explain how they affect the conclusions that can be drawn from the research.

In this article, we provide some guidelines for writing about research limitations, show examples of some frequently seen study limitations, and recommend techniques for presenting this information. And after you have finished drafting and have received manuscript editing for your work, you still might want to follow this up with academic editing before submitting your work to your target journal.

Why do I need to include limitations of research in my paper?

Although limitations address the potential weaknesses of a study, writing about them toward the end of your paper actually strengthens your study by identifying any problems before other researchers or reviewers find them.

Furthermore, pointing out study limitations shows that you’ve considered the impact of research weakness thoroughly and have an in-depth understanding of your research topic. Since all studies face limitations, being honest and detailing these limitations will impress researchers and reviewers more than ignoring them.

limitations of the study examples, brick wall with blue sky

Where should I put the limitations of the study in my paper?

Some limitations might be evident to researchers before the start of the study, while others might become clear while you are conducting the research. Whether these limitations are anticipated or not, and whether they are due to research design or to methodology, they should be clearly identified and discussed in the discussion section —the final section of your paper. Most journals now require you to include a discussion of potential limitations of your work, and many journals now ask you to place this “limitations section” at the very end of your article.

Some journals ask you to also discuss the strengths of your work in this section, and some allow you to freely choose where to include that information in your discussion section—make sure to always check the author instructions of your target journal before you finalize a manuscript and submit it for peer review .

Limitations of the Study Examples

There are several reasons why limitations of research might exist. The two main categories of limitations are those that result from the methodology and those that result from issues with the researcher(s).

Common Methodological Limitations of Studies

Limitations of research due to methodological problems can be addressed by clearly and directly identifying the potential problem and suggesting ways in which this could have been addressed—and SHOULD be addressed in future studies. The following are some major potential methodological issues that can impact the conclusions researchers can draw from the research.

Issues with research samples and selection

Sampling errors occur when a probability sampling method is used to select a sample, but that sample does not reflect the general population or appropriate population concerned. This results in limitations of your study known as “sample bias” or “selection bias.”

For example, if you conducted a survey to obtain your research results, your samples (participants) were asked to respond to the survey questions. However, you might have had limited ability to gain access to the appropriate type or geographic scope of participants. In this case, the people who responded to your survey questions may not truly be a random sample.

Insufficient sample size for statistical measurements

When conducting a study, it is important to have a sufficient sample size in order to draw valid conclusions. The larger the sample, the more precise your results will be. If your sample size is too small, it will be difficult to identify significant relationships in the data.

Normally, statistical tests require a larger sample size to ensure that the sample is considered representative of a population and that the statistical result can be generalized to a larger population. It is a good idea to understand how to choose an appropriate sample size before you conduct your research by using scientific calculation tools—in fact, many journals now require such estimation to be included in every manuscript that is sent out for review.

Lack of previous research studies on the topic

Citing and referencing prior research studies constitutes the basis of the literature review for your thesis or study, and these prior studies provide the theoretical foundations for the research question you are investigating. However, depending on the scope of your research topic, prior research studies that are relevant to your thesis might be limited.

When there is very little or no prior research on a specific topic, you may need to develop an entirely new research typology. In this case, discovering a limitation can be considered an important opportunity to identify literature gaps and to present the need for further development in the area of study.

Methods/instruments/techniques used to collect the data

After you complete your analysis of the research findings (in the discussion section), you might realize that the manner in which you have collected the data or the ways in which you have measured variables has limited your ability to conduct a thorough analysis of the results.

For example, you might realize that you should have addressed your survey questions from another viable perspective, or that you were not able to include an important question in the survey. In these cases, you should acknowledge the deficiency or deficiencies by stating a need for future researchers to revise their specific methods for collecting data that includes these missing elements.

Common Limitations of the Researcher(s)

Study limitations that arise from situations relating to the researcher or researchers (whether the direct fault of the individuals or not) should also be addressed and dealt with, and remedies to decrease these limitations—both hypothetically in your study, and practically in future studies—should be proposed.

Limited access to data

If your research involved surveying certain people or organizations, you might have faced the problem of having limited access to these respondents. Due to this limited access, you might need to redesign or restructure your research in a different way. In this case, explain the reasons for limited access and be sure that your finding is still reliable and valid despite this limitation.

Time constraints

Just as students have deadlines to turn in their class papers, academic researchers might also have to meet deadlines for submitting a manuscript to a journal or face other time constraints related to their research (e.g., participants are only available during a certain period; funding runs out; collaborators move to a new institution). The time available to study a research problem and to measure change over time might be constrained by such practical issues. If time constraints negatively impacted your study in any way, acknowledge this impact by mentioning a need for a future study (e.g., a longitudinal study) to answer this research problem.

Conflicts arising from cultural bias and other personal issues

Researchers might hold biased views due to their cultural backgrounds or perspectives of certain phenomena, and this can affect a study’s legitimacy. Also, it is possible that researchers will have biases toward data and results that only support their hypotheses or arguments. In order to avoid these problems, the author(s) of a study should examine whether the way the research problem was stated and the data-gathering process was carried out appropriately.

Steps for Organizing Your Study Limitations Section

When you discuss the limitations of your study, don’t simply list and describe your limitations—explain how these limitations have influenced your research findings. There might be multiple limitations in your study, but you only need to point out and explain those that directly relate to and impact how you address your research questions.

We suggest that you divide your limitations section into three steps: (1) identify the study limitations; (2) explain how they impact your study in detail; and (3) propose a direction for future studies and present alternatives. By following this sequence when discussing your study’s limitations, you will be able to clearly demonstrate your study’s weakness without undermining the quality and integrity of your research.

Step 1. Identify the limitation(s) of the study

This part should comprise around 10%-20% of your discussion of study limitations.

The first step is to identify the particular limitation(s) that affected your study. There are many possible limitations of research that can affect your study, but you don’t need to write a long review of all possible study limitations. A 200-500 word critique is an appropriate length for a research limitations section. In the beginning of this section, identify what limitations your study has faced and how important these limitations are.

You only need to identify limitations that had the greatest potential impact on: (1) the quality of your findings, and (2) your ability to answer your research question.

Step 2. Explain these study limitations in detail

This part should comprise around 60-70% of your discussion of limitations.

After identifying your research limitations, it’s time to explain the nature of the limitations and how they potentially impacted your study. For example, when you conduct quantitative research, a lack of probability sampling is an important issue that you should mention. On the other hand, when you conduct qualitative research, the inability to generalize the research findings could be an issue that deserves mention.

Explain the role these limitations played on the results and implications of the research and justify the choice you made in using this “limiting” methodology or other action in your research. Also, make sure that these limitations didn’t undermine the quality of your dissertation .

Step 3. Propose a direction for future studies and present alternatives (optional)

This part should comprise around 10-20% of your discussion of limitations.

After acknowledging the limitations of the research, you need to discuss some possible ways to overcome these limitations in future studies. One way to do this is to present alternative methodologies and ways to avoid issues with, or “fill in the gaps of” the limitations of this study you have presented. Discuss both the pros and cons of these alternatives and clearly explain why researchers should choose these approaches.

Make sure you are current on approaches used by prior studies and the impacts they have had on their findings. Cite review articles or scientific bodies that have recommended these approaches and why. This might be evidence in support of the approach you chose, or it might be the reason you consider your choices to be included as limitations. This process can act as a justification for your approach and a defense of your decision to take it while acknowledging the feasibility of other approaches.

P hrases and Tips for Introducing Your Study Limitations in the Discussion Section

The following phrases are frequently used to introduce the limitations of the study:

“There may be some possible limitations in this study.”
“The findings of this study have to be seen in light of some limitations.”
“The first is the…The second limitation concerns the…”
“The empirical results reported herein should be considered in the light of some limitations.”
“This research, however, is subject to several limitations.”
“The primary limitation to the generalization of these results is…”
“Nonetheless, these results must be interpreted with caution and a number of limitations should be borne in mind.”
“As with the majority of studies, the design of the current study is subject to limitations.”
“There are two major limitations in this study that could be addressed in future research. First, the study focused on …. Second ….”

For more articles on research writing and the journal submissions and publication process, visit Wordvice’s Academic Resources page.

And be sure to receive professional English editing and proofreading services , including paper editing services , for your journal manuscript before submitting it to journal editors.

Wordvice Resources

Proofreading & Editing Guide

Writing the Results Section for a Research Paper

How to Write a Literature Review

Research Writing Tips: How to Draft a Powerful Discussion Section

How to Captivate Journal Readers with a Strong Introduction

Tips That Will Make Your Abstract a Success!

APA In-Text Citation Guide for Research Writing

Additional Resources

Diving Deeper into Limitations and Delimitations (PhD student)
Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper: Limitations of the Study (USC Library)
Research Limitations (Research Methodology)
How to Present Limitations and Alternatives (UMASS)

Article References

Pearson-Stuttard, J., Kypridemos, C., Collins, B., Mozaffarian, D., Huang, Y., Bandosz, P.,…Micha, R. (2018). Estimating the health and economic effects of the proposed US Food and Drug Administration voluntary sodium reformulation: Microsimulation cost-effectiveness analysis. PLOS. https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002551

Xu, W.L, Pedersen, N.L., Keller, L., Kalpouzos, G., Wang, H.X., Graff, C,. Fratiglioni, L. (2015). HHEX_23 AA Genotype Exacerbates Effect of Diabetes on Dementia and Alzheimer Disease: A Population-Based Longitudinal Study. PLOS. Retrieved from https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001853

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Open-source data pipeline for street-view images: A case study on community mobility during COVID-19 pandemic

Contributed equally to this work with: Matthew Martell, Nick Terry

Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Software, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Industrial & Systems Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States of America

Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Software

Roles Data curation, Software

Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Project administration, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States of America

Affiliation Human Centered Design & Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Validation, Writing – review & editing

Matthew Martell,
Nick Terry,
Ribhu Sengupta,
Chris Salazar,
Nicole A. Errett,
Scott B. Miles,
Joseph Wartman,
Youngjun Choe

Published: May 10, 2024
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303180
Reader Comments

Street View Images (SVI) are a common source of valuable data for researchers. Researchers have used SVI data for estimating pedestrian volumes, demographic surveillance, and to better understand built and natural environments in cityscapes. However, the most common source of publicly available SVI data is Google Street View. Google Street View images are collected infrequently, making temporal analysis challenging, especially in low population density areas. Our main contribution is the development of an open-source data pipeline for processing 360-degree video recorded from a car-mounted camera. The video data is used to generate SVIs, which then can be used as an input for longitudinal analysis. We demonstrate the use of the pipeline by collecting an SVI dataset over a 38-month longitudinal survey of Seattle, WA, USA during the COVID-19 pandemic. The output of our pipeline is validated through statistical analyses of pedestrian traffic in the images. We confirm known results in the literature and provide new insights into outdoor pedestrian traffic patterns. This study demonstrates the feasibility and value of collecting and using SVI for research purposes beyond what is possible with currently available SVI data. Our methods and dataset represent a first of its kind longitudinal collection and application of SVI data for research purposes. Limitations and future improvements to the data pipeline and case study are also discussed.

Citation: Martell M, Terry N, Sengupta R, Salazar C, Errett NA, Miles SB, et al. (2024) Open-source data pipeline for street-view images: A case study on community mobility during COVID-19 pandemic. PLoS ONE 19(5): e0303180. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303180

Editor: Ahmed Mancy Mosa, Al Mansour University College-Baghdad-Iraq, IRAQ

Received: January 26, 2024; Accepted: April 20, 2024; Published: May 10, 2024

Copyright: © 2024 Martell et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All images collected throughout this longitudinal study are available on mapillary.com under the username ‘uwrapid’. Full instructions and code on how to reproduce the data pipeline described in this paper are available at https://github.com/marte292/rapid-data-pipeline . The processed output necessary to reproduce the regression analyses in this paper are within the supporting files.

Funding: The U.S. National Science Foundation (Grant Number 2031119) provided financial support for this research. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF. Data was collected using instrumentation provided by NSF as part of the RAPID Facility, a component of the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure, under Award No. CMMI: 2130997. There was no additional external funding received for this study.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Street-level imagery is becoming an increasingly popular form of data for research [ 1 ]. Between 2009 and 2020, more than 200 publications utilized street-level imagery from corporate sources in urban research [ 1 ]. Out of all these sources, Google Street View’s Street View Images (SVI) were the most popular among academics [ 1 – 3 ]. Uses for SVI data include estimating demographics [ 4 ], evaluating the built environment [ 5 ], surveying plant species [ 6 ], measuring pedestrian volume [ 7 ], among many other applications [ 8 – 10 ].

While SVI data can provide many useful insights for researchers, it is not without its flaws. For corporate-collected images such as Google Street View, or Tencent Street View the availability of images depends on where the companies decide to collect data, while the accessibility of these images hinges on the companies’ data provision policies. For example, there is no Google Street View service in most parts of Africa. An alternative to corporate-collected images are crowdsourced SVI databases such as Mapillary [ 11 ]. These crowdsourced images sometimes may have better coverage or temporal resolution than Google Street View, at the cost of varying image quality, field of view, and positional accuracy [ 3 , 12 ]. Perhaps the largest challenge with SVI data is its temporal instability. Updates to these image datasets at specific locations are infrequent, especially in rural areas [ 1 , 13 , 14 ]. Additionally, images frequently are not collected at a consistent time of day, or season, even within the same city. These issues make existing SVI data unreliable for temporal studies.

Typically, temporal studies involving image data use images (or video) from fixed locations. This data is used to do things such as evaluate disaster recovery [ 15 ], monitor ecological change [ 16 ], or measure urban flooding [ 17 ]. Data from fixed cameras is also used to count people [ 18 ]. The challenge with these methods is that they are fixed-location. In order to collect spatial image data for these methods, frequently a large team is required to traverse areas on foot. This challenge, along with existing SVI data’s temporal issues, demonstrate the potential value of collecting longitudinal SVI data.

Our main contribution is demonstrating the feasibility of collecting longitudinal SVI data. We demonstrate this through the creation of a complete data pipeline for conducting pedestrian counts using car-based street-level imagery. The pipeline accepts raw video collected by the camera as an input and outputs a record of each pedestrian detection and their locations (latitude and longitude). This approach allows for analysis of mobility patterns with high spatial resolution and a short lag time. It alleviates the quality and field of view inconsistencies that come with crowdsourcing SVI data [ 3 , 12 ], generates data that is not corporately owned, eliminates the temporal instability challenge of both kinds of data [ 1 , 13 , 14 ], while still maintaining the advantages of SVI data over fixed-location methods [ 15 ].

Specifically, we use this pipeline to generate and analyze video from 37 video-collection runs in the city of Seattle, Washington, USA from May 2020 through July 2023. The video data was converted into over 4 million high-resolution images, with each data-collection run representing about 1.5 TB of image data. We used the images to create a record containing the location of each detected pedestrian, cross-referenced to the relevant GEOID [ 19 ]. To detect pedestrians in the still images, our pipeline leverages the state-of-the-art convolutional neural network, Pedestron [ 20 ]. We used the cascade_hrnet architecture benchmarked on the CrowdHuman data set [ 21 ]. Our methods and dataset represent a first of its kind longitudinal collection and application of SVI data for research purposes.

As a secondary contribution, we provide a case study based on the video data collected throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. We examine the effect of vaccine availability and local demographics on pedestrian detections, while accounting for weekly and yearly seasonality. Community mobility became a key metric during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic as government officials worked to halt the spread of the virus [ 22 , 23 ]. Two of the largest and most widely used data sets for community mobility during this time were the Google Community Mobility Reports [ 24 ] and Apple Mobility Trends Reports [ 25 ]. Researchers used this data to study the incidence of COVID-19 in the US [ 26 ] and the effectiveness of government lockdown policies [ 27 , 28 ], among other topics. Issues with these two data sets include mandatory opt-in, use of specific map applications, a lack of independent verification, and no long-term data availability guarantees [ 26 , 28 – 30 ]. Our findings demonstrate the utility of our data processing pipeline as an alternative for tracking community mobility over time and show the potential for its use in a variety of research domains.

Data collection

We collected our data as a part of the Seattle street-level imagery campaign, an ongoing series of video surveys for the purposes of documenting mobility throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. During each survey, a vehicle equipped with a 360° video camera is driven along a pre-defined route through Seattle while collecting video data and GPS metadata. The route incorporates broad neighborhood/area canvassing designed to collect data useful to multidisciplinary researchers as well as capital transects. Full details on the route design are available in Errett et al. [ 31 ]. The capital transects specifically target capitals (social, cultural, built, economic, and public health) which are theorized to be closely tied to community resilience [ 32 ]. Specific canvassing areas and capitals within Seattle were chosen to ensure a representative sample of the overall population of Seattle [ 31 ]. While the drivers try to make the surveys as consistent as possible, occasionally exogenous factors caused deviations from standard protocols. For example, during three of the surveys (05-29-2020, 06-18-2020, and 06-26-2020), protests over the murder of George Floyd caused parts of the survey route to be unnavigable.

After consulting with the University of Washington Human Subjects Division, it was determined that this study was not considered human subjects research and would not require IRB approval. The data we captured was people in public places, where they cannot expect personal privacy. As an added precaution, all data for this study was published through Mapillary [ 11 ], which automatically obscures faces.

Data processing pipeline

After video collection, the raw data is segmented into image data. The images are subsampled from video frames so that they are collected about every 4 meters. The images are then uploaded into the DesignSafe-CI Data Depot [ 33 ]. From DesignSafe, the images are transferred to the TACC Frontera high-performance computing cluster [ 34 ]. We completed all file transfers between the two services using Globus [ 35 ]. Without access to these services, or similar ones, the storage and computing requirements for this project would be intractable.

On Frontera, orthorectification is performed to the images, then pedestrian detection is performed on the orthorectified images. The orthorectification transforms the images from a single image in the equirectangular projection to two images in the rectilinear (gnomonic) projection [ 36 ]. Pedestrians are detected on each of the new images using a convolutional neural network (CNN) based on a pre-trained model from the Pedestron repository [ 20 ]. Our data represents a highly challenging detection task, as there is great variation in lighting, backgrounds, human poses, levels of occlusion and crowd density from image to image and run to run. The Cascade Mask R-CNN architecture in the Pedestron repository performed well on the CrowdHuman data set, representing a similar challenge to our data [ 21 ]. All testing and use of the CNN was performed using GPUs on the Frontera cluster. An example image after undergoing orthorectification and pedestrian detection is shown in Fig 1 .

PPT PowerPoint slide
PNG larger image
TIFF original image

The left image is an original 360° image from a data collection run. The image on the right is the right-hand side of the original image after orthorectification and pedestrian detection (both sides of the image are processed separately). There are two pedestrians that were detected by the algorithm (in red bounding boxes).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303180.g001

Using one GPU node on Frontera, with four NVIDIA Quadro RTX 5000 GPUs, the entire process takes about 3 seconds per original 360° image. Given the 4 million images we collected, this takes about 3,300 hours of computing time. While this is not a small number, when running in parallel, the whole process can be completed in a manner of days. In comparison, a human taking 10s per orthorectified image to count all the pedestrians would take over 22,000 hours to complete the same task. File compression/decompression for file transfer also takes a substantial amount of time. Since we used DesignSafe as our main data storage platform, we had to transfer files to/from the Frontera supercomputer to perform our pedestrian detection. To avoid overloading the file transfer system, we compressed the images from each run into a tar file prior to transferring the files to Frontera. This file compression/decompression can take several hours per run, but can be performed in parallel with the detection algorithm since they are on different systems. After compression, file transfer using Globus [ 35 ] takes minutes.

In post-processing, the pipeline filters out low-confidence detections (defined as any detection with less than 80% confidence) and associates the remaining high-confidence detections to U.S. Cenus Bureau GEOIDs [ 19 ]. We arrived at this confidence level after tuning for the precision and recall of the CNN classifier. Specifically, the pipeline filters based on the output of the second to last layer of the CNN, known as a softmax layer . For a k –class classification problem, the softmax layer will output a k –dimensional probability vector, where each i th entry of the vector gives the probability that the original input to the CNN belongs to class i .

The final stage of post-processing is GEOID matching, where latitude and longitude metadata are cross-referenced to disjoint geographic regions (e.g. U.S. census tracts or block groups) and their respective GEOID codes. The cross-referencing code assumes the availability of shapefiles describing the geometry of the geographic regions. Aggregating the pedestrian detections according to U.S. Census Bureau GEOIDs [ 19 ] is necessary for analyses using sociodemographic data collected by the census. Additionally, the pedestrian detections can easily be cross-referenced with custom geometry defined using popular geographic information system software, such as the capitals data used in route construction and our analysis.

Following the GEOID matching step, the pedestrian detections data is written to a tabular format file (e.g. comma separated values). This file is an “analysis-ready” data product, in the sense that it is readable by most popular statistical analysis software (R, SPSS, Stata, etc.) and can be easily merged with other datasets using the GEOID column(s). A visual depiction of the entire pipeline is seen in Fig 2 . Full code and a manual for following our process is available at https://github.com/marte292/rapid-data-pipeline .

The parts of the flowchart in gray occur on NHERI DesignSafe-CI, while the right-hand part in blue is done on the Frontera cluster.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303180.g002

Case study: Community mobility in Seattle during the COVID-19 pandemic

Data processing..

All analysis is performed using the Python programming language version 3.11 [ 37 ]. The initial data product as outlined in the previous section is a list of detections, alongside the date of collection, geolocation, and GEOID. We also utilized a similar list of the images themselves with the same features. The last dataset we utilized is the median household income data and racial demographic data from the 2019 American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates. We aggregated the detections and image data for each data collection survey at the census tract level, then matched each census tract’s total number of detections and images to its respective demographic and income data.

We utilized the data from 36 of the 37 surveys, omitting data from 10-29-2020. A heavy rain event caused the survey to be stopped early due to poor video quality. For each survey, we divided the number of detections in each census tract by the number of images collected in the tract to create a normalized ‘detections per image’ metric. This is a necessary step as the number of images in each tract may change survey to survey due to circumstances outside our control, such as construction or community events altering the route.

The last step in data processing was to transform some of our data to be represented by categorical variables. The date of each survey was coded both as either a weekend or weekday, and by the season. The date was also coded as either being before, or after the date that vaccines became publicly available. Income data was coded to be one of 5 levels that were used during route design. These brackets were $48,274 and below, $48,275 to $80,819, $80,820, to $110,536, $110537 to $153,500, and $153,501 and above. Lastly, the proportion of the census tract’s population that identifies as non-white was coded as an indicator variable, with ‘1’ corresponding to areas that are 55.5% white or more. We determined this threshold using Jenk’s natural breaks optimization. This left us with a dataset of 3171 observations to be used for analysis. Each observation represented a census tract with a detections per image value, as well as values for each of the categorical variables defined above.

Initial regression analysis.

In addition to the above analysis, we subset the data by only looking at detections that occurred in an image with at least one other detection. Then we calculated detections per image again, and fit the above model again with the new response variable. This same process was followed for detections with at least two, three, and four other detections in the same image. The goal of these analyses was to see if there were different trends for larger groups of people when compared with the entire data set.

Data pipeline

Our main contribution, the open-source data pipeline, is publicly available on https://github.com/marte292/rapid-data-pipeline . The repository contains a process manual with step-by-step instructions on how to implement the data pipeline in Python [ 37 ]. The required Python libraries and system requirements are provided. Additionally, we provide enough code for future researchers to implement the pipeline on their own systems, with their own file structure. The pipeline is capable of processing terabytes of image data and outputting an analysis-ready data product in a matter of days (using high-performance computing, such as a single GPU node on Frontera, an academic supercomputer) with minimal human input.

Using data from the Seattle street-level imagery campaign, we calculated the number of detections per image across all data collection surveys. Fig 3 shows the detections per image for each survey, as well as the detections per image for the subset of detections sharing an image with at least 4 others. Fig 3 also displays the timestamp of COVID-19 vaccines becoming publicly available in Washington state.

As the survey dates are irregular, all dates are included in the figure. Please note that the axis for total detections per image does not start at 0. This was done purposefully to facilitate comparison between the trends of the two graphs.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303180.g003

Fig 3 depicts the trends over time for detections per image and detections sharing an image with at least 4 others. While both graphs exhibit similar trends overall, notably after vaccine rollout the graph of detections sharing an image with at least 4 others exceeds the graph of detections per image in all cases. The spike in detections seen in June 2020 is due to the large scale protests of police brutality that took place in Seattle in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder.

The full results of the linear regression model for total detections per image are displayed in Table 1 . They show that the season being summer is the only significant seasonal effect. Additionally, the income bracket is a significant predictor, with wealthier areas seeing less pedestrian traffic. Finally, a census tract having a population greater than 55.5% white is a significant positive predictor. All other variables are not significant, including vaccine availability.

The first three non-intercept terms represent indicator variables for the different seasons, with fall being the baseline. The Vaccine Available term represents a binary variable for whether the COVID-19 initial vaccination series was publicly available or not. Weekend is a binary variable for whether the data was collected on Saturday or Sunday. The four Income Bracket terms are indicator variables for the median income level of the census tract where the data was collected. The income brackets are defined in our methods. Lastly, the More than 55.5% White term is an indicator variable for if the census tract in question had a populace that is more than 55.5% White. Full documentation for the Python package used to make this output is available from the developers [ 38 ].

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303180.t001

For the regression models using a subset of data, the results are similar to the initial model. All models have the same significant predictors as the initial model. The model using the detections sharing an image with at least one other also had the weekend as a borderline significant, negative predictor. The models using detections sharing an image with at least 3 and 4 others had vaccine availability as a significant, positive predictor. The full results of the linear regression model for detections per image with at least 4 others are displayed in Table 2 , with all other regression models available in the supporting information.

Coefficients are defined the same as in Table 1 .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303180.t002

Comparison to Google Community Mobility data

Given the ability to measure community mobility through pedestrian counts, there is potential value of our pipeline for social sciences and public health research [ 22 , 23 ]. At an individual level, higher physical activity is known to predict better physical [ 39 , 40 ] and mental health [ 41 – 43 ], and is associated with higher self-reported satisfaction and quality of life [ 44 , 45 ]. In an aggregate sense, mobility is theorized to be an intermediate variable through which socioeconomic deprivation affects vulnerability to infectious disease [ 46 , 47 ], resilience to disasters [ 48 ], and exposure to environmental hazards [ 49 ]. In light of this body of literature, we argue that the use of pedestrian counts to assess mobility could be a differentiating factor in researching social and health inequity. One extremely common source of mobility data during the COVID-19 Pandemic has been Google Community Mobility Reports [ 24 ] and Apple Mobility Trends Reports [ 25 ]. While there have been improvements in recent years [ 50 ], there are known representation and self-selection biases with existing mobility data captured by smartphones and other internet-based data collection methods [ 51 – 55 ].

Given the large number of publications using smartphone data as the foundation for their work, a natural question is how our data compares to smartphone mobility data. Comparison between our data set and the still publicly available Google Community Mobility Reports data can reveal some of the similarities and differences between the two data sets [ 24 ]. Google Community Mobility data is reported at the county level in the United States. Since Seattle is in King County, Washington, the King County data is what we use to draw the comparison.

Google Community Mobility data does not provide raw mobility numbers, but rather is reported as a percentage change from the five-week period of Jan 5–Feb 6, 2020. This data is collected from smartphones running the Android operating system with location history turned on, which is off by default. The data is baselined by day of the week, so data from a given Monday is compared to the median of the five Mondays in the baseline window to calculate a percent change. Additionally, it is unclear how exactly Google quantifies mobility. It is mentioned that it combines number of visitors to a location with amount of time spent in that location, but no specifics beyond that are provided.

Google mobility data is broken down into different categories. The category that most closely aligns with one of the categories used in our analysis is parks. Although Google’s data classifies parks as official national parks and not the general outdoors, it does not indicate how it accounts for city or state parks. Our own data for park locations is based on the City of Seattle’s official classifications.

Fig 4 shows a comparison of our detections per image data against Google Community Mobility data. Note that not all surveys are included because Google Community Mobility data stopped being provided on October 15, 2022. Overall, the trends between the two data sets are remarkably similar, lending further credibility to our data collection procedure. The more notable differences in the graph are from the months of November 2020 through August 2021, where the Google mobility data shows a larger drop followed by an increase in community mobility than was visible through our own data.

The Pearson correlation between the two data sets is 0.387. The Google Community mobility data is aggregated at King County, WA, while our data covers a survey route within Seattle, which belongs to King County. As the dates of surveys were irregular (e.g., due to weather conditions), all dates are included in the figure.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303180.g004

One plausible explanation for this is the upwards sampling bias that occurs when using smartphone data [ 56 , 57 ]. Our data set captures anyone on the street, including individuals experiencing homelessness, who are less likely to have smartphones. This population was on the streets throughout the entirety of the pandemic, so they were consistently captured by our data collection efforts. This consistent baseline pedestrian count could lead to a lesser response to vaccine rollout and winter weather in our own data in comparison with Google’s. Additionally, there is a known income gap in both vaccination rates and smartphone ownership [ 58 , 59 ]. This gap could drive the increase in the Google Mobility data during vaccine rollout.

Implications, limitations, and extensions

Our results show that it is possible for researchers to collect and analyze longitudinal SVI data. The presented methods can be used to collect and process SVI data from 8 hours worth of video in a manner of days. This time will only further decrease with faster data processing infrastructure and methods. These methods will allow novel longitudinal SVI data to be collected for research in a variety of application areas.

The results of the case study also bear further discussion. We demonstrated expected relationships between seasonal effects like day of week and weather on pedestrian traffic. Additionally, we showed that pedestrian traffic is inversely proportional to income, a known result during the COVID-19 pandemic, as lower income households are constrained in their capacity to work from home or take time off of work [ 30 , 60 ]. Our results also showed that more white areas had higher on average pedestrian counts. This could be due to known trends, such as areas with larger non-white populations being more likely to stay home in response to government restrictions [ 61 ] and participate in other risk-reducing practices such as wearing a mask [ 62 ], or just due to local trends, as racial mobility trends tend to vary between cities [ 63 ]. These findings are consistent across all of our models, both looking at the entire data set, and the subsets examining pedestrians sharing an image. These results validate our method with respect to established literature, and provide a quantitative confirmation of results that had previously been found using cell phone data.

One new finding from our case study is that while overall pedestrian counts did not respond to vaccine availability, the subset of pedestrians who were in larger groups (4+ people in an image) did. Likely, the reason we did not see a response to the vaccine in the aggregate data is because our data only captures people who are outdoors. There is data that shows that outdoor pedestrian activity varied across cities, frequently increasing at recreation locations like trails, during the early days of the pandemic [ 64 , 65 ]. Given these increases at some locations, a return to ‘normal’ pedestrian traffic may not mean an increase, but rather a change in traffic patterns. Our data captures this by showing that there was a significant increase in larger groups of people after the vaccine became available. This implies that people were more willing to be near each other outdoors after they had been vaccinated.

While the data pipeline presented here does represent a method for generating a novel data product, there are implementation challenges worth further discussion. For data collection, in addition to the time required to drive the route limiting the places of interest the route could reach, there were also many tradeoffs that had to be made when designing the route itself [ 31 ]. Despite having our survey route carefully designed to assess a representative sample of the Seattle population, some bias in route design is unavoidable. Since the route design included data from the American Community Survey aggregated at the census tract level, there is an implicit assumption of spatial homogeneity of the population within each census tract. Such bias is a manifestation of the well-known modifiable areal unit problem [ 66 ]. Since the majority of the route was primarily based on locations of interest throughout the city, this concern is somewhat mitigated.

In terms of processing, the pre-trained model we used required a substantial amount of high-performance computing time, and at times the data product generated was so large as to be unwieldy. Given the challenge our data set represents, using a model designed to be generalizable is necessary to attain good detection results. As many state-of-the-art models perform substantially worse out of sample, we had to be careful to choose a model that was designed to perform well in this situation, at the cost of slower computing times [ 67 ]. Another unforeseen challenge was regular updates to the video camera’s software to process and segment the video data into images. Consistent image formatting was vital for the data processing pipeline to function, so regular quality checks are necessary to make sure the images are processed properly.

The data product created, pedestrian detections, has some limitations as well. First, our method only captures pedestrians who are outdoors and near enough to the street to be captured via camera. This means that our data set does not include people who are indoors at these locations of interest, or who are too far from the street to be seen by camera. While the changes over time in pedestrian traffic we observed are still meaningful, it is important to recognize they don’t capture everything. Similarly, our data cannot be interpreted as the actual number of pedestrians on the street. There is overlap in the image data, even when subset at 4 meter intervals and cropped during orthorectification. The orthorectified images only represent about 25% of the originals. However, this natural cropping is not enough to avoid the image overlap and further cropping would risk information loss. Pedestrians that appear in the foreground of one image may end up in the background of another. There are also several known instances of cyclists keeping relative pace with the street-view vehicle for several blocks, resulting in numerous detections. These issues are easy to circumvent in analysis by comparing the relative number of detections, although at the cost of interpretability.

Even with the above limitations, the data pipeline presented in this paper can be directly applied or adapted to be used in a number of contexts. Potential applications of longitudinal SVI data in assessing the built environment [ 14 ], broad urban research [ 1 , 3 , 68 ], and health research [ 8 ] have been well-documented, as the temporal instability of existing SVI data is discussed as a limitation in all of these fields. Beyond this, it is possible to estimate population demographics [ 4 ], and other neighborhood-level statistics [ 13 , 69 ] using SVI data. As our ability to quickly and accurately parse scenes using computer vision improves [ 70 ], potential application areas will only increase in number.

Another field where longitudinal SVI data could contribute a lot is disaster research. There is a substantial body of research dedicated to empirical methods for modeling various aspects of disaster recovery [ 71 ]. Our methods could be applied in this field to quantify recovery using pedestrian detections as a metric for community mobility, or another metric assessing the built environment as appropriate. Similar work has been done using repeat photography after Hurricane Katrina [ 15 ] but our methods represent a substantial increase in generated data, allowing for a wider range of analyses. Spatial video data collection for disaster reconnaissance has also been done [ 72 ], but involves manual assessment of the captured video. Our methods demonstrate that a fully-automated approach is possible, which would allow for more frequent data collection at a lower cost.

This article describes the creation of the first open-source SVI data pipeline for longitudinal analysis. Regression analysis based on the resulting longitudinal SVI data showed that pedestrian traffic patterns changed in response to the availability of the COVID-19 vaccine, thereby demonstrating the data pipeline’s usefulness in research and practice. In particular, we showed that there were statistically significant increases in groups of people in proximity to each other after the vaccine became publicly available. Our data also captured expected trends in pedestrian traffic based on annual seasonality and socioeconomic factors. Our results demonstrate the feasibility and value in collecting SVI data as part of a longitudinal study. Longitudinal SVI data is capable of providing valuable insights in a variety of fields of study. Future work includes applications of our methods in broader public health research, disaster research, and other fields of study that can benefit from longitudinal SVI data. Potential methodological directions include study-specific route design process improvements and newer pedestrian detection approaches, as further progress is made in this area.

Supporting information

S1 dataset. full dataset used for obtaining regression results presented in this paper..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303180.s001

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303180.s002

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge DesignSafe and the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin for providing the cyberinfrastructure that enabled the research results reported within this paper.

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Title: potential and limitations of llms in capturing structured semantics: a case study on srl.

Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) play a crucial role in capturing structured semantics to enhance language understanding, improve interpretability, and reduce bias. Nevertheless, an ongoing controversy exists over the extent to which LLMs can grasp structured semantics. To assess this, we propose using Semantic Role Labeling (SRL) as a fundamental task to explore LLMs' ability to extract structured semantics. In our assessment, we employ the prompting approach, which leads to the creation of our few-shot SRL parser, called PromptSRL. PromptSRL enables LLMs to map natural languages to explicit semantic structures, which provides an interpretable window into the properties of LLMs. We find interesting potential: LLMs can indeed capture semantic structures, and scaling-up doesn't always mirror potential. Additionally, limitations of LLMs are observed in C-arguments, etc. Lastly, we are surprised to discover that significant overlap in the errors is made by both LLMs and untrained humans, accounting for almost 30% of all errors.

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Open access
Published: 13 May 2024

The relationship between clinical symptoms of oral lichen planus and quality of life related to oral health

Maryam Alsadat Hashemipour 1 , 2 ,
Sahab Sheikhhoseini 3 ,
Zahra Afshari 4 &
Amir Reza Gandjalikhan Nassab 5

BMC Oral Health volume 24 , Article number: 556 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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Introduction

Oral Lichen Planus (OLP) is a chronic and relatively common mucocutaneous disease that often affects the oral mucosa. Although, OLP is generally not life-threatening, its consequences can significantly impact the quality of life in physical, psychological, and social aspects. Therefore, the aim of this research is to investigate the relationship between clinical symptoms of OLP and oral health-related quality of life in patients using the OHIP-14 (Oral Health Impact Profile-14) questionnaire.

Materials and methods

This descriptive-analytical study has a cross-sectional design, with case–control comparison. In this study, 56 individuals were examined as cases, and 68 individuals were included as controls. After recording demographic characteristics and clinical features by reviewing patients' records, the OHIP-14 questionnaire including clinical severity of lesions assessed using the Thongprasom scoring system, and pain assessed by the Visual Analog Scale (VAS) were completed. The ADD (Additive) and SC (Simple Count) methods were used for scoring, and data analysis was performed using the T-test, Mann–Whitney U test, Chi-Square, Spearman's Correlation Coefficient, and SPSS 24.

Nearly all patients (50 individuals, 89.3%) reported having pain, although the average pain intensity was mostly mild. This disease has affected the quality of life in 82% of the patients (46 individuals). The patient group, in comparison to the control group, significantly expressed a lower quality of life in terms of functional limitations and physical disability. There was a statistically significant positive correlation between clinical symptoms of OLP, gender, location (palate), and clinical presentation type (erosive, reticular, and bullous) of OLP lesions with OHIP-14 scores, although the number or bilaterality of lesions and patient age did not have any significant correlation with pain or OHIP scores.

It appears that certain aspects of oral health-related quality of life decrease in patients with OLP, and that of the OLP patient group is significantly lower in terms of functional limitations and physical disability compared to the control group. Additionally, there was a significant correlation between clinical symptoms of OLP and pain as well as OHIP scores.

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Lichen planus (LP) is a chronic and relatively common mucocutaneous disease that often affects the oral mucosa. The exact cause of the disease is yet to be discovered; however existing evidence suggests the involvement of immunologic processes in the etiology of the lesions. The disease is more common in women and middle-aged people, with an estimated prevalence ranging from 1% to 2.2% [ 1 ].

In the oral mucosa, LP typically presents as white lesions, often with erosions. The most common clinical pattern is the reticular form [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]. The most frequently affected oral sites are the buccal mucosa and, subsequently, the tongue and gingiva. Furthermore, the reticular, erosive, and bullous clinical patterns are common [ 5 , 6 ].

The prevalence of LP lesions and other epidemiological parameters reported in various studies vary significantly. One major reason for these variations is the differences in research methodologies, study populations, sampling techniques, and sample sizes. Many studies have been conducted in dental clinics and hospitals [ 2 , 3 , 4 ], and population-based studies are limited [ 5 , 6 ]. Given that many cases of oral LP are asymptomatic, and the possibility that these studies may not encompass all cases, this issue is raised. Moreover, the presence of lichenoid lesions as a broad spectrum of lesions with similar clinical and sometimes histological features can complicate the accurate diagnosis of LP [ 7 ].

Numerous clinical indices have been developed and refined based on clinical experience for the classification of oral LP [ 5 ]. Clinical features includes size, color, and location-based distribution [ 5 ]. The common clinical signs and symptoms of oral LP range from a burning sensation to severe chronic pain [ 4 ]. The measurement of pain associated with oral LP has been widely used in clinical practice and research [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 ].

Despite the availability of pain rating scales, none are capable of comprehensive assessment of the multidimensional aspects of pain [ 12 ]. Oral lichen planus is generally not life-threatening. However, the consequences of oral lichen planus can lead to the worsening of the quality of life in physical, psychological, and social dimensions. Effects such as difficulty eating certain foods, which can lead to weight loss or malnutrition in severe cases, have been reported. Dietary satisfaction is at risk and can impact happiness and social abilities [ 13 , 14 ].

Furthermore, speech problems that may result from dry mouth have also been reported [ 15 ]. Additionally, the presence of an ulcerative lesion can restrict the performance of daily oral hygiene activities [ 16 ]. In terms of sleep disturbances, patients with oral lichen planus have more sleep disorders compared to healthy individuals [ 17 ]. It appears that sleep deprivation can amplify pain signals and increasing pain sensitivity [ 18 ].

Some studies have shown that patients with oral lichen planus experience higher levels of stress and anxiety compared to healthy individuals [ 19 , 20 ]. Dissatisfaction with the appearance of oral lichen planus lesions on the lips, including whiteness, keratotic plaques, atrophic erythematous areas, or ulcers, as well as hyperpigmented coffee-colored or black areas following inflammation, has been reported [ 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 ], and this potentially affects the quality of life of patients due to its impact on aesthetics.

In relation to the social burden, it was investigated the aspects of OLP, including social cost, work loss or school absence, are related to the economy [ 26 ]. Lastly, it was revealed that the impact of OLP could cause the avoidance of social interactions, such as social gatherings or eating-out parties [ 13 ].

The concept of Oral Health-Related Quality of Life ( OHRQoL) had been developed and introduced into all fields of dentistry, including oral medicine [ 24 ]. For clinicians, the application of OHRQoL revealed the importance of understanding the disease from the patient’s perspectives. Moreover, the goal of OLP treatment should focus, not only on healing the lesion and reducing pain, but also improving OHRQoL. Taking these factors into considerations, we believe that using merely clinical indicators is not sufficient, and the added value of subjective patients’ symptoms and OHRQoL in the research studies are anticipated [ 5 , 24 ]. A number of previous studies have examined OHRQoL in OLP patients [ 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 ]. Most studies were conducted with the cross-sectional design. Various patient-based outcomes were used, for example, pain, self-perceived oral health, oral health satisfaction, as well as OHRQoL indices. Among the studies that applied the OHRQoL index, the Oral Health Impact Profile index (OHIP) was most frequently used [ 11 , 28 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 36 , 39 ]. The OHIP consists of 49 or 14 items (short form) covering a wide range of patient’s symptoms and problems of oral functioning. Therefore, the OIDP measures the changes in daily life performances which are considered as the ultimate oral impacts caused by various perceived symptoms [ 40 ].

Therefore, the aim of the present study was to assess OHRQoL of OLP patients using the OHIP index. Furthermore, the associations of OHRQoL and pain perception with OLP clinical characteristics in terms of localization, type, number and severity, according to Thongprasom sign scoring system were examined.

This study employed a descriptive-analytical and cross-sectional design with a case–control approach. Inclusion criteria for the case group included patients aged 18 or older who had been clinically and histopathologically diagnosed with oral lichen planus and confimed diagnosis. The clinical diagnosis of lichen planus was based on white lesion with Wickham’s striae in the forms reticular (fine white striae cross each other in the lesion), popular, erythematousor atrophic (areas of erythematous lesion surrounded by reticular components), ulcerative or erosive, plaque and Bullous. Also, the three classical histological feature of oral lichen planus what were put forward first by Dubreuill in 1906 and Shklar was used in this study (liquefaction degeneration of basal layer, overlying keratinization, lymphocytic infiltrate within the connective tissue that is dense and resembles a band) [ 24 ].

Additionally, the onset of their lesions should have occurred less than 3 years ago. On the other hand, exclusion criteria for the case group consisted of patients with other oral mucosal lesions, pregnant, smokers, and people with other oral mucosal changes and medical conditions which can have an additive role in the psychology of the patient and that could potentially affect their quality of life.

Furthermore, a total of 68 individuals with healthy oral mucosa were included as the control group. Inclusion criteria for the control group were participants aged 18 or older with no oral lesions or medical conditions such as diabetes that could affect their quality of life.

To conduct the study, patient records were reviewed, and demographic information, including gender, age, lesion type, time since the initial diagnosis of oral lichen planus, and clinical characteristics, were recorded. Additionally, phone contact was established with patients to assess pain severity and complete the OHIP-14 questionnaire.

A total of 56 individuals were examined in the case group and 68 individuals with healthy oral mucosa were included as the control group based on similar studies' sample sizes (z: 1.96, p = q = 0.5, d = 0.05).

The clinical severity of lesions was assessed using the Thongprasom scoring system [ 6 ], where scores ranged from 1 to 5, with 1 meaning only mild white lines, 2 meaning white lines with atrophic area < 1 square centimeter, 3 meaning white lines with atrophic area ≥ 1 square centimeter, 4 meaning white lines with erosive area < 1 square centimeter, and 5 meaning white lines with erosive area ≥ 1 square centimeter. In the case of multiple oral lichen planus lesions, the highest score among all lesions was recorded.

Regarding pain assessment, participants were asked to rate their current pain intensity related to oral lichen planus on a Visual Analog Scale (VAS), ranging from 0 to 10, where 0 indicated no pain, and 10 represented the worst imaginable pain. Pain scores were categorized into mild (0–3), moderate (4–7), and severe (8–10) [ 12 ].

The Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP-14) questionnaire, which had a valid Persian version, was used to evaluate the quality of life of the patients [ 26 ]. This questionnaire comprised 14 items assessing various aspects of mental functioning and quality of life. It included seven subdomains: functional limitations, physical pain, psychological discomfort, physical disability, psychological disability, social disability, and handicap, with each subdomain containing two questions.

Two methods were employed to assess the responses: The Additive method and the Simple Count (SC) method. In the first method, the options of the questionnaire were scored as follows: 0 = never, 1 = rarely, 2 = sometimes, 3 = often, and 4 = always. The OHIP-14 score ranged from 0 to 56, with lower scores indicating better quality of life. Additionally, a "severity" measure was calculated to represent better mental perception. The severity scores were categorized into five groups: very low, low, moderate, severe, and very severe. In the SC method, options were scored as 0 for never and rarely, and 1 for sometimes, often, and always. This method was considered to account for the possibility that some individuals might not perceive the real difference between the questionnaire options. The OHIP-14 score ranged from 0 to 14 [ 27 ].

Data analysis was conducted using the T-test, the Mann–Whitney U test, the Chi-Square, Spearman's Correlation Coefficient, and SPSS Version 24. The significance level for data analysis was set at P < 0.05.

In this case–control study, 56 patients with histopathologically confirmed oral lichen planus and 68 healthy individuals, who had no complaints of oral mucosal diseases and had either accompanied patients or visited the School of Dentistry for routine dental examinations, were respectively enrolled as the case and control groups. The case group consisted of 36 females and 20 males, with a mean age of 48.2 ± 4.3 years, a minimum age of 39, and a maximum of 64 years. These two groups were matched in terms of age, gender, and oral health status ( P = 0.12, 0.41, 0.23, respectively). Table 1 displays the demographic characteristics and oral health status of the participants.

Twenty-two individuals (39.3%) among the participants had oral lichen planus lesions for one year, 18 of them (32.1%) between one to three years, and 16 of them (28.6%) had lesions for less than one year. Almost all patients (50 individuals—89.3%) complained of pain; however, the average pain intensity was primarily mild (34 individuals—60.7%), followed by moderate (14 individuals—25%), and the rest (8 individuals—14.3%) reported severe pain. The mean pain score was 3.1 ± 0.9.

Considering the clinical features of oral lichen planus, the commonly affected mucosal sites were buccal mucosa (78.2%), followed by gingiva (62.5%), tongue and lips (17.6%), palate (16.1%), and floor of the mouth (3.9%). Equal to 46.2% (23 individuals) had a reticular and popular type of oral lichen planus, 22% (13 individuals) had a combination of reticular, atrophic, and erosive types, 14.3% (8 individuals) had atrophic, 10.7% (6 individuals) had ulcerative, and finally, 10.7% (6 individuals) had bullous lesions. Regarding the distribution of oral lichen planus lesions, approximately 46.3% were bilateral, and the rest involved more than two sites.

The impact of oral lichen planus on the quality of life is presented in Table 2 . About 82% (46 individuals) of patients stated that oral lichen planus have affected their quality of life. The total OHIP-14 score was 10.12 ± 18.15 in the case group and 8.71 ± 15.11 in the control group, with no statistically notable difference between the two groups ( P = 0.05). The mean and standard deviation of OHIP-14 subgroups in each of the case and control groups using two evaluation methods are shown in Tables 2 , 3 and 4 . As observed, the case group had a greater functional limitation compared to the control group ( P = 0.03). Also, using the SC evaluation method, the patient group reported significantly lower quality of life in terms of functional limitation and physical disability ( P = 0.01, 0.02, respectively). There was a statistically noticeable difference between the mean total OHIP-14 score and its subgroups among genders (men more than women, P = 0.01). There was no significant difference between the mean total OHIP-14 score and its subgroups concerning age ( P = 0.09).

This study demonstrated a positive statistical correlation between clinical symptoms of oral lichen planus, pain, and the OHIP-14 questionnaire score. With an increase in the Thongprasom Sign Score, the OHIP-14 score increased. Pain in patients with oral lichen planus was associated with clinical severity, and a significant relationship was observed in this regard Table 3 .

The location and clinical manifestation type of oral lichen planus lesions were related to the OHIP-14 questionnaire score. The study showed that oral lichen planus in the palate significantly affected the OHIP-14 score, leading to a significant increase in the score. Patients with ulcerative, erosive, and bullous types of oral lichen planus reported remarkably higher pain levels compared to other types. Although the number of lesions did not have any correlation with pain and questionnaire score. Table 4

Lichen planus is a relatively common chronic skin disease that often affects the oral mucosa. Patients with oral lichen planus suffer from symptoms that affect their daily life in various fields. Although the etiology of oral lichen planus is not known, the role of mental disorders, especially stress, anxiety and depression, in the pathogenesis of the disease is discussed [ 23 , 24 , 25 ].

Chronic diseases of the oral mucosa can definitely affect the quality of life. Therefore, several studies have investigated the quality of life related to oral health of patients with oral symptoms [ 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 ]. Patients with erosive lichen planus suffer from symptoms that affect their daily life in various fields. There are different tools and questionnaires for evaluating the quality of life related to oral health. These tools are used to complete clinical evaluations and strengthen the relationship between patients and physician, also patients can have a better understanding of the consequences of oral diseases in their daily life and their impact on quality of life [ 31 ].

OHIP-14 is a questionnaire that was first used by Slade in 1997 to evaluate the quality of life related to oral health. This questionnaire examines 7 aspects of the quality of life related to oral health, including functional limitation, physical pain, mental discomfort, physical disability, mental disability, social disability and disability [ 28 , 32 ]. LOCKER model shows the effect of oral conditions on these 7 aspects of quality of life. Based on this model, the first level of factors affecting the quality of life related to oral health are functional limitations, physical pain and mental discomfort. At the next level, there are many factors that cause more problems in people's lives, which include physical, mental, and social disability, and finally, people may feel disabled in life due to oral diseases, which includes the last level of this model [ 31 ].

In this case–control study, 56 patients with confirmed lichen planus were considered as the case group and 68 healthy individuals who had visited Kerman Dental School for routine dental examinations \ without any muco-oral disease, were included in the study under the title of control group. The case group included 36 women and 20 men. The average age was 48.2 ± 4.3 years and they were at least 39 and at most 64 years old.

Twenty-two (39.3%) of the participants had oral lichen planus lesions for 1–5 years. 18 people (32.1%) had the lesion for more than 5 years and 16 people (28.6%) for less than 1 year. Almost all patients (50 people—89.3%) complained of pain. However, the average intensity of pain was mostly mild (34 people-60.7%), followed by moderate (14 people-25%) and the rest (8 people-14.3%) severe. The average pain score was 3.1 ± 0.9.

In Khalili and Shojaei's study [ 32 ], the mean age of the patients was 42 ± 14.2, and the patients ranged in age from 6 to 73 years. Silverman et al. [ 33 , 34 ] in 2 studies reported the mean age as 52 years (22–80 years) and 54 years (21–82 years).

Equal to 46.2% (23 people) of the patients had reticular and popular type of lichen planus. 22% (13 persons) were a combination of reticular, atrophic and erosive types, 14.3% (8 persons) were atrophic, 10.7% (6 persons) were ulcers and finally 10.7% (6 persons) were bullous. According to the number of oral lichen distribution, about 46.3% were bilateral and the rest involved more than two places.

In Khalili and Shojaei's study [ 32 ], it was reported that the frequencies of female and male patients are 49.6% and 50.4%, respectively. The studies by Silverman and colleagues [ 33 , 34 ] revealed that 65 to 67% of patients are women, and Vincent and colleagues reported this rate to be 76% [ 35 ]. Silverman et al. [ 33 ] found that the frequency of reticular lesions as 34% and the type of injury as 59.9%, and in another study, the frequency of reticular lesions was 28.5% and the type of injury was 71.58% [ 34 ]. In Vincent et al.'s research work [ 35 ], the frequencies of reticular, atrophic and ulcreated lesions were 24.3%, 33.6% and 41.9%, respectively.

Due to the fact that reticular lesions are not biopsied in most cases, the results of this study do not reflect the actual distribution of the disease in the population. In the mentioned studies, the amount of atrophic and injured type is more than the reticular type, and the reason for this is the examination of patients referred to diagnostic and treatment centers. It is obvious that because the reticular type has no pain and clinical symptoms, the referrals of affected people and even their awareness of the lesion are less than other types of diseases.

According to the clinical features of oral lichen planus, the three most common sites were buccal mucosa (78.2%), followed by gums (62.5%), tongue and lips (17.6%), palate (16.1%) and floor of the mouth (3.9%).

In the study by Khalili and Shojaei [ 32 ], the most common sites of involvement were the mucous membrane of the cheek and gums, followed by the tongue, and in 67% of cases, involvement was seen in only one anatomical site. The common conflict is consistent with all the researches that have been done before [ 33 , 34 , 35 ]. In the studies by Khalili and Shojaei [ 32 ] and Myers et al. [ 36 ], lesions have been presented in several areas of the mouth in most cases.

Based on the results of this research, the quality of life related to the oral health of the patient group was lower than that of the healthy group, and the patients with oral lichen planus expressed significantly more functional limitations and physical disability than the healthy group. Functional limitation in many patients was due to their dissatisfaction with the change in the taste of the mouth, and their physical disability was mostly due to dissatisfaction with the type of food they were eating. This finding is in accordance with the research of Tebelnejad et al. [ 27 ]. Based on the investigation by Lopez-Jornet et al. [ 28 ], who examined the quality of life related to oral health in patients with oral lichen planus in Spain the patients' quality of life was slightly lower than the control group and the patients' quality of life was reported to be lower in terms of mental disability, social disability and disability.

The difference between the findings in the study by López-Jornet et al. [ 28 ] and those obtained in the present work can be related to the different population under study and the sample size.

Ashshi et al.'s research [ 37 ] showed that oral lichen planus has significantly poorer quality of life in Chronic Oral Mucosal Disease Questionnaire-26 (COMDQ-26) and Oral Potential Malignant Disorder QoL Questionnaire (OPMDQoL) compared to dysplasia. In addition, patients with oral lichen planus aged 40 to 64 years were independently associated with higher COMD-26 scores compared to older patients (> 65 years).

The present investigation depicted that there is a significant relationship between the type of ulcerative, atrophic and bullous lesion and the presence of a lesion in the palate and increased pain intensity.

The increase in pain and irritation in the oral mucosa of patients with oral lichen planus can be a reason for the effect on the functional and physical aspects of the patients' quality of life and on the effect of lichen disease, which has also been found in the study of Hegarty and colleagues [ 30 ]. The oral plan emphasizes the quality of life and its physical, social and psychological aspects.

In the research of Saberi et al. [ 38 ] on patients with erosive/ulcerative OLP, there was a significant relationship between oral pain and the total score of COMDQ as well as its physical, social and emotional domains.

In this research, the total score of OHIP-14 in the case group was 18.15 ± 10.12 and in the control group was 15.11 ± 8.71, without any statistically significant relationship between the two groups, such that the case group had more functional limitations than the control group. Also, by using the SC evaluation method, the patient group expressed a significantly lower quality of life compared to the healthy group in terms of aspects of functional limitation and physical disability.

The study of Daume et al. [ 39 ] showed that the average score of OHIP-14 in the case group is 13.54 and there is a significant difference between the two groups. There was a significant difference in the areas of physical pain, mental discomfort, physical disability and social disability. Physical pain score and eating restriction score were significantly different between clinical forms.

Although in the present study it seems that oral lichen planus disease has caused the quality of life of people to decrease, "according to the decrease in the quality of life in the first and second levels of the LOCKER model, it has not led to the third level of disability in the LOCKER model, which is confirmed by the research by Tebelnejad et al. [ 27 ].

The quality of life related to oral health of patients referred to oral diseases England, and also people with oral diseases and functional limitation, physical pain and discomfort was studied by Llewellyn and colleagues [ 31 ] and Slade [ 40 ]. They faced more mental problems than the general population. Although these diseases have caused a lower quality of life according to the first level of the LOCKER model, they have not caused disability.

Osipoff et al. [ 41 ] showed that erosive lichen planus is not significantly related to the increase in pain intensity, which is consistent with the findings of Gonzalez-Moles et al. [ 42 ]. Research by Suliman et al. [ 43 ] and Hegarty et al. [ 44 ] reported more severe pain and quality of life problems in patients with erosive lichen planus.

Our findings showed that pain intensity doesn’t have any relation with bilateral lesions. These results are in accordance with other findings [ 13 , 27 , 45 , 46 , 47 ]. However, Osipoff et al. [ 41 ] found that lichen planus is the most painful lesion, which is not in agree with our results.

The results of Wiriyakijja et al.'s study [ 48 ], which is consistent with previous researchs [ 49 , 50 ], showed that patients with ulcerative lichen planus experienced a greater impact on quality of life than those with other clinical types. Also, patients with ulcerative lichen planus reported significant levels of oral discomfort when eating certain foods, performing health care, more concerns about medication use, and more psychosocial burden. This finding is consistent with a previous study, which showed the change and avoidance of diet in patients with lichen planus regardless of the presence of ulcerative/erosive lesions [ 51 ]. Therefore, it seems that regardless of the clinical type, the presence of lichen planus have a negative effect on various types of patient activities and all oral symptoms such as pain [ 52 , 50 ].

Vilar-Villanueva et al. [ 53 ] found a higher OHIP-14 score for patients with atrophic/ulcerative lichen planus compared to patients with reticular lichen planus. Karbach et al. [ 54 ] reported similar findings. However, Parlatescu et al. [ 55 ] did not find a significant difference between asymptomatic and symptomatic lichen planus patients. They attributed this observation to the small number of clinical subtypes of lichen planus, but Wiriyakijjia et al. observed a poor quality of life score in ulcerative lichen planus patients compared to keratotic lichen planus patients [ 56 ].

As discussed above, these preliminary results of association analyses from current investigation were subject to certain limitations. First, our cross-sectional data would not allow for evaluating the effects of OLP treatment on OHRQoL. The data were mostly derived from follow-up patients, while 15.2% of patients were newly diagnosed who never previously been treated. For recall patients, information on OLP treatment was not available. Treatment experience in terms of type and duration of treatment might affect patient’s quality of life. Two previous longitudinal studies following OLPpatients after treatments reported significantly improved clinical signs, as well as OHRQoL [ 33 , 34 ].

Therefore, further longitudinal study to assess overtime change of OIDP intensity, taking into account previous or ongoing treatment, would be required for better understanding on the impacts of OLP treatment on patients’ quality of life. Second, some of the previous studies performed multivariate analysis where confounding factors were taken into account [ 28 , 35 ]. The others limitation was non-cooperation of a number of patients and Incomplete number of files.

However, this study applied only univariate analyses due to a relatively small sample size. The small sample size led to the third limitation on the generalization of our findings to OLP patients, particularly for reticular OLP as discussed earlier. Therefore, future study with larger sample size is required in order to corroborate the present study’s findings.

The current study demonstrated that nearly all patients had oral impacts affecting their daily activities. The impacts were frequently related to eating, cleaning the oral cavity and emotional stability. There were significant associations between OLP clinical signs and OHRQoL. However, some increasing clinical scores did not correspond with the increase of OHRQoL. Therefore, using only an OLP sign scoring index or other clinical indicators might fail to acknowledge patient’s perceptions. The results supported the application of OHRQoL assessment to complement OLP clinical measures.

It seems that some aspects of the quality of life related to oral health are reduced in patients with lichen planus. The quality of life related to oral health in the group of patients with lichen planus is significantly lower in terms of functional limitations and physical disability was more than the control group. There was also a significant relationship between the clinical symptoms of lichen planus and pain.

Non-cooperation of a number of patients.

Incomplete number of files.

Otherwise the limitation of this finding was relatively small numbers of patient with soft palate involvement.

Our cross-sectional data would not allow for evaluating the effects of OLP treatment on OHRQoL.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This study is part and in parts identical of the doctoral thesis ‘The relationship between clinical symptoms of oral lichen planus and quality of life related to oral health’ by Sahab Sheikhhoseini at the Dental school, University of Kerman, Iran, under the supervision of Maryam Alsadat Hashemipour

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Maryam Alsadat Hashemipour: writing, critical evaluation of the manuscript and designed the study. Sahab Sheikhhoseini & Zahra Afshari: data collection. Amir Reza Ganjalikha Nassab: manuscript editing

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The verbal informed consent is approved by the ethics committee of Kerman University of Medical Sciences. The informed verbal consent was obtained from the participants for examinations and participation in the study following the provision of the needed explanations by the research deputy of Kerman University of Medical Sciences. All the information on the subjects will remain confidential. The authors would like to express their gratitude to the Vice Deputy of Research at Kerman University of Medical Sciences for their financial support (Reg. No. 401000588). This project was approved by the Ethics Committee of the university with the code IR.KMU.REC.1401.560. All experiments were performed in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations (such as the Declaration of Helsinki).

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Hashemipour, M.A., Sheikhhoseini, S., Afshari, Z. et al. The relationship between clinical symptoms of oral lichen planus and quality of life related to oral health. BMC Oral Health 24 , 556 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12903-024-04326-2

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Limitations of the international approach to anti-corruption: a systematic review of South Africa’s compelling case of failing anti-corruption

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In the Global South, anti-corruption initiatives continue to fail despite varying commitments to the international anti-corruption agenda. Concurrently, as this study demonstrates, researchers investigating this paradox appear confined within orthodox explanations for failing anti-corruption efforts. Through a systematic review of 58 studies, this paper demonstrates that South Africa’s anti-corruption corpora from 1995 to 2022 fall to this critique. By employing socio-legal theoretical perspectives, the paper elucidates how and why the orthodoxy dominates the corpora and subsequently suggests a more nuanced understanding of the country’s ongoing failure to combat corruption. For example, the paper argues that the intricacies of South Africa’s corruption challenge the perspective that anti-corruption measures fail simply due to widespread rule-breaking. Through the prism of legal pluralism, this paper demonstrates that adherence to rules is indeed prevalent in South Africa, albeit often not aligned with formal state anti-corruption legislation and regulations. Finally, the paper posits innovative approaches to enhance and broaden our comprehension of why anti-corruption efforts fail, especially in the Global South.

Introduction: towards a better understanding of corruption and anti-corruption

International Anti-Corruption Initiatives: a Classification of Policy Interventions

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Introduction

The United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and non-governmental entities like Transparency International converge upon a set of shared tenets and best practices regarding how to eradicate corruption globally. This commonality in perspective underpins what might be termed an international anti-corruption consensus (Gephart, 2009 , p. 8; Kuldova et al., 2024 ). Sampson ( 2010 , p. 262) articulates this notion further, observing that this consensus projects itself globally as an extensive array of policies, regulatory measures, conventions, training modules, and programmes dedicated to enhancing integrity and ameliorating public governance.

Regrettably, corruption persists as a potent scourge worldwide, casting a shadow of doubt over the efficacy of the international anti-corruption consensus (Gutterman & Lohaus, 2018 ). Numerous scholars and policy experts concur that the strategies and technologies of international anti-corruption consensus disproportionately depend on a principal-agent theoretical framework that misrepresents the complexity of corruption (Persson et al., 2010 , 2013 ) and neglects the nuanced local realities that are crucial for the successful implementation of anti-corruption measures (Jackson, 2020 ; Khan et al., 2019 ). In this paper, the aforementioned theoretical postulations are termed “the orthodoxy.”

Through a critical interpretive synthesis (CIS) of studies published between 1995 and 2022 on South Africa’s anti-corruption efforts, this paper elucidates how anti-corruption researchers appear confined within the orthodoxy in their attempt to unravel why the country’s anti-corruption efforts have yielded minimal results. Subsequently, this paper draws on socio-legal theories and critical corruption scholarships to present a nuanced understanding of the country’s failing anti-corruption and posit innovative approaches that can enhance our comprehension of corruption and anti-corruption in general.

This paper is structured as follows. The subsequent section provides a background on (anti) corruption in South Africa. Section three delves into the theoretical underpinnings that guide this study. Section four articulates how the Critical Interpretive Synthesis (CIS) method was employed in the study, and the subsequent section— section five —presents the study’s findings on why South Africa’s anti-corruption regime is failing. These findings are assembled under three interrelated thematic corpora from an interpretive synthesis of the eligible literature. Section six incorporates key arguments from the thematic corpora to illuminate their overall contribution to understanding the country’s failing anti-corruption, thereby suggesting how the corpora appear confined within the orthodoxy. Subsequently, in this section, the paper attempts a more nuanced understanding of the country’s ongoing failure to combat corruption. Lastly, the final section ( section seven ) proffers a summary of primary findings and their implications, supplemented by research recommendations for future studies.

Anti-corruption in South Africa: a compelling case

South Africa’s violent history, apartheid, and white supremacy are crucial to understanding the country’s anti-corruption challenges. The apartheid regime was inherently corrupt. According to Lodge ( 1998 ), the National Party, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, promoted transactive corruption by favoring white civil servants to foster the socio-economic fortunes of the white minority. Although this system was driven by the goals of Afrikaner Nationalism rather than individual enrichment (Seegers, 1993 ), it paved the way for a corrupt regime by the 1980s, especially at the homeland government level (Bauer, 2000 ; Lodge, 1998 ). The impending end of white rule led to a rush to exploit and plunder state resources (Hyslop, 2005 ; Van Vuuren, 2006 ). As one official described, many felt they were missing out if they did not engage in corruption (Bauer, 1999 , p. 78). Consequently, lack of accountability, kickbacks, favoritism, cronyism, and bribery became common in various state departments (Bauer, 1999 ; Hyslop, 2005 ; Lodge, 1998 ).

Despite democratic reforms and increased scrutiny, corruption remained pervasive across various sectors due to pre-existing structural weaknesses and ingrained habits (Lodge, 2001 ). Integrating former homeland administrations into new local governments and the infusion of political solidarity among the new ruling elite and its supporters perpetuated patrimonial habits, noticeably intensifying corruption in provincial and local governments (Lodge, 2001 ). Moreover, various new stimulants for corrupt behaviour, such as the shortages of skilled staffing in financial control systems and the expansion of citizen entitlements to public resources, arose (Camerer, 2009 ; Lodge, 1998 ; Van Vuuren, 2006 ). The systemic and structural weaknesses of the new state, coupled with the emergence of a new economic elite, culminated in creating an environment in which corruption flourished (Hyslop, 2005 ; Lodge, 1998 ).

The extent to which the country’s violent and racialized histories shape its current anti-corruption legislative framework is unclear. Today, South Africa is a devoted signatory to several anti-corruption conventions, such as the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) and the African Union Convention, to mention a few (Langendorf, 2015 , p. 57). It is essential to highlight, however, that before the ratification of the UNCAC, South Africa did not have legislation explicitly targeting corruption. Hence, corruption was fought through a general National Crime Prevention Strategy.

Meanwhile, the country has implemented several anti-corruption interventions over the last two decades. Nevertheless, these interventions have yielded minimal results (Budhram & Geldenhuys, 2018 ; Gray, 2021 ). The recent misappropriation of the Covid-19 relief fund, evidence of tender irregularities and scandals at the Ministry of Health, and the killing of a whistleblower in the Gauteng Health Department suggest that corruption is still endemic in the country (Patel & Govindasamy, 2021 ).

South Africa is distinct in many ways but shares some significant commonalities with other sub-Saharan countries. The country’s multi-racial demography, settler colonial historical legacy, relatively strong constitutionalism, multi-party liberal democracy, and economic development over the last two decades set it free from the trappings of the stereotypical African context where bad governance and the lack of the rule of law are used to explain away failing anti-corruption efforts. Aside from its strong constitutionalism and the rule of law, South Africa had the best anti-corruption legislation on the African continent, having significantly implemented the UNCAC provisions and receiving a “Very Good” rating in the integrity index (Integrity, 2008 ). Hence, South Africa’s failing anti-corruption regime represents a compelling analytical case for understanding the intricacies of the international anti-corruption consensus.

Theoretical perspectives on [anti]-corruption

Combatting corruption comprises three interdependent efforts: understanding corruption, designing counteractive strategies, and establishing anti-corruption institutions to enforce and implement the strategies. Developing a far-reaching theoretical characterization of corruption has perhaps been the most challenging among these interdependent efforts.

The orthodoxy and its critique

Rose-Ackerman’s ( 1997 , 2008 ) conceptualization of corruption as the “misuse of public office for private gain” and variants of it (see, for example, Nye, 1967 ; Transparency International, 2022 ; World Bank, 1997 ) has resounded well with academics, policymakers, and shaped international anti-corruption practice for decades (Mungiu-Pippidi, 2013 ). In this view, corruption occurs when the authority of a public official is exercised in a manner that violates the public trust and contravenes its anticipated purpose of pursuing the public’s collective interest (Ganahl, 2014 ; Rose-Ackerman, 2008 ). According to Tanzi ( 1998 ), the public-private divide stresses corruption among public officials and shadows corrupt practices in the private sector or private-private corruption. Nevertheless, the Transparency International variant of the definition seems to offset this critique. By conceptualizing corruption as the abuse of ‘entrusted power’ for private gain, the dichotomy remains. However, the description encompasses public and private officials (Transparency International, 2022 ).

Critical corruption scholars argue that this conceptualisation frames corruption within a rational-legal bureaucratic system marked by structured hierarchy and distinct roles within the public sector aimed at functioning on codified, logical, and societal rules. In contrast, the private sphere is shaped by familial obligations, emotions, beliefs, and customs. Moreover, it views corruption as dysfunctional, ethically reprehensible, transactional, and definitively harmful (Gutterman & Lohaus, 2018 ). However, this perspective is inherently Western and may not align with non-Western societies, where the boundary between public and private realms is more fluid, with private aspects like family obligations and spirituality influencing the public sphere (Zaloznaya, 2013 ). Thus, cloaked as universal, this perspective is reductive and imposes Western notions of corruption on variable local experiences and cultural understandings (Zaloznaya, 2013 ).

Furthermore, this conceptualisation primarily construes corruption as motivated by an individual’s cost-and-benefit calculus or, as Zaloznaya ( 2013 , p. 711) rehearses March and Olsen ( 1994 ), a form of rationality that reflects the logics of consequence whereby people break legal and ethical codes for the sake of material benefits and power. Thus, individuals’ self-seeking instrumental calculus amidst entrusted power creates corruption opportunities. Also known as the principal-agent theory, this perspective views corruption as occurring in a dualistic relation where the official (agent with entrusted power) has more information and discretional power in a specific situation and uses this advantage for their gain, even when it goes against the interests of the public (principal) (Rose-Ackerman, 2008 ; Tanzi, 1998 ). Within this perspective, corruption persists amidst principals’ poor supervision, monitoring, and sanctioning of officials (Jackson, 2020 ).

Anti-corruption reforms, especially those promoted by the international anti-corruption consensus through international best practices and conventions, as well as through political pressure from Western governments and aid conditionalities from international organizations such as the World Bank and IMF, are along the lines of this theoretical perspective and, therefore, often promote counteractive measures that seek to primarily enhance monitoring, supervision, transparency, accountability, and the compliance of public agents with bureaucratic norms, procedures, and formal rules (Khan et al., 2019 ; Kuldova et al., 2024 ; Sampson, 2005 ; Zaloznaya, 2013 , p. 707).

Meanwhile, several scholars insist that the principal-agent perspective mischaracterises the nature and mechanism of corruption, especially in systemic corrupt contexts. Rothstein ( 2021 ) argues that “principals,” as assumed in the principal-agent perspective, barely exist in these contexts because the top politicians and bureaucratic leaders accrue the most from corruption and thus are less incentivised to combat it. In the case of developing countries, Khan et al. ( 2019 , p. 8) add that the perspective erroneously assumes that people are generally rule-abiding; hence, corruption results from occasional violations that can be addressed with improvements in good governance, transparency, and accountability. However, in reality, rule violation is generally more prevalent. As a result of this theoretical mischaracterisation, the implementation of the UNCAC and other international best practices has yielded minimal results, especially in systemic corrupt contexts (Jackson, 2020 ; Khan et al., 2019 ; Persson et al., 2010 ).

Critics of the principal-agent perspective argue that corruption, when systemic, is mainly a collective action problem. The collective-action theory proposes that corrupt practices persist in the contexts of their occurrence because they are generally considered the norm. As a result, people either lose or sometimes gain little from behaving otherwise, especially if it is impossible to trust that others in the same context will follow suit (Bauhr, 2017 ; Kaufmann et al., 2015 ; Marquette & Peiffer, 2015a ; Mungiu-Pippidi, 2013 ). In this context, corruption is seen as a manifestation of “free-riding” behaviour (Olson, 1971 ). This interpretation of corruption considers good governance, rule of law, transparency, and accountability as public goods that are non-excludable (meaning it is impossible to prevent people from benefiting) and non-rivalrous (one person’s use does not diminish availability for others) (Marquette & Peiffer, 2015b , p. 3; Rothstein, 2011 ). As a result, even individuals who do not actively contribute to producing good governance, accountability, and transparency can still reap the benefits, becoming what is known as “free riders.” Hence, those who engage in corruption do so out of self-interest, knowing their participation will not lead to losing their beneficial status (Marquette & Peiffer, 2015b , p. 6). Furthermore, free riders also perceive their contribution to the production of good governance as insignificant, with the expectation that others will also free-ride on their efforts.

The collective-action perspective emphasizes that corruption is a collective rather than an individual issue (Marquette & Peiffer, 2015a ). It implies that effective anti-corruption initiatives must build mutual trust in producing good governance, transparency, and accountability. Nevertheless, both principal-agent and collective action theories postulate that individuals are motivated by self-interest; therefore, increasing surveillance and implementing punitive measures can enhance accountability and curb corruption (Marquette & Peiffer, 2015b , p. 6).

Socio-legal perspectives

According to Krygier ( 1990 ), law is a tool the state uses to translate its wishes into action and maintain social order. However, several socio-legal scholarships have critiqued this instrumental view, which construes law as external to society. These scholarships demonstrate that law is constitutive or integral to society (Halliday & Morgan, 2013 ; Sarat & Kearns, 2009 ; Silbey, 2005 ), thus emphasizing the importance of individuals’ understanding and interpretation of the law (Halliday & Morgan, 2013 ) which shape their everyday behavior (Hertogh, 2004 ).

Informed by this constitutive perspective, recent socio-legal studies on anti-corruption have presented more nuanced explanations for the limited success of anti-corruption efforts, particularly in non-Western countries. For example, these studies highlight the importance of legal pluralism in understanding why anti-corruption efforts fail (Bierschenk, 2008 ; Urinboyev & Svensson, 2018 ). Legal pluralism refers to the coexistence and clash of multiple sets of rules or ‘legal orders’ that interrelate with and influence people’s social behaviour. These legal orders encompass various forms of law, including national/state law, customary rules, religious decrees, moral codes, and practical norms (Griffiths, 2003 ; Merry, 1988 ). The concept of legal pluralism recognizes that state law is just one of many legal orders within society. Especially in non-Western societies, legal anthropology studies have demonstrated the existence of non-state normative systems or “semi-autonomous fields,” as Sally Moore calls them, that possess defined boundaries and internal mechanisms, including extra-legal activities that challenge externally directed behavioural changes that contradict the field’s normative order (Moore, 1972 , p. 720). Members of semi-autonomous fields feel a moral obligation to conform to the internal rules and moral codes because their membership is contingent upon their conformity to internal norms rather than external expectations (Overman et al., 2014 ). Consequently, this poses crucial challenges to legal and administrative reforms that contravene the internal norms of semi-autonomous fields.

The legal pluralism perspective ties in with legal consciousness studies investigating the taken-for-granted worldviews and assumptions about law and legality that shape people’s everyday behavior (Halliday & Morgan, 2013 , p. 2). Legality in the legal consciousness approach signifies the ‘meaning, sources of authority, and cultural practices commonly recognised as legal, regardless of who employs them or for what ends’ (Ewick & Silbey, 1998 , p. 22). Holen ( 2023 , p. 22) succinctly defines this notion of legality as an assemblage of normativity, i.e., the state laws, morals, social norms, religious norms, commands, customs, expectations, and etiquette. Legal consciousness scholarships suggest that at the individual level, on the one hand, this intricate assemblage of normativity shapes people’s understanding of legality—what is right or wrong, corrupt or not—in varying situations. On the other hand, at the structural level, this intricate assemblage of normativity could account for why a discrepancy comes to exist between what the law purports to offer and what it achieves in reality— typically called “the gap problem” in socio-legal research (Halliday & Morgan, 2013 , p. 3; Silbey, 2005 , p. 323).

The legal pluralism and legal consciousness approaches can deepen our understanding of why corruption persists even amid international-standard anti-corruption legislative and institutional frameworks, especially in third-world countries. These socio-legal perspectives provide a critical theoretical toolkit for understanding this discrepancy beyond the orthodoxy . By empirically focusing on everyday social logic, local cultural categories, and norms concerning the law, these perspectives can disentangle the intricacies of legality that shape individual understanding and attitude regarding corruption on the one hand and, on the other hand, how these complexities come to produce the structural ineffectiveness of anti-corruption initiatives.

Systematic review method

According to Tranfield et al. ( 2003 ), systematic review methods differ from traditional narrative reviews because they rely on a more transparent and rigorous process of gathering and selecting literature. This study employed the Critical Interpretive Synthesis (CIS) systematic review method. The CIS approach is a novel review method that combines conventional systematic methodology with qualitative analysis techniques from grounded theory and meta-ethnography (Depraetere et al., 2021 ; Flemming, 2010 ). This method comprises the following steps: searching the literature, eligibility assessment, data extraction, and interpretive synthesis (Dixon-Woods et al., 2006 ). In searching for literature, this study followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodological guidelines (Moher et al., 2009 ). Thus, a search was conducted on the Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, and Google Scholar databases for studies published between January 1995 and June 2022 via the following search term in the title or abstract:

[corruption OR anti-corruption OR anti-corruption]

[South Africa]

The search resulted in 529 records. These comprised 89 papers from Web of Science, 58 from Scorpus, and 382 from Google Scholar. Afterward, duplicates were identified and removed, bringing the total down to 474 records. Then, the titles and abstracts of the 474 records were screened, after which all potentially eligible studies were extracted via the Zotero reference management software for further eligibility assessment. The potential eligible studies comprised only peer-reviewed journal articles, books, or chapters of books published in English within the social sciences from 1995 to 2022. However, to be eligible for the interpretive synthesis, a potential study should have been concerned with, but not limited to, South Africa’s anti-corruption institutions, agencies, strategies, laws, regulations, and policies. Eventually, 58 of the 474 records met the eligibility and quality criteria and were selected for the critical interpretive synthesis (Fig. 1 ).

PRISMA flow diagram

Subsequently, the lines-of-argument synthesis strategy (LOA) (Noblit et al., 1988 ) was used to identify and synthesise evidence, key findings, and critical arguments found in the 58 eligible literature into three interrelated scholarly corpora that comprehensively account for South Africa’s failing anti-corruption. It is possible that some relevant studies may have used words synonymous with corruption or anti-corruption and were thus uncaptured by this systematic method’s search strategy. Also, studies that use specific names of places or organisations in South Africa without mentioning “South Africa” in the abstract or title may have been omitted. I conducted a “retrospective reference list checking” of the 58 eligible studies to address these limitations (Gough & Richardson, 2018 , p. 125). However, no additional eligible studies were found. Thus, the 58 eligible studies reflect a substantial proportion of research on South Africa’s anti-corruption regime.

This study found an overall increase in peer-reviewed anti-corruption research on South Africa, particularly in the last decade, a period where the country’s corruption woe is reported to have peaked (Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2022 ) and public discourse was marked by a growing discernment of corruption’s pervasiveness in the country (James, 2023 ). However, most of these studies employed secondary research methods in investigating anti-corruption at the macro or national level. The lack of primary empirical investigation, chiefly ethnographic inquiries of anti-corruption at South Africa’s sub-national or local level, is alarming because understanding local contextualities is crucial to effective anti-corruption design and implementation. Notwithstanding, the synthesis of findings and critical arguments within the 58 eligible anti-corruption studies produced three mutually supporting corpora that comprehensively account for South Africa’s failing anti-corruption. Broadly, the first corpus demonstrates the country’s lack of ethical and dedicated political and bureaucratic leaders. The second corpus appraises South Africa’s anti-corruption regime, i.e., legal and institutional framework. It examines its susceptibility to politicisation and political pressure. Lastly, the third corpus shifts attention to the actor’s anti-corruption perspective. It investigates the intricacies of anti-corruption compliance in South Africa (Fig. 2 ).

Number of eligible studies per year

Corpus one: lack of ethical and dedicated leaders

Data Box 1: Review-Data in Corpus One

In 2001, Tom Lodge asserted that “detracting from the government’s proclaimed commitment to fighting corruption are attacks by senior politicians on the work of anti-corruption agencies” (Lodge, 2001 , p. 62). Lodge’s assertion still holds. Bruce ( 2014 ) observed that political actors attain and maintain control over crucial anti-corruption agencies by controlling their politically appointed top officials.

In Naidoo’s ( 2013 , p. 531) view, “no aspect of South Africa’s anti-corruption efforts have coveted as much political controversy as the country’s specialised institutional responses.” The controversial disbandment of the Directorate of Special Operations (DSO) and verdicts from Hugh Glenister v President of the Republic of South Africa & Others are watershed events that epitomise the country’s challenges with political interference and the politicisation of its anti-corruption regime (Mphendu & Holtzhausen, 2016 ; Pillay, 2017 ).

Shortly after its establishment in 2001, the DSO launched a fierce campaign against corruption and organised crimes. Eventually, they gained a reputation for investigating and prosecuting high-profile cases occasionally involving top-ranking members of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) (Berning & Montesh, 2012 ; Naidoo, 2013 ; Pillay, 2017 , p. 6).

Parenthetically, in 2007, the ANC, during its National Congress, resolved that the DSO should be disbanded (Kinnes & Newham, 2012 ). As a result, the Parliament passed the South African Police Service Amendment Bill to dissolve the DSO and replace it with the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (DPCI) (Berning & Montesh, 2012 ). Whereas the disbanded DSO was under the National Prosecution Authority (NPA), its successor, i.e., the DPCI, was placed under the South African Police Service (SAPS). Ultimately, the DSO’s closure severely compromised the state’s ability to investigate and counter corruption (April & Sebola, 2016 ; Berning & Montesh, 2012 ). For example, April and Sebola ( 2016 ) demonstrate that under the DPCI, corruption-related arrests and convictions rates declined by 60 per cent and 83 per cent, respectively.

Consequently, the public accused the ANC government of dissolving the DSO to undermine investigations to protect corrupt ANC party officials (Berning & Montesh, 2012 ; Bruce, 2014 ; Keightley, 2011 ; Kinnes & Newham, 2012 ; Mphendu & Holtzhausen, 2016 ; Tushnet, 2019 ). Eventually, the Constitutional Court ruled that the legislation establishing the DPCI was unconstitutional because it failed to secure an adequate degree of independence for the DPCI (Berning & Montesh, 2012 ; Kinnes & Newham, 2012 ; Olutola, 2014 ; Tushnet, 2019 ). Besides, the DCPI has been plagued with unstable leadership, factionalism, and illegal promotion and appointments (Pillay, 2017 ).

However, the DSO’s demise was also due to several mistakes during their investigation and prosecution of high-profile cases. For example, they violated the principles of attorney-client privileges and exceeded their jurisdiction by collecting intelligence without a legal basis (Berning & Montesh, 2012 ). Moreover, Quarcoo ( 2009 ) insists that the DSO’s demise became imminent early in its establishment when they made the prosecution of high-profile individuals their primary focus. He claims that the investigation and prosecution of top politicians by anti-corruption agencies like the DSO may suggest that the law reserves no haven for the political elite. However, due to the political ramifications of such endeavours, the agency’s prosecutorial powers invariably are vulnerable to partisan application, or the accusation thereof, both impugning the agency’s legitimacy” (Quarcoo, 2009 , p. 33). Quarcoo argues that a country that overemphasises the prosecutorial instead of preventive functions of its anti-corruption agencies risks jeopardising its sustainability, which seems to have been the fate of the DSO.

South Africa’s struggles with political interference and politicisation of anti-corruption are complex. There are no indications, at least in this corpus, that this problem can be circumvented through institutional design due to the rather unfortunate efficacy of collective political actions. One may, therefore, assume that South Africa’s anti-corruption enforcement will improve if its top political leaders become dedicated, willing, and ethical (Lodge, 2001 ; Mphendu & Holtzhausen, 2016 ; Okafor, 2009 ).

However, the corpus cautions that improved political will and dedication must be accompanied by innovative bureaucratic leadership required to design, adjust, and enforce measures (e.g., ethics training) to improve the moral climate of their institutions and reduce corruption (Lekubu & Sibanda, 2021 ; Mantzaris, 2016 ; Naidoo, 2012 ; Parboteeah et al., 2014 ). In the country’s local governance, for example, April and Sebola ( 2016 ) observed that appointing senior officials based on only political connectivity and employment equity is rampant. This absence of meritocracy has ushered many departments under incompetent leaders who do not effectively apply the country’s anti-corruption laws and policies, thereby creating institutional environments that entrench unethical and corrupt practices (Majila et al., 2014 ; Manyaka & Nkuna, 2014 ).

In any case, leaders must exemplify their institution’s code of conduct and other professional ethics in their daily behaviour to improve the ethical climate of their institutions (Parboteeah et al., 2014 ). Sadly, many public sector departments in South Africa are led by unethical leaders who instead exploit loopholes in their systems for personal gain (Naidoo, 2012 ; Odeku, 2019 , p. 11). Bribery and corruption prevail even within the top leadership of the country’s anti-corruption enforcement agencies (Olutola, 2014 ). In the last decade alone, two successive National Commissioners of the SAPS have been implicated, and one was convicted for corrupt practices (Keightley, 2011 ; Kinnes & Newham, 2012 ). In addition, there is evidence of some clerks and judges engaging in bribery (Roelofse et al., 2014 ; Sundström, 2015 ) and corrupt senior managers converting anti-corruption incentives into reward schemes for colluding subordinates (Sundström, 2019 ). Meanwhile, leaders who resist political interference are unceremoniously removed from office (Pillay, 2017 ).

Corpus two: political susceptibility of anti-corruption regime

Data Box 2: Review-Data in Corpus Two

South Africa’s anti-corruption legal framework is considered sound because it conforms to international anti-corruption standards (Kurakin & Sukharenko, 2018 ; Langendorf, 2015 , pp. 57–58; Majila et al., 2014 ; Safara & Odeku, 2021 , pp. 209–214). Aside from the existing legal framework, there are recent calls for a “right to freedom from corruption law” (Maseko, 2021 , p. 127; Mubangizi, 2020 , p. 245; Mubangizi & Sewpersadh, 2017 , p. 67). Advocates of this law maintain that it will empower ordinary people to demand transparency and accountability and claim constitutional damages from corrupt public officials. Simultaneously, the legal framework is plagued with voluminous laws and technical formalities, resulting in ambiguities and conflicting provisions (Kanjere & Koto, 2021 ; Sewpersadh & Mubangizi, 2017 , p. 14). Hence, it is unclear how the passing of more laws will improve the country’s fight against corruption.

Besides, for Langendorf ( 2015 ), passing anti-corruption laws in South Africa has primarily been mere adherence to the prescripts of international law. Makiva ( 2021 ) shows evidence of Langendorf’s claim in her mixed-method comparative study of public procurement corruption in Kenya and South Africa. She found that although the design of institutional architecture adheres to international law and best practices, leaders often deliberately put weak internal controls in place to lubricate corrupt activities. As a result, she concludes that the adherence of these countries’ anti-corruption design to international law and best practices is perhaps primarily to attain legitimacy from the international community (Makiva, 2021 ).

Analyses of the DSO’s disbandment and the Glenister case suggest that in practice, South Africa’s anti-corruption laws are often either not applied or selectively applied, and its anti-corruption institutions are not sufficiently independent (Langendorf, 2015 , pp. 84–87; Sewpersadh & Mubangizi, 2017 , p. 14). Nonetheless, it is the primary responsibility of anti-corruption institutions and agencies to enforce and implement the country’s anti-corruption measures. Therefore, if the legal framework is presumably sound amid widespread corruption, one may be inclined to scrutinise the country’s anti-corruption institutional framework.

South Africa’s anti-corruption institutional model relies on rich and varied laws, rules, and regulations, creating about 19 institutions, agencies, and coordinating mechanisms (Pillay, 2017 ). According to Dassah ( 2014 ), the country’s model suffers from every possible weakness of the multi-agency model, such as red-tapism, patronage networking, and rivalry among agencies. In addition, the mandates of the anti-corruption agencies are unclear and overlap, leading some observers to argue that the model lacks proper oversight, coordination, a unified strategic approach, and a leading central agency (Bruce, 2014 ; Chetty & Pillay, 2017 ; Faull, 2011 ; Pillay, 2017 ). These scholars concur that South Africa should establish an independent and centralised single anti-corruption agency (Majila et al., 2014 , p. 236; Montesh & Berning, 2012 , p. 135). However, Mphendu and Holtzhausen ( 2016 ) maintain that because anti-corruption requires a multi-faceted approach that reinforces all pillars of South Africa’s integrity system, no single institution can eliminate the country’s corruption single-handedly. Instead, improving the coordination between agencies can enhance speedier prosecution and the effectiveness of the anti-corruption architecture (Naidoo, 2013 , p. 533).

Subsequently, instead of a single centralised agency, Budhram ( 2015 , p. 53), for example, calls for the formation of a Corruption Intelligence Centre (CIC) that will gather and share crucial information and intelligence needed for other anti-corruption agencies to function effectively. Accordingly, South Africa’s National Development Planning Commission (NDP) refutes claims that fragmentation of anti-corruption efforts is a crucial problem for the country’s fight against corruption (Bruce, 2014 ; Pillay, 2017 ). To this end, the commission emphasises the importance of the existing checks and balances in the current multi-agency model. It claims that the country does not have the institutional foundation suitable and adequate for establishing a single-agency model (Bruce, 2014 ).

Nevertheless, it is discernible within the literature that the most crucial challenge of the country’s multi-agency framework is its susceptibility to political interference and pressure (Bruce, 2014 ; Dassah, 2014 ; Imiera, 2020 ; Keightley, 2011 ; Lodge, 2001 ; Majila et al., 2014 ; Mphendu & Holtzhausen, 2016 ; Naidoo, 2013 ; Pillay, 2017 ; Roelofse et al., 2014 ). Ostensibly, it is usual for corrupt employees to gain impunity through protection from government officials (Roelofse et al., 2014 ). For example, Majila et al. ( 2014 ) employed a self-administered structured questionnaire to several officials from provincial departments in the Eastern and Northern Cape to examine whether anti-corruption agencies are apolitical and capable of exercising their duties effectively. They found that, in most cases, political power was used to protect the corrupt activities of family members, friends, and political supporters. Similarly, Nzo’s ( 2016 , p. 114) ethnographic study of the political complexities involved in council decision-making in the Northern Cape revealed that political pressure to show loyalty to the ANC political party influenced ANC councillors and other political officeholders to ignore legal recourse against certain persons implicated in financial misconduct. Due to political interference, anti-corruption agencies have become increasingly unmotivated to devote themselves wholly to their duties because the effective and appropriate enforcement of laws and regulations often depends on the will and determination of political actors (Majila et al., 2014 ).

However, Naidoo ( 2013 ) argues that the problem of political interference and pressure has little to do with the current multi-agency approach and more to do with the principal-agent lines of accountability upon which the country’s anti-corruption strategies and institutional framework are designed. After an intra-institutional and inter-institutional analysis of South Africa’s anti-corruption enforcement, Naidoo ( 2013 , p. 523) observes that because the integrity of the country’s approach is shaped by principal-agent accountability, institutional or political actors can compromise or sideline anti-corruption mechanisms through collective action efforts. Therefore, even though the call for a single-agency model is profound in the eligible literature and chiefly inspired by the successes of Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), proponents have struggled to demonstrate how this framework will be more resilient to collective action efforts and political pressure (Bruce, 2014 ; Mphendu & Holtzhausen, 2016 ; Pillay, 2017 ).

Corpus three: contextual realities of anti-corruption compliance

Data Box 3: Review-Data in Corpus Three

Generally, understanding contextual realities requires primary empirical, often ethnographic, research methods. As shown in the descriptive analysis of the eligible literature, there is a lack of ethnographic enquiries into South Africa’s anti-corruption efforts. This dearth explains why corpus three comprises relatively few studies compared to one and two, which focus on more structural and macro-level intricacies.

Nevertheless, this corpus highlights the complexities of the country’s corruption problem that are crucial to understanding compliance and non-compliance with anti-corruption rules and regulations. In South Africa, corruption can be embedded in loyalties and solidarities forged around a contemporary political morality that rationalises the act as a form of redress and a means to reverse historic racial inequities (Bruce, 2014 ; Gray, 2021 , p. 377; Mubangizi, 2020 ). According to Bruce ( 2014 , p. 57), these contemporary solidarities and loyalties are “manifestations of political and other solidarities, partly animated by ideas of justice and associated with opposition to apartheid and the apartheid period more generally.” Gray ( 2021 , p. 377) describes this as a sense of entitlement, a feeling of the state’s indebtedness to one who struggled during the apartheid and was deprived because of it.

Even though this political morality may emanate from deeply held beliefs and worldviews concerning the country’s socio-economic realities, such rationalisation could also serve as a neutralisation technique (Bruce, 2014 ). Due to this prevailing political morality, the prescripts of the Constitution have become just one of several moral points of reference and, hence, not unambiguously adhered to by many (Bruce, 2014 , p. 54; Munzhedzi, 2016 ; Bähre, 2005 ). Consequently, the implementation of government policies such as the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), ideally aimed at empowering the previously disadvantaged, has instead culminated into fertile avenues with opportunities for individuals and groups with political connections to pursue self-interest (Bruce, 2014 , p. 57; Munzhedzi, 2016 , p. 1). Furthermore, Bähre’s ( 2005 ) anthropological study indicates that this prevailing political morality perpetuates the pervasive culture of silence and impunity surrounding corrupt practices.

Meanwhile, other scholarships underplay the socio-political dimension of this morality to argue that corruption’s pervasiveness is instead indicative of a general moral crisis in South Africa (Mantzaris, 2016 ; Odeku, 2019 ; Pitsoe, 2013 , p. 751; van Niekerk, 2003 , p. 137). To illustrate this, Mantzaris ( 2016 ) explains that in South Africa, individual desires for personal gratification have heightened due to the portrayal of lavish lifestyles as a valued norm through commercialism and advertisement. Owing to this status quo, individuals with inadequate training in moral ethics and values cannot restrain themselves when encountering corruption opportunities (Mantzaris, 2016 ; Odeku, 2019 ; Pitsoe, 2013 , p. 751; van Niekerk, 2003 , p. 137). However, Nomtha Gray’s ( 2021 ) case study demonstrates that construing compliance/non-compliance as simply a product of individual ethics and morals is perhaps reductionist.

Gray found that “authority and seniority also conferred rectitude,” leading low-level officials to treat irregular instruction as ethics and principles of their ‘principals’ (Gray, 2021 , pp. 378, 380). His interviews demonstrate that informal sanctioning and micro-power relations in South Africa’s public procurement departments lead low-level officials to believe that acting contrary to irregular instructions from their superiors amounts to insubordination (Gray, 2021 , p. 378). Consequently, officials execute irregular instructions even when they do not understand them. This practice led him to conclude that South Africa’s public procurement practices are reminiscent of apartheid-era levels of compliance that prioritise ‘following orders’ above formal procurement policies (Gray, 2021 , p. 369).

Gray’s observation corroborates Brogden and Nijhar’s ( 1998 , p. 104) arguments that corrupt practices in South Africa are sustained through interstices of power masked within permissive formal procedures. To a large extent, Gray ( 2021 ) demonstrates the implication of informal norms and micro-power relations on compliance or non-compliance with formal rules and bureaucratic protocols. Alexander et al. ( 2022 ) further unravel these intricacies by showing that compliance or non-compliance is also shaped by officials’ perceptions of the applicability, suitability, and relatability of formal rules and bureaucratic protocols to the contextual realities of their daily work.

In a mixed-method study of anti-corruption challenges and opportunities in urban planning, Alexander et al. ( 2022 ) found that most public planners believe that their code of conduct is vague and complex and does not correspond to the daily socio-political realities of their work. These socio-political realities include financial and human resource constraints, overlapping administrative and political systems, and competing socio-economic, environmental, and spatial needs. According to Alexander et al. ( 2022 , p. 8), this discrepancy has resulted in the planners’ dependence on individual negotiation and deal-making outside the formal planning process. However, in doing so, they establish the normative validity of their conduct on the “logic of appropriateness” — they conduct themselves in ways they deem appropriate for specific situations (Alexander et al., 2022 , p. 8). Therefore, they may not view non-compliance with formal rules and regulations as corruption and vice versa.

South Africa’s anti-corruption appears to be confined within the orthodoxy. Essentially, the corpora suggest that the country’s anti-corruption regime adheres to the principal-agent model, which hinges primarily on oversights, regulations, and enforcing formal regulations and bureaucratic procedures. However, this model is undermined by the absence of ethical ‘principals,’ whose integrity is essential for its success. The corpora indicate that corruption in South Africa is better understood as a collective action problem, wherein corrupt behavior is perceived as “normal” and mutually expected by both principals and agents. This situation results in a lack of incentive from both parties to combat it. Nonetheless, the collective action theory does not offer an exhaustive account for understanding and addressing corruption in South Africa.

Beyond the orthodoxy

The consensus apparent within the corpora concerning the robustness of South Africa’s anti-corruption legislation is fraught with challenges. This consensus is based on South Africa’s adherence to the UNCAC and international best practices. As a result, the corpora exonerate the legislation prematurely, shifting the attention toward law enforcement and policy implementation. However, as posited by Langendorf ( 2015 ), South Africa’s corruption problems indicate that it may have followed the UNCAC roadmap but has undoubtedly gotten lost because the map is not the territory. Undoubtedly, the international anti-corruption consensus faces particular difficulties concerning the tension between the universality of the anti-corruption norms and its simultaneous contextualization of specific and local application” (Gephart, 2009 , p. 4). Hence, the conformance of South Africa’s anti-corruption regime with the UNCAC and international best practices may inadvertently undermine its sensitivity to the country’s socio-political and legal context.

Furthermore, such adherence to international law may also subjugate the country’s anti-corruption regime to the domination, control, and neo-liberal interests of the Global North or the West. However, this claim cannot be considered a given because universal norms can arise through participatory crafting processes (Fassbender et al., 2012 ). Besides, Africa is an active innovator and generator of norms within the international legal order (Gathii, 2012 ; Levitt, 2008 ).

Nevertheless, scholars of the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) maintain that international law extends a historical pattern that privileges Western interests. These scholars argue that international law has played a complicit role in fostering neo-colonial relationships, perpetuating a relation in which the Global North imposes its social, economic, and political interests on the Global South (Mutua, 2000 , p. 31). As Chimni ( 2022 , p. 46) contends, contemporary imperialism has shifted from direct colonization to consensually negotiated shared rules, deploying multi-layered strategies like power, mediation, and revolutionary approaches to achieve harmonization objectives. These also embody a specific vision of how states around the world are supposed to function - namely, according to the ideal of a Western state, and if they deviate from this ideal, they are seen as failed, fragile, or corrupt. Therefore, anti-corruption researchers must be critical of the UNCAC and other international standards as they may primarily disseminate, validate, sustain, and impose Western interests, ideologies, and governance structures on the Global South (Bracking, 2014 ; Brown & Cloke, 2011 ; Snyman, 2021 ).

As part of a global disciplinary effort to manage uncertainties, reduce risks, and establish normalized governance, the international anti-corruption consensus allows its actors to present their involvement as impartial, apolitical, and driven by combating a universal problem. However, their proposed solutions inherently carry political and ideological underpinnings, albeit obscured by layers of technocratic language (Snyman, 2022 ). Indeed, recent scholarship from critical corruption researchers such as Joaquin Villanueva ( 2019 ) and Jose Atiles ( 2020 , 2023a , b ; Atiles et al., 2022 ) serves to illuminate how discourses on corruption operate politically to extend, justify, and contest neo-colonial relationships. Unfortunately, appraisals of South Africa’s anti-corruption regime often lack a critical approach to international law and do not adequately draw on actor perspectives and the rich social contexts within which regulations are enforced.

Nonetheless, the smaller corpus three suggests that the UNCAC norms embedded in the country’s anti-corruption laws and policies do not automatically resonate with some cross-section of people in South Africa who, through informal norms, practices, and local rationalities, contest them. Meanwhile, this nuanced and impactful disparity is yet to garner significant attention within South Africa’s anti-corruption corpora. Nevertheless, the corpora lay an essential empirical and theoretical foundation for future research.

Furthermore, the corpora indicate the prevalence of other normative orders besides the state legal system that shape public attitudes, experiences, and behaviors toward anti-corruption laws and regulations. This phenomenon is exemplified by the incongruent normative stances between the ANC political party and the South African Parliament on the one hand—which resolved to disband the DSO—and the prescripts of state law as manifest in the South African Supreme Court’s adjudication that deemed the disbandment unconstitutional (refer to Corpus two ). Although various studies in the reviewed body of work hint at the existence of semi-autonomous social fields, they fail to thoroughly analyze these phenomena through the lens of legal pluralism (see, for example, Alexander et al., 2022 ; Bähre, 2005 ; Bruce, 2014 ; Gray, 2021 ).

Notwithstanding, empirical evidence supporting the prevalence of semi-autonomous fields in South Africa challenges the idea that anti-corruption measures fail due to widespread rule-breaking. Through the prism of legal pluralism, it becomes evident that adherence to rules is indeed prevalent in the country, albeit often not aligned with formal state legislation and regulations. These findings also corroborate legal consciousness scholarship, which proposes that a complex combination of norms shapes individuals’ understanding of legality. Therefore, prioritizing empirical examination of everyday social logic, local cultural categories, and norms concerning law can assist researchers in unravelling the complexities of legality that shape individuals’ understanding and attitudes towards anti-corruption initiatives. The country’s anti-corruption corpora suggest a significant interconnection between its social, cultural, and legal spheres. However, when examining the role of law in combatting corruption, the corpora predominantly adopt an instrumentalist perspective. Meanwhile, this is not peculiar to anti-corruption research on South Africa. The instrumental perspective dominates anti-corruption studies globally, which, in de Sa e Silva’s view ( 2022 , p. 365), is perhaps due to the field’s orientation to policy.

Thus, rooted in the instrumental view, the failure of South Africa’s anti-corruption regime to significantly reduce corruption is almost entirely attributed to the country’s inability to effectively enforce its sound anti-corruption legislation and institutional framework due to a lack of principled principals, political will, and dedication. Indeed, a perplexing gap remains between the theoretical intentions of the country’s anti-corruption regime (promising accountability, transparency, and institutional autonomy) and the practical realities of endemic impunity and political interference. However, the corpora fail to provide a sufficient explanation of this paradox. The corpora’s limitation suggests the necessity for a critical understanding of the intricate interaction between law and society.

This paper contends that the complex nature of corruption in South Africa calls for a critical reorientation within its anti-corruption scholarship. Scholars must shift from an instrumental perspective to a constitutive understanding of the law’s role in addressing corruption. This shift entails a comprehensive understanding of the interplay between law and society, considering both the “pull” – the constraints imposed by formal law – and the “push” – individuals’ interpretations of the law (Marshall & Barclay, 2003 , p. 618). This shift could provide a more nuanced understanding of the intricacies of corruption and contribute to formulating more effective strategies to combat it. Despite their potential value, these socio-legal perspectives have not garnered significant focus from anti-corruption scholarship in South Africa and globally.

South Africa’s anti-corruption corpora spanning the last two decades attribute the country’s failing anti-corruption primarily to the lack of dedicated and proactive leadership to guarantee effective monitoring, supervision, and enforcement of the country’s anti-corruption regime. This paper maintains that although comprehensible, this accumulated scholarship appears to be confined within ‘the orthodoxy’ and does not offer a sufficient understanding of why corruption is still endemic in the country. Subsequently, the paper critically engages with the corpora in a humble attempt to drive it beyond the orthodoxy.

Subsequently, it draws on TWAIL scholarships to critique the corpora’s consensus that South Africa’s anti-corruption legislative and institutional framework is sound primarily because it adheres closely to the UNCAC and international best practices. It argues that although the UNCAC as international law may appear to be apolitical or neutral, it may also embed political and ideological underpinnings that advance the interests of the Global North over the Global South. Subsequently, the close adherence of South Africa’s anti-corruption regime to the UNCAC and other international best practices instead necessitates critical empirical enquiry.

Moreover, the corpora demonstrate that a nexus between formal and informal norms shapes individuals’ worldviews and behavior toward anti-corruption regulations and their perception of legality. This intricacy calls for a nuanced empirical enquiry into the country’s anti-corruption regulations—one that delves into people’s internalized perceptions and ideas of the law that shape their daily conduct. However, scholars of South Africa’s anti-corruption regime have yet to inculcate such a constitutive perspective of law into their inquiries. This paper concludes that adopting a constitutive perspective, using socio-legal approaches like legal pluralism and legal consciousness, can offer a more nuanced understanding of South Africa’s failing anti-corruption regime beyond the ‘orthodoxy.’

Data availability

The author confirms that all data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article and its supplementary information files.

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Labik Amanquandor, T. Limitations of the international approach to anti-corruption: a systematic review of South Africa’s compelling case of failing anti-corruption. Crime Law Soc Change (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-024-10152-y

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Common types of limitations and their ramifications include: Theoretical: limits the scope, depth, or applicability of a study. Methodological: limits the quality, quantity, or diversity of the data. Empirical: limits the representativeness, validity, or reliability of the data. Analytical: limits the accuracy, completeness, or significance of ...
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A case study is one of the most commonly used methodologies of social research. This article attempts to look into the various dimensions of a case study research strategy, the different epistemological strands which determine the particular case study type and approach adopted in the field, discusses the factors which can enhance the effectiveness of a case study research, and the debate ...
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Case studies are in-depth investigations of a person, group, event, or community. Typically, data is gathered from various sources using several methods (e.g., observations & interviews). The case study research method originated in clinical medicine (the case history, i.e., the patient's personal history). In psychology, case studies are ...
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While case studies render extremely interesting data, they have many limitations and are not suitable for all studies. One key limitation is that a case study's findings are not usually generalizable to broader populations because one instance cannot be used to infer trends across populations. Case Study Advantages and Disadvantages Advantages 1.
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Limitations. Single case study analysis has, however, been subject to a number of criticisms, the most common of which concern the inter-related issues of methodological rigour, researcher subjectivity, and external validity. With regard to the first point, the prototypical view here is that of Zeev Maoz (2002: 164-165), who suggests that ...
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Case study research also has methodological limitations. Case study has been criticized for its perceived lack of rigor and/or quality, lack of consensus on design methods, as well as its ...
Case Study
The definitions of case study evolved over a period of time. Case study is defined as "a systematic inquiry into an event or a set of related events which aims to describe and explain the phenomenon of interest" (Bromley, 1990).Stoecker defined a case study as an "intensive research in which interpretations are given based on observable concrete interconnections between actual properties ...
Case Study Design
Learn about case study design and the advantages of case study, as well as its limitations. Understand the characteristics of case study through examples. Updated: 11/21/2023
Case Study: Definition, Examples, Types, and How to Write
A case study is an in-depth study of one person, group, or event. In a case study, nearly every aspect of the subject's life and history is analyzed to seek patterns and causes of behavior. Case studies can be used in many different fields, including psychology, medicine, education, anthropology, political science, and social work.
The Strengths and Limitations of Case Study Research
Limitations of Case Studies In order to balance this account, it is necessary to examine, if more briefly, some of the limitations of case study research. There is too much data for easy analysis. All case study researchers are conscious of being swamped in data. For example, our Training Credits study generated 198 taped interviews.
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Observations published can generate ideas and be a trigger for further studies. For instance, a case series consisting of several similar cases in a short period can make up the case-group for a case-control study . Clinicians could do the observation and publish the case series while the case-control study could be left to the academics.
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Authors are sometimes reluctant to discuss the flaws in their study, as they believe that this might jeopardize their chances of acceptance. However, hiding the limitations only draws more attention to them and gives the impression that the research process was not rigorous enough. This case study highlights the importance of presenting limitations and provides some tips on how to present ...
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1 Answer to this question. Answer: There are two aspects to your query, scope and case study. Let's take them one by one. Scope is the boundary you set for your research. If you do not (properly) define the scope, it may impact either the study or the findings. If the scope is too broad, you may not be able to complete the study.
Limitations of a Research Study
3. Identify your limitations of research and explain their importance. 4. Provide the necessary depth, explain their nature, and justify your study choices. 5. Write how you are suggesting that it is possible to overcome them in the future. Limitations can help structure the research study better.
Limitations of the Study
Statements about a study's limitations should not be buried in the body [middle] of the discussion section unless a limitation is specific to something covered in that part of the paper. If this is the case, though, the limitation should be reiterated at the conclusion of the section.
The Strengths and Weaknesses of Case Studies
Tylenol - Disadvantages. The main disadvantage is that the study cannot be recreated, and what happens in one industry, doesn't necessarily resonate in other industries. Case study method is responsible for intensive study of a unit. It is the investigation and exploration of an event thoroughly and deeply.
Case Study Method
The case study method can be used only in a limited sphere, it is not possible to use it in the case of a big society. Sampling is also not possible under a case study method. Response of the investigator is an important limitation of the case study method. He often thinks that he has full knowledge of the unit and can himself answer about it.
What are the limitations of case studies?
The case study is not a research method in and of itself; rather, researchers select methods for data collection and analysis that will result in case study-worthy data. Limitations of Case Studies. There is insufficient scientific rigour and no basis for extending findings to a broader population. The researchers could inject their personal ...
Case Study Method
The case study method uses investigatory research as a way to collect data about specific demographics. This approach can apply to individuals, businesses, groups, or events. ... Without this limitation in place, the results of the study cannot be guaranteed because of the presence of bias. 4. It is a subjective method to use for research.
How to Present the Limitations of the Study Examples
Step 1. Identify the limitation (s) of the study. This part should comprise around 10%-20% of your discussion of study limitations. The first step is to identify the particular limitation (s) that affected your study. There are many possible limitations of research that can affect your study, but you don't need to write a long review of all ...
What is the limitation of a case study?
A case study is an observation technique in which one person is studied in depth in the hope of revealing universal principles. The issues with case studies are that: They cannot lead to conclusions regarding causality. The individual studied may be atypical of the larger population. Researchers try to ensure that their studies are ...
Open-source data pipeline for street-view images: A case study on
Limitations and future improvements to the data pipeline and case study are also discussed. Citation: Martell M, Terry N, Sengupta R, Salazar C, Errett NA, Miles SB, et al. (2024) Open-source data pipeline for street-view images: A case study on community mobility during COVID-19 pandemic. PLoS ONE 19(5): e0303180. ... One new finding from our ...
[2405.06410] Potential and Limitations of LLMs in Capturing Structured
View a PDF of the paper titled Potential and Limitations of LLMs in Capturing Structured Semantics: A Case Study on SRL, by Ning Cheng and 8 other authors. View PDF Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) play a crucial role in capturing structured semantics to enhance language understanding, improve interpretability, and reduce bias ...
The relationship between clinical symptoms of oral lichen planus and
In this case-control study, 56 patients with histopathologically confirmed oral lichen planus and 68 healthy individuals, who had no complaints of oral mucosal diseases and had either accompanied patients or visited the School of Dentistry for routine dental examinations, were respectively enrolled as the case and control groups.
Anti-corruption in South Africa: a compelling case
In the Global South, anti-corruption initiatives continue to fail despite varying commitments to the international anti-corruption agenda. Concurrently, as this study demonstrates, researchers investigating this paradox appear confined within orthodox explanations for failing anti-corruption efforts. Through a systematic review of 58 studies, this paper demonstrates that South Africa's anti ...
The Advantages and Limitations of Single Case Study Analysis
Having elucidated the defining principles of the single case study approach, the paper now turns to an overview of its main benefits. As noted above, a lack of consensus still exists within the wider social science literature on the principles and purposes - and by extension the advantages and limitations - of case study research. Given ...
The Effects of Property Tax Levy Limits on School Infrastructure Assets
Although this limit imposes a restriction only on operating, rather than capital, property tax levy, we hypothesize that the limit may have spillover effects on school IAE. We examine this hypothesis by employing a difference-in-differences estimation approach together with an event-study design on a panel of school districts between 2011 and 2020.
Environments
Wastewater-based epidemiology has garnered considerable research interest, concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. Restrictive public health interventions and mobility limitations are measures to avert a rising case prevalence. The current study integrates WBE monitoring strategies, Google mobility data, and restriction information to assess the epidemiological development of COVID-19.

How to Write Limitations of the Study (with examples)

What are limitations in research?

Why is identifying limitations important?

How to write limitations

Don’t hide your limitations

Writing limitations

Examples of common limitations

Methodology limitations

Research process limitations

Final thoughts

Ensure your structure and ideas are consistent and clearly communicated

Case Study Research Method in Psychology

Famous Case Studies

Clinical Case Studies

Child Psychology Case Studies

Types of Case Studies

Where Do You Find Data for a Case Study?

1. Primary sources

2. Secondary sources

3. Archival records

4. Organizational records

How do I Write a Case Study in Psychology?

1. Introduction

2. Case Presentation

3. Management and Outcome

4. Discussion

5. Additional Items

Limitations

Further Information

10 Case Study Advantages and Disadvantages

Case Study Advantages and Disadvantages

2. Holistic Understanding

3. Examination of rare and Unusual Phenomena

4. Helps Reveal the Experiences of Marginalzied Groups

5. Ideal in Situations where Researchers cannot Control the Variables

6. Supports the generation of new theories or hypotheses

7. Reveals the Unexpected

Disadvantages

2. Subjectivity in interpretation

3. Difficulty in replicating results

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What Is a Case Study?

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Section 1: A Case History

Section 2: Treatment Plan

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What Are the Limitations of a Research Study?

Why and Where Should You Include the Research Limitations?

1. Common Limitations of the Researchers

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3. Limited Time

4. Conflict over Biased Views and Personal Issues

Types of Limitations of Research

1. Research Design Limitations

2. Impact Limitations

3. Data or statistical limitations

How to Correctly Structure Your Research Limitations?

1. Formulating your goals and objectives

2. Application of your data collection methods in research

3. Sample sizes

4. The absence of previous studies in the field you have chosen

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