Degrees-of-freedom analysis of case data in business marketing research

A valuable, although little-used, case data analysis technique, Degrees of Freedom Analysis, is the subject of this article. Given the richness of cas e data and its prevalence in business marketing research, Degrees of Freedo m Analysis has the potential to become an important addition to one's "rese arch workbench." The technique, first proposed by Donald Campbell (Campbell , Donald, T.: "Degrees of Freedom" and the Case Study. Comparative Politica l Studies, 8, 178-193 [1975]), is described. Three business marketing appli cations are presented; the first two involve use of the technique to compar e the extent to which four theories of group decision making are manifested in organizations. The third application illustrates how the technique cart be used for theory development in the context of manufacturer-distributor relationships. Our contribution is in demonstrating how researchers can lin k "traditional" (i.e., logical positivistic) hypothesis resting procedures to examine theoretical propositions in case study research. This approach i s one way of achieving a critical rest (Carlsmith, J. Merrill, Ellsworth, P hoebe C., and Aronson, Elliot: Methods of Research in Social Psychology. Ad dison Wesley publishing Company, Reading, MA, 1976]), that is, resting the relative empirical strengths of competing theories. Our applications highli ght the value of generalizing case data to theory versus the inappropriate attempt to generalize such data to a population (Yin, Robert K.: Case Study Research Design and Methods, second edition. Sage publications, Thousand O aks, CA, 1994). The explication and demonstration of this technique is nor available elsewhere to the degree provided here. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science inc. All rights reserved.