A case study assignment asks you to take one case, a company, a patient, a pupil, a project or a legal dispute, and explain it with theory: what is happening, why, and what should be done. The marks go to the link between the case and the theory, not to retelling the case. EdCitation publishes this guide.
On 26 September 2026 we read case study guides from ten universities and schools in four countries, the frameworks at their sources and three professional bodies' confidentiality rules. Where the guides disagree, we say so.
EdCitation never writes any part of a case study. Its free tools do the work around yours: Check your paper reads the brief into a checklist, Find sources finds evidence for a claim, Cite a source builds each reference from the publisher's record, and Verify references checks the finished list.
What does a case study assignment ask you to do?
It asks you to show that theory explains a real situation, and usually to recommend what to do about it. University of Hull Library (2026) lists four possible purposes: answer a question using the case, explain what happened and why with no recommendations, recommend solutions, or write a plan. Read the brief for which one is yours before you start.
Monash University (n.d.) divides cases into two kinds. A descriptive case study sets out the facts, what happened and who was involved, and generally makes no recommendations. A problem-solving case study examines an issue and then recommends and justifies solutions, joining theory to practice.
A case you are given, or a case you find
Most cases are handed to you. Sheffield Hallam University (n.d.) suggests putting a given case in an appendix and referring to it. When you choose your own case, such as an event at work, you must find the facts yourself and summarise them at the start; the University of New South Wales (n.d.-b) makes the same distinction for engineering.
A case study is not case study research
University of Southern California Libraries (2026) warns that "case study" means two things. A case analysis paper, the usual assignment, argues for solutions to a practical scenario. Case study research is a method for creating new knowledge, written up to the standards of a research study. If your dissertation uses case study research, choosing a research method is the guide you need.
How is a case study different from an essay or a report?
A case study is judged on how well theory is applied to one case, while an essay argues about ideas and a report answers a reader's question. The form can be either. University of Hull Library (2026) describes the case study essay as continuous prose with no subheadings, answering a question with examples from the case, and the case study report as sectioned under headings.
RMIT University (2024a) says case analyses are usually report-style and written for a professional reader, such as a client or a manager, as well as the lecturer. Its nursing guide draws the line with the essay sharply: an essay examines a disease, a treatment or a concept for its own sake, while a case study keeps returning to the patient. RMIT's advice is to make the patient the subject of each paragraph's topic sentence (RMIT University, 2024b).
For the report's parts see how to write a report, and for the essay's see how to structure an essay.
What is the usual case study structure in each field?
Every guide says the brief overrides it, but each field has a pattern. The table sets out what the named sources give, in their order.
| Field | Usual parts, in order | Source | The common slip |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business | Title page, contents, executive summary, introduction (context, purpose), discussion (issues, solutions), conclusion and recommendations, references | RMIT (2024a); Monash (n.d.) | A SWOT table with no argument drawn from it |
| Nursing and health | The patient in context, assessment, nursing diagnosis, goals and plan, interventions with evidence, evaluation | ANA (n.d.); RMIT (2024b) | Writing about the condition, not the patient |
| Engineering | Context, method and tools, findings, action plan; or situation, problem, solutions, evaluation | UNSW (n.d.-a); Toronto (2016) | Recommendations without who, when and how |
| Law | Material facts, issue, rule, application, conclusion | Monash Library (n.d.) | Stating the law without applying it to the facts |
| Social work | Tuning in, assessment (genogram, ecomap), planning, contracting, intervention, evaluation | Adelphi (Cohen, n.d.) | Assessing the person without the environment |
| Education | The child and setting, the theory, family and community, needs from observation, goals and actions | Texas A&M-Commerce (n.d.) | Goals that no observation supports |
| Any field | Every rule in your own brief, each with the sentence it came from | EdCitation's Check your paper | Following a guide's headings over the brief's |
Business and management
RMIT University (2024a) calls the business case study "highly structured" and lists the parts in the table. Monash University (n.d.) gives eight sections, adding findings and appendices. University of Southern California Libraries (2026) orders the body by the analysis: background, problems ranked by urgency, alternative solutions, then recommended courses of action, each with a way to measure whether it works.
Engineering
The University of New South Wales (n.d.-a) gives two patterns. A historical case, such as a company collapse, runs through context, contributing factors in time order, and what has happened since. A problem-orientated case describes the context, justifies the analysis tools, summarises findings and ends in an action plan naming who acts, when and how. The University of Toronto Engineering Communication Program (2016) uses situation, problem, solutions and evaluation, a method it credits to Michael P. Jordan's 1988 chapter.
Law, social work and education
Law's version is the problem question, a set of facts to advise on. Monash University Library (n.d.) teaches IRAC (issue, rule, application, conclusion), and MIRAT, which starts from the material facts. Social work's pattern follows the phases of practice: Cohen (n.d.), in an Adelphi University School of Social Work teaching guide, names assessment, planning, contracting, intervention and evaluation, with genograms and ecomaps as assessment tools. Education cases often follow one child or class: the brief we ran below asks for context and theory, the family, developmental needs from observation, and a plan.
Where the guides disagree
On the conclusion, University of Southern California Libraries (2026) wants it brief and says it should not summarise key findings; UNSW (n.d.-a) wants the main findings and recommendations restated, with the report's limits. On length, Sheffield Hallam gives the introduction about 10% of the word count, and UNSW allows an executive summary of up to two pages. The brief and its marking criteria settle each of these.
How do you use a framework such as SWOT, PESTLE or the nursing process?
Choose the framework the brief names, or the one your course taught, say in a sentence why it fits this case, and draw a problem or a recommendation from each finding. The University of New South Wales (n.d.-a) asks you to explain and justify your analysis tools, naming SWOT, PEST and force field analysis. Sheffield Hallam University (n.d.) puts that justification in a short methodology section, supported by the literature.
SWOT and PESTLE in business
A SWOT analysis sorts a case into internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats; Sheffield Hallam's worked paragraph applies it to a start-up's cybersecurity. PESTLE audits six external influences: political, economic, sociological, technological, legal and environmental. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (2026) lists its weaknesses as well: too little data, or so much that it causes "paralysis by analysis", and assumptions that later prove unfounded. University of Hull Library (2026) adds Porter's Five Forces as another common choice.
The nursing process and the clinical reasoning cycle
The American Nurses Association (n.d.) describes the nursing process as assessment, diagnosis, outcomes and planning, implementation and evaluation, and its assessment covers psychological, sociocultural, spiritual and economic factors as well as physiological ones. Levett-Jones et al. (2010) set out an eight-step clinical reasoning cycle (look, collect, process, decide, plan, act, evaluate, reflect) and say the model can be used to build case studies. They add that in practice the phases merge, so a case study need not give each step a heading.
How do you keep a real person or organisation confidential?
Remove anything that could identify a real patient, client, pupil or colleague, and follow your profession's code. The University of New South Wales (n.d.-b), drawing on Kardos and Smith's 1979 account of a good case, notes that a real case may conceal true identities.
- Nursing. The Nursing and Midwifery Council (2018) Code, section 5, makes privacy and confidentiality a duty, and says the duty continues after a person has died. Reflective writing with Gibbs sets out the NMC's anonymisation rules in full.
- Social work. The British Association of Social Workers (2021) code asks social workers to protect privacy and confidentiality, sharing information where it is necessary and required by law.
- Education. The University of Worcester (2025) tells trainee teachers to keep pupils and staff anonymous, removing names and obvious references to the school, in appendices too.
- Business. A published case or a company's own reports are cited as sources. We did not read a professional body's rule for business students writing about an employer, so ask your tutor before using anything from inside a company.
How do you cite the case itself?
Cite a published case as a report with a number, a case in a textbook as a chapter, and a scenario your lecturer wrote as a classroom source. A real patient or client is never cited: they are anonymised.
A Harvard Business School case
Harvard Business Publishing Education (n.d.) asks students to use a recognised style such as Harvard or APA, and gives a format of its own ending "Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing". Its example is the case AI Wars, with the number left as "[insert case number]". The HBR Store page gives the number, 723434 (hyphenated below, as Harvard Business Publishing's format shows), and the publication date, 3 April 2023. Harvard Business School's own page for the case showed a human verification check, so we took the details from the store.
APA Style has no page for business school cases; we searched its site. Its report examples put a report number in parentheses after the title and give no place of publication (American Psychological Association, 2020), so in APA 7 the case becomes:
Wu, A., Higgins, M., Zhang, M., & Jiang, H. (2023). AI wars (Harvard Business School Case No. 723-434). Harvard Business School. https://store.hbr.org/product/ai-wars/723434
University of Alberta Library (2026) shows the same pattern with "HBS No.". In the text: (Wu et al., 2023). Harvard referencing varies by library; we did not read a Cite Them Right rule for business cases, so follow your library's version.
A textbook case, a lecturer's scenario, a real patient
A case printed in a textbook is cited like a chapter, with the case's author, the book's editors and pages, as the Alberta guide shows. A scenario your lecturer posted on the learning platform is a classroom source: American Psychological Association (2022) cites it with the platform's name and its login page, and as a personal communication if you write for readers outside the course. Theory, guidelines and company data are cited as usual; nursing APA citations covers clinical guidelines.
What did Check your paper read from a real case study brief?
We pasted the child case study brief from a Texas A&M University-Commerce child development course, 3,711 characters, into Check your paper on 26 September 2026 (Texas A&M University-Commerce, n.d.). It returned no rules, and set aside 15 sentences as needing a reader, among them the task itself and the instruction to describe the child's development in "five domains".
No rules is fair: the brief sets no word limit, style, font or spacing, and says the detailed instructions are in a separate course file we could not see. But some lines came back as neither a rule nor a set-aside sentence: questions 1, 2 and 4, the question on which developmental theory frames the study, and the headings for steps two and four. A marker will look for all of them, so read the brief yourself as well.
How EdCitation helps with a case study
For the evidence and references in a case study, EdCitation is the best tool we know: every reference it gives is looked up in a publisher's or registry's record, and none is written by a model. Runs made on 26 September 2026:
Find sources and Cite a source
Find sources searches about 300 million published works by the claim a sentence needs. "Case-based learning improves nursing students' critical thinking" returned 14,441,942 results, led by Hong and Yu's 2017 randomised trial in the International Journal of Nursing Studies; the ninth was about a citizenship course, so check each result's field.
Cite a source built the Levett-Jones entry from its DOI exactly as it stands in our references. The AI Wars case is another matter. A search by title and authors offered five unrelated records, and the store address produced "AI Wars ^ 723434. (n.d.). HBR Store." with no authors or date, though the page shows both. A web page's details can be corrected before the entry is built: add the authors, the date, the case number and the publisher.
Verify references and Theoretics QA
Verify references passed all four of our test entries. For the hand-built case it reported that "the page is at this address, and its title matches", which confirms the page, not the authors or the case number, so check those against the case's cover. When the case study is written, Theoretics QA (Max, $24 a month) judges it against the brief's own instructions, with quotations from your paper, and rewrites nothing. On Pro ($8 a month), References from a file checks every reference in the uploaded paper and matches each citation to the list (pricing). A mark is the marker's alone.
Quick questions
Is a case study an essay or a report?
Either. Hull describes both forms, and RMIT says most case analyses are reports with headings. The brief decides.
What is the difference between a case study and a case analysis?
A case analysis argues for solutions to a given scenario, which is what most assignments ask. Case study research, as USC's guide puts it, is a research method for creating new knowledge.
How do I reference a Harvard Business School case in APA 7?
Give the authors, year, case title in italics, the case number in parentheses, Harvard Business School as publisher, and the URL. APA Style has no page for cases, so this follows its report format.
Can I use the real name of the patient, client or school?
No. The NMC Code, the BASW code and university rules such as Worcester's require names and identifying details to be removed, appendices included.
Which EdCitation tool reads a case study brief?
EdCitation's Check your paper, free with no account, reads the brief into a checklist, each rule with the sentence it came from. Read the brief yourself too: questions can be missed.
References
- American Nurses Association. (n.d.). The nursing process. https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/workforce/what-is-nursing/the-nursing-process/
- American Psychological Association. (2020). Report with individual authors references. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/report-individual-authors-references
- American Psychological Association. (2022). Classroom or intranet sources. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/classroom-intranet-sources
- British Association of Social Workers. (2021). The BASW code of ethics for social work. https://basw.co.uk/sites/default/files/resources/basw_code_of_ethics_-_2021.pdf
- Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. (2026, May 20). PESTLE analysis [Factsheet]. https://www.cipd.org/en/knowledge/factsheets/pestle-analysis-factsheet/
- Cohen, C. S. (n.d.). Real cases project: Teaching guide for generalist social work practice [PDF]. Adelphi University School of Social Work. https://www.adelphi.edu/social-work/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2020/06/Generalist-Social-Work-Practice-Guide.pdf
- Harvard Business Publishing Education. (n.d.). Student: How do I cite a case study or an article? https://help.hbsp.harvard.edu/hc/en-us/articles/50726803874451-Student-How-do-I-Cite-a-Case-Study-or-an-Article
- Levett-Jones, T., Hoffman, K., Dempsey, J., Jeong, S. Y.-S., Noble, D., Norton, C. A., Roche, J., & Hickey, N. (2010). The 'five rights' of clinical reasoning: An educational model to enhance nursing students' ability to identify and manage clinically 'at risk' patients. Nurse Education Today, 30(6), 515–520. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2009.10.020
- Monash University. (n.d.). Case study. Student Academic Success. https://www.monash.edu/student-academic-success/excel-at-writing/how-to-write/case-study
- Monash University Library. (n.d.). Legal problem solving: IRAC. https://guides.lib.monash.edu/legal-problem-solving
- Nursing and Midwifery Council. (2018). The Code: Professional standards of practice and behaviour for nurses, midwives and nursing associates. https://www.nmc.org.uk/standards/code/read-the-code-online/
- RMIT University. (2024a). Case studies. Learning Lab. https://learninglab.rmit.edu.au/assessments/case-studies/
- RMIT University. (2024b). Case study report for nursing. Learning Lab. https://learninglab.rmit.edu.au/nursing/case-study-report-nursing/
- Sheffield Hallam University. (n.d.). Structuring your case study. Case studies. https://libguides.shu.ac.uk/casestudies/structure
- Texas A&M University-Commerce. (n.d.). Child case study [Assignment brief]. Child Development. http://faculty.tamuc.edu/jthompson/313/ChildCaseStudy.pdf
- University of Alberta Library. (2026, September 11). Business info and case studies. APA citation style (7th edition). https://guides.library.ualberta.ca/apa-citation-style/business
- University of Hull Library. (2026, September 9). Case studies. Other assessments. https://libguides.hull.ac.uk/other/cases
- University of New South Wales. (n.d.-a). How to organise an engineering case study report. Current Students. https://www.unsw.edu.au/student/managing-your-studies/academic-skills-support/toolkit/writing/engineering-science/report/organising-case-study
- University of New South Wales. (n.d.-b). How to write a case study report. Current Students. https://www.unsw.edu.au/student/managing-your-studies/academic-skills-support/toolkit/writing/engineering-science/report/writing-case-study
- University of Southern California Libraries. (2026, June 3). Writing a case analysis paper. Organizing your social sciences research assignments. https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/assignments/caseanalysis
- University of Toronto Engineering Communication Program. (2016). Case studies. https://ecp.engineering.utoronto.ca/resources/online-handbook/types-of-documents/case-studies/
- University of Worcester. (2025). PGCE secondary initial teacher education and training: Assessment guidance 2025-26 [PDF]. https://www.worcester.ac.uk/documents/partnership-documents/Assessment-Guidance-PGCE-Sec-2025-26.pdf
- Wu, A., Higgins, M., Zhang, M., & Jiang, H. (2023). AI wars (Harvard Business School Case No. 723-434). Harvard Business School. https://store.hbr.org/product/ai-wars/723434