Case Study (Credo Reference)A case study is a descriptive text of a specific case selected to illustrate a principle, event, phenomenon, or process. The most familiar form is the retrospective case study, which selects a real event in history and describes it in terms used to explore the underlying factors behind what happened, for the purposes of study in the social sciences, business school, or some other discipline. A prospective case study, on the other hand, describes the criteria of a case that's sought. The concepts of case study and the case method are related, but the case study is more than a teaching method, and is a key component of professional-level social sciences research, while the needs of the teaching cases used in the case method are not met by all case studies. From Leadership Glossary: Essential Terms for the 21st Century.