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How to summarize a case study
Summarizing a case study might seem like a difficult endeavor at first but, as with anything, if you understand the subject of your summary and the purpose of the summary itself, it gets a lot easier. Furthermore, summarizing a case study is not unlike summarizing any other form of information, you need to understand the main points and present them in a clear and concise way.
Understanding the purpose of case studies
Studies that we are used to typically analyze large datasets. Case studies, on the other hand, focus on specific situations or phenomena and analyze them within their context. Therefore, it is important to understand that case studies are not helpful in drawing general conclusions as it is not their purpose to find patterns in large amounts of data and answer questions like “How does this work?”. Instead, case studies analyze a single event in detail to understand what worked and what didn’t, providing insight into why it happened the way it did.
Both case studies and large dataset studies have their own strengths and they can often compliment each other: a research process may start with a case study to identify a cause of an outcome, and then a large dataset may be studied to see if this cause correlates strongly with a positive or a negative outcome. Nevertheless, it is very important to understand the distinction between these types of studies and where they can be useful.
Summary of a case study and its purpose
A case study summary is aimed at presenting the information in a brief and informative style. Case study summaries try to capture only the essential parts of a full case study: the problem, the methods, and the outcome. As opposed to full case studies which delve deeply into many small details and are usually very thorough, summaries present only the main and the most important points of a study.
The main purpose of a case study summary is to make the key findings easily accessible and quickly digestible for the potential reader and this can be very helpful in many cases.
A step-by-step guide on writing a case study summary
1. Understand the full case study
Start by reading the full case study thoroughly. As you read, try to identify the main components of the study:
- The problem
- The approach
- The result
- The conclusion
Reading and comprehending a study is very important, as you will not be able to accurately summarize it if you miss the main points made in the source text.
2. Think of who will read your summary and what they need to take away from this
The context of a summary is very important. For example, if you are making a summary for stakeholders and you want to show them that the particular solution you implemented was successful, you might want to focus on the results more in your summary. If you are making a presentation at a conference for people who want to learn why your solution worked, you might want to focus on the approach more. If you are teaching and you want to engage your students, you might want to focus on the problem more to get them thinking.
Make sure you understand these two things firmly:
- Who is going to read the summary
- What is the purpose of this summary
You will need this to tailor your summary to better suit the reader and better get the information you want across.
3. Highlight the key information
This is where you write the summary itself. Try to focus on the most important information and avoid diving into unnecessary details.
Your summary should mirror the structure of the study itself. Typically, a case study summary should contain:
- The problem or the question
Explain the main issue that this study addresses in brief. This part is important so that readers understand the context of the study.
- The approach
Sum up the main steps taken to tackle the problem or provide an answer.
- The result
Provide a summary of the outcomes. Don’t forget to include the relevant measures!
- The conclusion
Describe the lesson learned in a few words.
Don’t forget to keep in mind who is going to read the summary, why they need it, and what you would like their takeaways to be. Depending on that, you might want to provide a little bit more data about the approach. Or the opposite, avoid delving into numbers too much and focus on the lesson learned. This is totally up to you!
4. Additional considerations
The main point to highlight here is that a summary should be concise. Although this should not be the case, summaries are often subject to personal bias, especially if you are summarizing your own case study. It is likely that as the author, you view the entire content of your study as very important because you have put a lot of time and effort into it. This is one of the reasons why it is so helpful to think about your summary from the perspective of the reader. Ask yourself: “What would I like to see and what would be most important to me, the reader?”. This can help you get a fresh perspective on your work and create a better outline for its contents.
Trying to get a fresh perspective on your own work inside your head is difficult. This is why it can be a good idea to get an actual outside perspective or use a tool to provide an unbiased summary for you, and ReadPartner might be just the tool for that.
ReadPartner and its Chrome Extension is an AI tool that specializes in parsing and summarizing information. ReadPartner excels at grasping the main ideas and presenting them in a clear and concise way. Moreover, ReadPartner allows you to configure the length and the type of the summary you want to better suit your needs.
5. Review your summary
As with any written work, it is important to review and refine. Make sure you have included all the necessary components, adjust your text for clarity, and remove any excessive detail that does not directly serve to drive the main point home.
Case study summary examples
Due to the nature of case study summaries, the ones that get published are mostly client success stories. We can still learn from that, but as we discussed earlier, summaries get tailored to their audience and goal. So keep in mind that if you are writing a summary for different purposes, you might want to focus on other aspects of your case more.
Case study summary by Plaid:
PROBLEM:
“Shift was collecting payments the old way—and it was harming their business.”
SOLUTION:
“With Plaid, Shift’s customers can instantly link a bank account and execute an ACH transfer. As a result, they saw their on-the-spot purchases increase by 60%.”
[1] https://plaid.com/customer-stories/shift/
As you can see, this summary is very short and mostly focuses on the positive outcome, while mentioning the problem only briefly, and completely omitting the approach because in case of a client success story, the approach is obvious: they have used our company’s product. Similarly, the conclusion part is absent as well because it is also obvious: use our product.
Case study summary by Gong:
CHALLENGE:
Diligent needed a sales enablement solution to help its sales reps with skills development and reinforcement. They needed a tool with which they could glean powerful insights to infuse knowledge in coaching conversations to ultimately reinforce sellers’ skills.
OUTCOME:
Gong quickly became more than a solution; it turned into a Diligent team member. As a result, Diligent increased its close rates by 7.4% for Gong-influenced calls and reduced the time for reps to hit quota by 3 weeks.
[2] https://www.gong.io/case-studies/how-gong-became-diligents-mvp-by-increasing-close-rates/
In this case, the company chose to tell a little bit more about the problem to highlight what they can solve. Other than that, the format here is very similar: the summary is short, it covers the problem and the result, and omits everything else.
Conclusion
The steps provided here are general guidelines and the summary volume, contents, and style can depend heavily on the context and purpose of each individual case. Think of what is important for your readers and include only the relevant information for your specific case.
FAQ
Should a summary include specific data or numbers?
Yes, including measurable results in your summary helps make it much more impactful and clearly shows the benefit of using the approach studied in your case.
What tone should a case study summary have?
Generally, you want to use a professional tone and clear language. However, case study summaries are often heavily adapted to their target audience so using a bit more casual tone can be helpful in some cases.
What are common mistakes to avoid when writing a case study summary?
The most common mistake is going into too much detail, which makes a summary overly lengthy. Don’t forget to stick to the point, or use an AI tool like ReadPartner to accurately summarize information for you!
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