Evaluations of policy studies have attracted increasing interest due to the growing importance in recent decades of the expansion of public service programs and the resulting research on associated policies. Yin and Heald propose three different approaches to “review this research and evaluate the most significant results” (1975, p. 371) through the propositional method, the cluster method, and the case study method. Yin and Heald propose that the most appropriate of these three methods for political studies is the case study method (1975, p. 371). Therefore, it is important to learn how the case study method is used, how policy study knowledge can be expanded through this method, and its applicability to other public policy topics beyond. beyond the application of Yin and Heald in their study on decentralization. The case investigation method requires training of observers, reader-analysts, to answer closed questions regarding the case study. This allows “to undertake comprehensive examinations of individual case studies with scientific rigor” (Yin & Heald, 1975, p. 372). By using trained reader-analysts, the case study method also addresses three major issues in reviewing research: reliability, variances in weak and strong responses, and explicit study exclusion criteria. of cases. Reliability is determined by comparing responses to closed-ended questions from multiple analysts to determine the level of reliability of the question. Discrepancies between weak and strong responses are addressed by offering the reader-analyst the opportunity to indicate, for each question, their confidence in their response. Exclusion of case studies is addressed by including specific closed-ended questions that “serve as exclusion criteria” (p. 373). This allows for a specific review of this method since "investigative results are no better than the quality of the original cases" (p. 380), the potential inability to address the "unique factors of an individual case" (p. 380) and the lack of “process discovery” due to the focus on evaluation (p. 380). However, regardless of these limitations, the applicability of this approach to the public policy literature may prove invaluable as policies continue to evolve and the public requires more services. Researchers' abilities to consider a wide range of case studies in a scientific manner will continue to provide increasing amounts of knowledge regarding policy impacts and effectiveness. Works Cited Yin, RK and Heald, KA (1975). Use the case study method to analyze policy studies. AdministrativeScience Quarterly, 20 (3), pages 371-381. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2391997