Despite increasing popularity of the case study in government-commissioned policy research
and evaluation, doubts about the validity of field research methods remain widespread in the
academic literature. The new scientific realism challenges research based on conceptions of
prediction and control and supports the development of explanatory approaches. In this article,
a rationale for the central importance of field methods in education and social research is
offered, a conception of threats to validity as rebuttals in a socially transacted argument about
the plausibility of a knowledge claim is developed, and seven groups of threats to the validity of
explanatory inferences are suggested
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