BMBF WORKSHOP | Qualitative Comparative Analysis (Prof. Schneider, CEU)

Review

You can download the presentation of Prof. Schneider here (using the same password/username as for the readings).

Workshop preparation

1. Please download the readings and datasets HERE 
   (If you do not know the username/password, please contact mikko.huotari@politik.uni-freiburg.de)
2. Please bring your laptops!
3. Please download and install two small software packages on your computer (Tosmana & fsQCA).

4. Optional software:

   • R: http://www.r-project.org/, packages QCA, QCAGUI, and QCA3

   • Stata

5. You can find more information about these QCA-tools on the respective websites: http://www.u.arizona.edu/~cragin/fsQCA, http://www.tosmana.net

Instructor  

• Name: Schneider, Carsten Q.
• Department/Unit: Department of Political Science and Center for the Studies of Imperfections in Democracies (DISC)
• Institution: Central European University
• Full postal address for ECPR correspondence: Nador utca 9, H-1051 Budapest, Hungary
• Phone: 0036 1 327 3086
• Fax: 0036 1 327 3087
• E-mail: schneiderc@ceu.hu

→ Faculty profile 

Short bio

Carsten Q. Schneider is Associate Professor and Founding Director of the ‘Center for the Study of Imperfections in Democracy’ (DISC, www.ceu.hu/disc) at the Central European University (Hungary). His research focuses on regime transitions, the consolidation and qualities of democracy, and measuring political regimes. His book ‘The Consolidation of Democracy in Europe and Latin America’ has been published with Routledge. He is also working in the field of comparative methodology, especially on Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and its fuzzy set extension. He has published articles in several peer-reviewed journals and has a book under contract with Cambridge University Press on set-theoretic methods in the social science, co-authored with Claudius Wagemann, with whom he has already published a textbook on QCA in German.

Course Outline

This course deals with set-theoretic methods and their application in the social sciences. In a first step, the course spells out the fundamental concepts that characterize this methodological perspective, among them the central notions of necessity and sufficiency. This requires that the participants are also made familiar with background knowledge from set-theory, formal logic and Boolean algebra. The course will start with crisp-set (dichotomous) Qualitative Comparative Analysis (csQCA), including practical steps, best practices, and the use of software packages (fsQCA, TOSMANA, depending on the advancement of the course perhaps also Stata and R). Then the course provides a thorough introduction to fuzzy-set QCA (fsQCA). Time permitting, we will discuss several advanced issues surrounding QCA, such as its relation to case selection principles, concept formation and aggregation issues, or the treatment of time in QCA. Both fake and real-life published data are used throughout the course; but participants are also encouraged to bring their own data, if available. Some basic empirical comparative training is useful to get more out of the course, but this is no course prerequisite in a strict sense.

Course structure

• Intro (lecture): Set-theoretic methods and QCA (necessity and sufficiency)

• From formal logic to noisy social science data: parameters of fit (consistency and coverage)

• Hands-on exercise: minimizing truth tables and calculating consistency and coverage

• Crisp-set concepts in fuzzy-sets

• Advanced issues in set-theoretic methods

• Replication of published example and application of standards of good practice

• General discussion

Readings

Books of particular relevance

(Skim through as many as you can)

• Rihoux, Benoît and Charles C. Ragin, eds. (2009). Configurational Comparative Methods. Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and Related Techniques. Thousand Oaks and London: Sage
• Ragin, Charles C. (2008). Redesigning Social Inquiry: Set Relations in Social Research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Ragin, Charles C. (2000): Fuzzy-Set Social Science, University of Chicago Press
• Ragin, Charles C. (1987): The Comparative Method: Moving Beyond Qualitative and Quantitative Strategies: University of California Press
• Schneider, Carsten Q. and Claudius Wagemann (2012). Set-Theoretic Methods in the Social Sciences: A User’s Guide for Qualitative Comparative Analysis and Fuzzy-Sets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Schneider, Carsten Q. und Claudius Wagemann (2007). Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) und Fuzzy Sets. Ein Lehrbuch für Anwender und jene, die es werden wollen. Opladen & Farmington Hills: Verlag Barbara Budrich. [for German speakers]