Charles Ragin has published a research note on dual calibration, a heretofore undocumented function in the fs/QCA software. Dual calibration applies the direct method but uses four threshold values, allowing one to construct two fuzzy sets from a single variable, simultaneously calibrating “high-X versus not-high-X” and “low-X versus not-low-X.”

Tutorial, Guides and Reports

Charles Ragin has published a research note on “Stepwise Consistency Analysis,” which offers a method of comparing consistency scores across truth table rows, in order to better understand the dynamics at work within the truth table as a whole. Read it on our “Tutorials, Guides, and Reports” page.

Charles Ragin’s new book Analytic Induction is now available. It is open access, so you may read it for free via UC Press and JStor. You may also purchase a print copy or download it for your Kindle at Amazon.

COMPASSS Newsletter #50 is now available on the newsletter page at https://compasss.org/newsletter/ [direct link].

Many thanks to our intern, Nolan Witty, for putting the newsletter together and all of the contributors from across the COMPASSS community.

The 3rd Annual QCA Conference of the Americas (AQCA2024) will be held on March 20-22, 2024 at Northwestern University (Chicago, Illinois, USA). The call for abstracts is now open with submissions due on November 1, 2023. Please find complete details and updates on the conference website at https://compasss.org/aqca.

József Mezei (Åbo Akademi University) and Shahrokh Nikou (Åbo Akademi University and Stockholm University) are organizing a QCA minitrack for HICSS (Jan 3-6, 2024). Submissions are due by June 15, 2023. Please see the call for papers for details.

In this hybrid symposium, a panel of scholars discuss James Mahoney’s recent book, The Logic of Social Science.  The book develops a scientific constructivist approach that uses set-theoretic analysis to avoid essentialist biases in the production of knowledge. This scientific constructivist approach recognizes that social categories depend on collective understandings for their existence, but it insists that this recognition need not hinder the use of explicit procedures for the rational assessment of truth. Mahoney argues that set-theoretic analysis enables scholars to avoid the pitfalls of essentialism and produce findings that rest on a firm scientific foundation.

All speakers will participate online; you are invited to attend online or in person at Central European University, where the symposium will be followed by a wine and cheese reception.

https://events.ceu.edu/2023-05-25/set-theory-constructivism-and-science-symposium-james-mahoneys-logic-social-science

In Fall of 2022, Lasse Gerrits and Sofia Pagliarin, both of the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, organized the first Time-in-QCA (TiQ) workshop. They have now produced a corresponding report of the workshop. More than just reviewing the workshop itself, this report is essential reading for anybody interested in longitudinal QCA: it summarizes existing conceptualizations of the relationships among time and QCA, provides a high-level overview of methodological techniques for incorporating time and process into QCA, and identifies avenues and areas for future exploration.

Report of the first ‘Time-in-QCA’ (TiQ) International Workshop