This course will deepen your understanding of the potentials and pitfalls of set-theoretic methods. The skills you gain will enable you to be more critical and assertive if and when you choose or reject set-theoretic methods as the most appropriate research method for your research project.

By the end of this course, you will be able to produce QCA studies of a quality and level of sophistication beyond the current mainstream and thus yield substantive results that are more compelling for you and for your (critical) audience.

We will try and address all the following topics but, depending on participants’ needs and interests, we can put more emphasis on some:

• Set-theoretic multi-method research (SMMR)
• Set-theoretic robustness and sensitivity
• Set-theoretic theory evaluation
• Enhanced Standard Analysis
• Data structures and set-theoretic methods, including temporal ordering and two-step QCA
• Model ambiguity
• Multi-value QCA

This course provides a highly interactive online teaching and learning environment, using state of the art online pedagogical tools. It is designed for a demanding audience (researchers, professional analysts, advanced students) and capped at a maximum of 16 participants so that the teaching team (the Instructor plus one highly qualified Teaching Assistant) can cater to the specific needs of each individual.