Prof. Dr. Dr. Lasse Gerrits (IHS, Rotterdam, The Netherlands) and Dr. Sofia Pagliarin (University of Bamberg, Germany) will present Trajectory-based QCA (TJ-QCA) as a new way to account for and integrate processes over time in QCA both conceptually and methodologically. Research methods usually struggle with the complexity of social processes, such as policy processes, and how they play out over time. As commonly acknowledged, the outcome of these processes observed ‘here and now’ is a result of what happened ‘back…

This webinar begins with a short introduction to NCA, followed by a comparison of NCA and QCA and suggestions for using both techniques to complement one another.  The webinar will last approximately 1.5 hours (~60 minutes of presentation plus ~30 minutes of Q&A). To facilitate participants from different time zones, the webinar will be offered twice: NCA and QCA 1: Tuesday 26th January 9:00 (CET, Rotterdam Time) NCA and QCA 2: Tuesday 26th January 17:00 (CET, Rotterdam Time)

This course provides training on methods that enable a researcher to construct a solid and well-argued comparative research design (CRD) – any research enterprise that comprises at least two ‘cases’ or units of analysis.  We will cover multiple options, from very few cases (small-n) to multiple cases (intermediate-n) to many cases (larger-n), and in particular options that are QCA-compatible.  By the end of this course, you will be able to write up a well-constructed CRD section for your project and…

This course introduces you to Qualitative Comparative Analysis and fuzzy sets, and their application in the social sciences, using the R software environment.  It starts out by familiarising you with the basic concepts of the underlying methodological perspective, including formal logic, Boolean algebra, causal complexity, and calibration. From there, we move to the central notions of necessity and sufficiency, and discuss ways to analyse these using parameters of fit and visualisation techniques. The core of the course focuses on the…

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…