This Workshop is tailored for scholars with significant research experience beyond their PhD, and organised on a flexible basis to meet specific needs -- typically in connection with an ongoing research project they are managing (e.g. troubleshooting, arbitrating between methodological options, fine-tuning some designs, etc. It covers a broad range of case-oriented methods and designs (single case studies, process tracing, ‘thick’ binary comparisons, etc…), comparative methods and designs (small-N comparisons, intermediate-N comparison across multiple cases, Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and…

This course introduces participants to the logic and foundations of case-oriented and set-theoretic methods. We discuss perspectives on causality, case-orientation in empirical social research, and the main features of set-theoretic methods. We will reflect about different types of research questions, evidence and observations, causal complexity, causal effects, causal mechanisms, and context. The course then covers basics of set theory, measurement and set calibration, logical operations, and the logic of necessary and sufficient conditions as set relations. We will apply these…

This course introduces participants to crisp set and fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and its analysis in R. It provides participants with a basic understanding of the analytic underpinnings and steps of QCA, and enables them to independently perform a basic crisp or fuzzy set QCA (Standard Analysis). We will look at the origins, analytic aims, and variants of QCA, and deal in depth with techniques and practices of set calibration. The nuts and bolts the QCA technique, from…

This course addresses advanced issues that arise if and when scholars embrace notions of sets and their relations. While it is a course about set-theoretic methods writ large, most of the time, we will discuss issues specific to QCA. 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; robustness and sensitivity; set-theoretic theory evaluation; enhanced Standard Analysis;   data structures and set-theoretic methods, including…

The goal of this workshop is to provide a ground-up introduction to Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and fuzzy sets. Participants will get intensive instruction and hands-on experience with the fsQCA software package and on completion should be prepared to design and execute research projects using the set-analytic approach. Update: The workshop has been canceled due to the Coronavirus pandemic

Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is a method that has become part of the toolbox in disciplines such as political science, sociology, public administration and organization and management studies. QCA can be used to answer any research question if one is interested in analyzing patterns of necessity and sufficiency in a group of cases, ranging from a handful to many thousands. This course introduces participants to the principles and techniques of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) on a methodological and an applied…

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).  By the end of this course, you will be able to write up a well-constructed CRD section for your project and to reflect strategically on your comparative research…