Configurational Comparative Methods

This is an advanced methodologcial course on a set of data analysis techniques that are

based on set theory and formal logic, which have become known under the acronym QCA

(Qualitative Comparative Analysis), or, most recently under CCM (Configurational

Comparative Methods). Invented by Charles Ragin (1987), this technique has undergone

various modifications, improvements, and ramifications. It currently receives increasing

interest in the broader social scientific community, both from its more qualitative and its

more quantitative side. This course aims at providing both the mathematical and (set)

theoretcial underpinnings of QCA and the technical and research practical skills necessary for

performing a QCA analysis.

In order to achieve these aims, we will first look at crisp set QCA (csQCA). We introduce

the concepts of causal complexity and of necessity and sufficiency, show how the latter

denote subset relations, and then learn how such subset relations can be analyzed with socalled

truth tables. In the second part of the course, we extend what we have learned for

csQCA to fuzzy set QCA (fsQCA). In a last step we look at advanced moduls for QCA (both

crisp and fuzzy) and other extensions of QCA (such as mutli-value QCA and time-series

QCA). We will frequently go to the computer lab and enhance our practical skills by

performing hands-on analyes.

A desired (and very likely) side effect of this course will be that we engage into

discussions on more general methodological issues of good comparative research, such as

case selection, concept formation, measurement and validity, forms of causal relations.