Abstract
We present QCA, a package for performing Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). QCA is becoming increasingly popular with social scientists, but none of the existing software alternatives covers the full range of core procedures. This gap is now filled by QCA. After a mapping of the method's diffusion, we introduce some of the package's main capabilities, including the calibration of crisp and fuzzy sets, the analysis of necessity relations, the construction of truth tables and the derivation of complex, parsimonious and intermediate solutions.
Highlights
Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) - a research method popularized largely through the work of Charles Ragin (Ragin, 1987, 2000, 2008) - counts among the most influential recent innovations in social science methodology
Allowing for a publication lag of about two years, 4.2 applications on average have been published throughout the first decade following the introduction of crisp-set QCA (csQCA) in Ragin (1987)
Countries with electoral systems of proportional representation (ES), parliamentary quotas (QU), social democratic welfare systems (WS), autonomous women’s movements (WM), more than 7% left party seats (LP) and more than 30% seats held by women (WNP) are coded “1”, all others “0”
Summary
Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) - a research method popularized largely through the work of Charles Ragin (Ragin, 1987, 2000, 2008) - counts among the most influential recent innovations in social science methodology. In addition to Ragin’s (2008) “direct method” and “indirect method”, fuzzy offers a set-normalizing linear membership function Most importantly, it includes various statistical procedures for coding truth tables, the appropriateness of which largely depends on the research design.. Researchers have often been limited in their analyses when using one programme, or they had to resort to different programmes for performing all required operations This gap is filled by the QCA package, which seeks to provide a user-friendly yet powerful command-line interface alternative to the two dominant graphical user interface solutions fs/QCA and Tosmana. In the remainder of this article, we introduce some of the package’s most important functions, including the calibration of sets, the analysis of necessity relations, the construction of truth tables and the derivation of complex, parsimonious and intermediate solution types
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