Application Of Qualitative Comparative Analysis Research Articles

The determinant conditions and causal mechanisms that explain the use of micromobility services

Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is presented as a possible solution to the sustainability challenges posed by the concentration of population in cities. Despite the wide range of services that it incorporates and the fact that its adoption is associated with numerous benefits, its rate of use remains low. Therefore, the aim of our research is to identify the factors which explain the use of micromobility services. Since the adoption of mobility is a complex phenomenon whose explanation involves conditions at different levels, a model based on a multilevel perspective is applied to a sample of 48 cities in different parts of the world. The application of Qualitative Comparative Analysis and Necessary Conditions Analysis shows that there are no necessary conditions in kind for the use of micromobility services, although there are necessary conditions in degree. Likewise, the different combinations of conditions that explain the use, and denial, of the micromobility services are identified. The role played by satisfaction with public transport and the perception that traffic congestion is not a problem stand out in explaining the use, or denial, of micromobility services. There is a causal mechanism that shows how certain conditions trigger the use of micromobility services. MaaS operators should take advantage of existing synergies with different services in the mobility regime to try to encourage the adoption of their applications.

Two needs, one deed: optimising malaria outcomes through mangrove interventions in ghana

Uncertainties around deforestation influences on vector-borne disease transmission and prevalence means that varieties of forest management techniques must be included in evaluations of health management policies.This commentary presents ideas for improving malaria management policy in marginal communities, where both elimination of health inequalities and mangrove restoration are desirable interventions. It relies on results of novel application of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) on causal relationships influencing malaria incidence in Ghana. Restoration-related mangrove conditions were investigated alongside the predominant vector control strategies.QCA findings show ecological conditions of temperature reduction, improved water quality, arrest of mangrove land conversion and presence of biological control agents combining diversely to amplify impacts of personal protective measures, especially insecticide treated net usage. The viewpoint is that ecosystem and health mangers must collaborate in capacity building, trend monitoring and creation of new knowledge to ensure that cross-sector benefits are sufficiently addressed in policy reforms. Further research required to reveal how mangrove presence and/or restoration affect malaria parasite prevalence and transmission dynamics in mangrove mosquitoes, to identify pathways for modifying and tailoring vector-control strategies to suit needs in mangrove communities.QCA could be a valuable causal inference technique for bringing clarity to nature-health relationships because it makes room for analysis of 'conjunctural' impacts of non-nature conditions.

ПРИМЕНЕНИЕ КАЧЕСТВЕННОГО СРАВНИТЕЛЬНОГО АНАЛИЗА К НАУКЕ О ПОВЕДЕНИИ МЕНЕДЖМЕНТА. ПРИЧИННАЯ АСИММЕТРИЯ, КОНЪЮНКЦИЯ И ЭКВИФИНАЛЬНОСТЬ

Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is in the spotlight as a new analytical method that overcomes the problems of traditional quantitative and qualitative research and bridges the gap between them. The purpose of study is to advance the understanding of QCA and its potential applications in future research. The problems associated with traditional quantitative and qualitative research methods are presented, as well as a comparative overview of the characteristics and tasks of QCA; the application of QCA in administrative science and the attributes of QCA, which facilitate the analysis of phenomena characterized by causal asymmetry, conjunction and equifinality. The article examines how well QCA is suitable for administrative science. The usefulness of QCA in management research and the possible direction of future application is demonstrated.

Using fsQCA to Illuminate Person Attributes of Music Engagement in Alzheimer's Disease

Preserved engagement with music in Alzheimer's disease (AD) is noteworthy given that such persons lack interest and engagement in the activities of daily life. Because music engagement is associated with increased well-being, illuminating personal attributes that facilitate music engagement is an important step towards utilizing music as a therapeutic tool. Here, we use Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis, a systematic approach to case study series analysis, to explore the role of personal attributes such as musical semantic memories, music perceptual abilities, and overall cognitive status in facilitating music engagement in 15 individuals with a diagnosis of probable AD. Nine different solution terms revealed many different pathways to preserved music engagement in AD. Solutions demonstrated the equifinality of music engagement and the usefulness of the qualitative comparative analysis approach. This article is meant to provide both concrete evidence for the role of different person attributes in music engagement in AD and an illustration of the application of qualitative comparative analysis. We discuss our results using the Comprehensive Process Model as a framework and provide suggestions on how to incorporate qualitative comparative analysis in the research workflow.

Political parties as allies for the forestry sector: A case study from Germany

This paper aims at shedding light on partisan differences in forest policy by analysing whether governing parties' policy outputs are strongly orientated towards the demands of the nature conservation or the forestry sector. The data base encompasses four forest-related issues, relevant from 2001 to 2018 in the 16 German Bundesländer, so that more than 50 cabinets were able to be considered for analysis. The application of Qualitative Comparative Analysis allowed testing for several variables that were expected to have an impact on or even dominate partisan effects in certain configurations. The findings show that political parties do matter in forest policy. While the Green Party's policy outputs are clearly orientated towards nature conservation demands, the Christian Democratic Union/ Christian Social Union is a suitable ally for the forestry sector. The Social Democrats are between these two extremes, but closer to nature conservation in highly populated Bundesländer. Factors like forest cover or share of private forests were revealed not to be as important as political parties. We conclude that research in forest policy missed an important political factor of forest policy by neglecting the influence of political parties as a research subject.

Utilization of Eight-Variable Karnaugh Maps in the Exploration of Problems of Qualitative Comparative Analysis

Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is an emergent methodology of diverse applications in many disciplines. However, its premises and techniques are continuously subject to discussion, debate, and (even) dispute. We use a regular and modular Karnaugh map to explore a prominent recently-posed eight-variable QCA problem. This problem involves a partially-defined Boolean function (PDBF), that is dominantly unspecified. Without using the algorithmic integer-programming approach, we devise a simple heuristic map procedure to discover minimal sets of supporting variables. The eight-variable problem studied herein is shown to have at least two distinct such sets, with cardinalities of 4 and 3, respectively. For these two sets, the pertinent function is still a partially-defined Boolean function (PDBF), equivalent to 210 = 1024 completely-specified Boolean functions (CSBFs) in the first case, and to four CSBFs only in the second case. We obtained formulas for the four functions of the second case, and a formula for a sample fifth function in the first case. Although only this fifth function is unate, each of the five functions studied does not have any non-essential prime implicant, and hence each of them enjoys the desirable feature of having a single IDF that is both a unique minimal sum and the complete sum. According to our scheme of first identifying a minimal set of supporting variables, we avoided the task of drawing prime-implicant loops on the initial eight-variable map, and postponed this task till the map became dramatically reduced in size. Our map techniques and results are hopefully of significant utility in future QCA applications.

Augmenting brand experience in native advertising on social medias using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis

Native advertising has increasingly garnered the attention of enterprises. However, in practice, the brand experience created by these advertisements is not ideal, while empirical research on the brand experience of native advertisements is lacking. To resolve practical issues and fill the gap in theoretical discourse, this study uses fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) and applies the perspective of set theory to research social media native advertisements in the field of new media. Three factors of influence are identified for analysis relative to pathways that augment the advertising experience: a user characteristic (self-concept congruence), an advertisement characteristic (brand fit), and interactive environment characteristics (precision, interactivity, and intrusiveness). The study verifies the complementary, substitutional, and inhibiting relationships among the influencing factors and suggests native advertisement-serving strategies to guide enterprises as they construct quality brand experiences. This research enriches and develops current brand experience research and theories and expands the application of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) to the fields of journalism and communications, as well as advertising. It also contributes to practice, supplying suggestions for enterprise advertisements on WeChat Moments.

Qualitative comparative analysis as a method for project studies: The case of energy infrastructure

Empirical research involving projects is an important and common way to advance knowledge in the energy sector, and there are well-established approaches for qualitative analysis of single or few cases (1–10 cases) as well as quantitative analysis of large databases (from 50+ cases). However, the “middle-ground” of analysing 10–50 cases is an unknown territory, and very few approaches exist to deal with numbers of cases that lie in the range of 10–50. This paper shows how this “middle-ground” can be explored through Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). This is a method that can be applied to energy infrastructure projects (such as construction, operations, and decommissioning of power plants) in order to study causal inference (e.g. factors associated with outcomes). This paper demonstrates the potential of QCA by showing its application on an energy infrastructure phenomenon with an intermediate number of cases, that of nuclear decommissioning projects. These projects are becoming increasingly important to society and have multibillion US dollar budgets. Moreover, their characteristics need to urgently be matched with their project performance in order to avoid even further cost overruns. The application of QCA to 24 European nuclear decommissioning projects shows that a combination of characteristics (such as a streamlined governance structure and the presence of a storage facility for radioactive material on site) might be contributing to lower cost overruns. This paper concludes by showing how QCA can be applied to other energy infrastructure phenomena with a similar intermediate number of cases.

Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) in Spatial Planning Research and Related Disciplines: A Systematic Literature Review of Applications

Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is a potentially interesting method for spatial planning researchers. Although increasingly used, its application in spatial planning research is lagging behind other disciplines. We conducted a systematic literature review of QCA applications in spatial planning and related disciplines (SPARD), addressing two questions: when, where, and how is QCA used in SPARD and what are the main advantages of QCA for spatial planning research? We found that the main reasons why QCA is used in SPARD are its sensitivity to context, its ability to use small-/medium- n cases, and its attention to causal complexity.

Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA): A useful methodological tool for research in the social sciences. An example from the online word-of-mouth context

This study applies the QCA method to the context of the word-of-mouth (WOM) generation process and related motivations. The purpose is to investigate the behaviour of Generation Y in the online context, particularly regarding the activity of WOM about travel/hotels and hospitality experiences. A survey was completed by respondents with questions related to the main reasons for posting comments about travel experiences, summarised into five main motivations. Our main contribution is to provide an application of QCA and its relevance in the social media context. Results reveal that different ‘recipes’ of antecedents lead to share the tourism experience in the online context, deriving from a combination of the presence or the absence of these motivations to generate WOM.

Parametric strategic management: genesis & pracsis

The author’s concept of parametric strategic management approach is considered in accordance with generally accepted strategic management conceptions. Simultaneously the article makes an attempt to substantiate application of qualitative comparative analysis as a relevant method of empirical verification and to construct one-dimensional model of employee’s labor participation as the demonstration of practical application of the author’s concept

Set-theoretic methods in democratization research: an evaluation of their uses and contributions

ABSTRACTSet-theoretic methods in the form of explanatory typologies have for long figured prominently in democratization research, especially in comparative historical analysis. In the 1990s, qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) entered this research field but a tally shows that the number of democratization studies using this method has so far been low and there is little evidence of any take-off. We review a series of landmark studies that use explanatory typologies and 16 studies that use QCA to see how they fare on three criteria: alignment between hypotheses and methods, the strength of causal claims, and the employment of robustness tests. The review shows that most of the QCA applications devote too little attention to formulating set-theoretic propositions and to carrying out robustness tests. Moreover, many scholars are too quick to interpret their findings as causal relationships, especially in light of the modest use of within-case evidence. Finally, it is striking that virtually none of these analyses has influenced the literature in the way some of the studies combining simple explanatory typologies with within-case analysis have. Against this backdrop, we discuss the potential of QCA for democratization research.

Qualitative Comparative Analysis as an Evaluation Tool: Lessons From an Application in Development Cooperation

Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is gaining ground in evaluation circles, but the number of applications is still limited. In this article, we consider the challenges that can emerge during a QCA evaluation by drawing on our experience of conducting one in the field of development cooperation. For each stage of the evaluation process, we systematically discuss the challenges we encountered and suggest solutions on how these can be addressed. We believe that sharing this kind of lessons learned can help evaluators become more familiar with QCA, shedding light on what it is to be expected when considering the application of QCA for an evaluation, at the same time reducing unfounded fears and promoting awareness of traps and requirements. The article can be insightful and potentially inspirational for both commissioners and evaluators.

Using qualitative comparative analysis in a systematic review of a complex intervention.

BackgroundSystematic reviews evaluating complex interventions often encounter substantial clinical heterogeneity in intervention components and implementation features making synthesis challenging. Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is a non-probabilistic method that uses mathematical set theory to study complex phenomena; it has been proposed as a potential method to complement traditional evidence synthesis in reviews of complex interventions to identify key intervention components or implementation features that might explain effectiveness or ineffectiveness. The objective of this study was to describe our approach in detail and examine the suitability of using QCA within the context of a systematic review.MethodsWe used data from a completed systematic review of behavioral interventions to improve medication adherence to conduct two substantive analyses using QCA. The first analysis sought to identify combinations of nine behavior change techniques/components (BCTs) found among effective interventions, and the second analysis sought to identify combinations of five implementation features (e.g., agent, target, mode, time span, exposure) found among effective interventions. For each substantive analysis, we reframed the review’s research questions to be designed for use with QCA, calibrated sets (i.e., transformed raw data into data used in analysis), and identified the necessary and/or sufficient combinations of BCTs and implementation features found in effective interventions.ResultsOur application of QCA for each substantive analysis is described in detail. We extended the original review findings by identifying seven combinations of BCTs and four combinations of implementation features that were sufficient for improving adherence. We found reasonable alignment between several systematic review steps and processes used in QCA except that typical approaches to study abstraction for some intervention components and features did not support a robust calibration for QCA.ConclusionsQCA was suitable for use within a systematic review of medication adherence interventions and offered insights beyond the single dimension stratifications used in the original completed review. Future prospective use of QCA during a review is needed to determine the optimal way to efficiently integrate QCA into existing approaches to evidence synthesis of complex interventions.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13643-016-0256-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

How useful are incubators for new entrepreneurs?

This study examines profiles of incubator tenants who provide the most positive evaluations of the use of advisory services and support from incubators. The study presents an application of qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to a sample of 54 incubator tenants in Valencia, Spain. The study examines how entrepreneurs' age, gender, education and training, work experience, and family background affect the utility of advice and support from experts at the incubator. The results of the research inform that the incubator tenants who find the services of incubators most useful are young, have good studies, have professional experience, and have family experience.

Application of Qualitative Comparative Analysis: Competition Environment in Five Countries

Application of Qualitative Comparative Analysis: Competition Environment in Five Countries

Integrating qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) and fuzzy cognitive maps (FCM) to enhance the selection of independent variables

This study proposes the use of fuzzy cognitive maps (FCMs) in qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) applications to enhance the selection of independent variables in the QCA framework. QCA techniques hold great potential to identify the causal models that exist among different but comparable cases. Due to the complexity of causality issues, however, such techniques may not be able to uncover the “true” causal foundation of a given phenomenon. FCMs typically offer a fuller view of the cause-and-effect relationships between variables, thus allowing for a better understanding of their behavior; for instance, the manner in which variables relate to each other, or the measure of their intensity. This study thus proposes that such maps can be a useful support in the selection of independent variables for a QCA model, and provides specific guidelines and an illustrative example of how to integrate FCMs in QCA applications.

Model Ambiguities in Configurational Comparative Research

For many years, sociologists, political scientists, and management scholars have readily relied on Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) for the purpose of configurational causal modeling. However, this article reveals that a severe problem in the application of QCA has gone unnoticed so far: model ambiguities. These arise when multiple causal models fare equally well in accounting for configurational data. Mainly due to the uncritical import of an algorithm that is unsuitable for causal modeling, researchers have typically been unaware of the whole model space. As a result, there exists an indeterminable risk for practically all QCA studies published in the last quarter century to have presented findings that their data did not warrant. Using hypothetical data, we first identify the algorithmic source of ambiguities and discuss to what extent they affect different methodological aspects of QCA. By reanalyzing a published QCA study from rural sociology, we then show that model ambiguities are not a mere theoretical possibility but a reality in applied research, which can assume such extreme proportions that no causal conclusions whatsoever are possible. Finally, the prevalence of model ambiguities is examined by performing a comprehensive analysis of 192 truth tables across 28 QCA studies published in applied sociology. In conclusion, we urge that future QCA practice ensures full transparency with respect to model ambiguities, both by informing readers of QCA-based research about their extent and by employing algorithms capable of revealing them.

A Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis of the Hungarian, Polish and Lithuanian Presidencies and European Union Eastern Partnership Policies

This article analyses and compares the influence of the Hungarian, Polish and Lithuanian Presidencies of the Council of the European Union (taking place between 2011 and 2013) on the Union's policies towards the countries of the Eastern Partnership – Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The influence of the Presidencies is compared through qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), which aims to identify necessary and sufficient conditions for influence to occur. The results show that there is only one necessary condition for the Presidency to exert influence, that is, the issue should be highly salient to the incumbent Member State. The absence of any other condition for influence does as such not hamper Presidency influence. Moreover, the analysis reveals three sufficient combinations of conditions for Presidency influence, in which the individual conditions play different roles. The application of QCA to Presidency influence leads to novel insights and stimulates conceptual clarity on the level of and the conditions for influence.

Application of Qualitative Comparative Analysis: Competition Environment in Five Countries

This paper presents a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) of the telecom market in five countries namely USA, UK, Australia, Japan and Brazil. It highlights the diversity and similarity in competition environments across the countries. The paper brings out a set of common policy initiatives that these five countries have implemented called as the necessary conditions. It also provides a set of alternative combination of policy initiatives that some of the countries have implemented, this set is the sufficient conditions. Thus this paper shows that different causal paths – each path being relevant, in a distinct way – may lead to the same outcome in competition regulation. For the five countries studied, it is found that Opening up of Essential Facilities (OEF), Regulating Prices (RP), Unified and Multi-service Licensing (UML), Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO), Infrastructure Sharing (IS) and Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) are the necessary pre-conditions for a country to have an Effective Environment for Competition.The combination of variables like Opening up of Essential Facilities (OEL), Regulating Prices (RP), Spectrum Trading and Leasing (STL), Unified and Multi-service Licensing(UML), Mobile Virtual Network Operator( MVNO),Infrastructure Sharing (IS) and Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) are observed in four countries USA,UK, Brazil and Australia. Whereas, combination of variables like Opening up of Essential Facilities(OEL), Regulating Prices (RP), Unified and Multi-service Licensing (UML), Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO),Infrastructure Sharing (IS) and Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) is observed in Japan.