The Laboratory for Comparative Social Research announces the next  regular seminar, which will be held in Saint-Petersburg (Sedova st., 55-2, room 303) on May 25 at 18-00 p.m. Alexey Gilev (HSE, Department of Political Science) will deliver a report “QCA (Qualitative Comparative Analysis) in Comparative Research: Foundations and Limitations”.

QCA, a method elaborated by Charles Ragin, aimed at becoming an alternative approach to statistical inference using large-N datasets and in-depth case-study (A. Lijphart). First, QCA allows for transparent, falsifiable and replicable research of small and medium-N observations. Second, this method is relatively detached from the degrees-of-freedom problem. Second, as opposed to frequentist and probabilistic approach of statistical analysis QCA explores deterministic relations between variables – necessary and sufficient conditions. Lastly, QCA has powerful tools to address the multicollinearity problems, i.e. disturbing correlations between independent variables. On the other hand, QCA has not succeeded as an equipotential alternative to more conventional forms of comparative analysis. One of the reasons is the lack of parsimoniality. I will address these issues as well as I show a number of illustrations of current use of QCA in specialized packages.

Everyone interested is invited!

Working language is English.

Videoconference with Moscow office of the LCSR (Krivokolenny Pereulok , 3, room 3-333) will be provided. Guests from Moscow are invited to make a request for a pass to the building to Ilya Lomakin (ilomakin@hse.ru) by 11 am of the seminar’s day.

Guests from St. Petersburg are invited to make a request for a pass to the building to Violetta Korsunova (vikorsunova@hse.ru) by 11 am of the seminar’s day.

Also after the seminar a videotape will be put up after the summary of the presentation.

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