Qualitative Comparative Analysis With R ― A Comprehensive Description

This book is a comprehensive guide to qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) using R. Using Boolean algebra to implement principles of comparison used by scholars engaged in the qualitative study of macro social phenomena, QCA acts as a bridge between the quantitative and the qualitative traditions. The QCA package for R, created by the author, facilitates QCA within a graphical user interface. This book provides the most current information on the latest version of the QCA package, which combines written commands with a cross-platform interface. Beginning with a brief introduction to the concept of QCA, this book moves from theory to calibration, from analysis to factorization, and hits on all the key areas of QCA in between. Chapters one through three are introductory, familiarizing the reader with R, the QCA package, and elementary set theory. The next few chapters introduce important applications of the package beginning with calibration, analysis of necessity, analysis of sufficiency, parameters of fit, negation and factorization, and the construction of Venn diagrams. The book concludes with extensions to the classical package, including temporal applications and panel data. Providing a practical introduction to an increasingly important research tool for the social sciences, this book will be indispensable for students, scholars, and practitioners interested in conducting qualitative research in political science, sociology, business and management, and evaluation studies.

Adrian Du?a is a Romanian sociologist working for the University of Bucharest, at the Department of Sociology, where he teaches research methodology and social statistics. His main methodological research interest is the Qualitative Comparative Analysis, for which he authored a number of peer-reviewed articles and books (please see attached).

He is also an active R user and developer, having authored and submitted R packages to CRAN, two of which being dedicated to QCA. There is also another package called “venn” which draws Venn diagrams up to 7 sets, that is used in conjunction with the QCA package.