Alrik ThiemUniversität Luzern · Department of Political Science
Alrik Thiem
43.4
·
Dr.sc.ETH (PhD)
About
66
Publications
43,771
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964
Citations
Introduction
I am Swiss National Science Foundation Professor of Political Science at the University of Lucerne (Switzerland), where my work focuses on the development and application of empirical research methods, data analytics and questions of causal inference. Specifically, I concentrate on configurational comparative methods (CCMs) such as Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). In this connection, I also carry out consultancy projects for other research teams and international organizations. In addition, I have a strong interest in meta-scientific topics such as publication bias and research ethics. Empirically, I have done work in the area of European foreign, security and defence policy.
Research Experience
September 2017 - present
University of Lucerne
Position
- Swiss National Science Foundation Professor
March 2014 - August 2017
University of Geneva
Position
- Senior Research Associate
March 2009 - December 2013
ETH Zurich
Position
- Research Assistant
Publications
Publications (66)
Both the natural and the social sciences are currently facing a deep “reproducibility crisis”. Two important factors in this crisis have been the selective reporting of results and methodological problems. In this article, we examine a fusion of these two factors. More specifically, we demonstrate that the uncritical import of Boolean optimization...
Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is a relatively young method of causal inference that continues to diffuse across the social sciences. However , recent methodological research has found the conservative (QCA-CS) and the intermediate solution type (QCA-IS) of QCA to fail fundamental tests of correctness. Even under conditions otherwise ideal...
To date, hundreds of researchers have employed the method of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) for the purpose of causal inference. In a recent series of simulation studies, however, several authors have questioned the correctness of QCA in this connection. Some prominent representatives of the method have replied in turn that simulations with...
Increasing sustainable productivity growth in the food and agriculture sector is a common goal of all OECD and G20 countries. At the same time, an important policy question for many governments is how the current set of agricultural policies affects both productivity growth and environmental performance of the sector. Despite the high relevance of...
Background
Implementation of multifaceted interventions typically involves many diverse elements working together in interrelated ways, including intervention components, implementation strategies, and features of local context. Given this real-world complexity, implementation researchers may be interested in a new mathematical, cross-case method c...
Background: Implementation of multifaceted interventions typically involves many diverse elements working together in interrelated ways, including intervention components, implementation strategies, and features of local context. Given this real-world complexity, implementation researchers may be interested in a new mathematical, cross-case method...
Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is a relatively young method of causal inference that continues to diffuse across the social sciences. However, recent methodological research has found the conservative (QCA-CS) and the intermediate solution type (QCA-IS) of QCA to fail fundamental tests of correctness. Even under conditions otherwise ideal f...
To date, the method of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) has been employed by hundreds of researchers. At the same time, the literature has long been convinced that QCA is prone to committing causal fallacies when confronted with random data. Specifically, beyond a certain case-to-factor ratio, QCA is believed not to be able to distinguish any...
To date, the method of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) has been employed by hundreds of researchers. At the same time, the literature has long been convinced that QCA is prone to committing causal fallacies when confronted with random data. Specifically, beyond a certain case-to-factor ratio, QCA is believed not to be able to distinguish any...
Empirical research methods provide the necessary means to extract relevant information from data. Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), one such method, is currently making first inroads into the development and planning (D&P) community. On the one hand, QCA is well suited for building empirically founded theories emphasizing causal complexity. O...
Necessary condition analysis (NCA) has recently been proposed to researchers in business, management, organization, psychology, sociology, and even medicine as a new data analysis tool for identifying necessary but insufficient causes of an outcome. In this comment, I demonstrate that NCA is inadequate for performing such inferences. The reason is...
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 mod...
The search for necessary and sufficient causes of some outcome of interest, referred to as configurational comparative research, has long been one of the main preoccupations of evaluation scholars and practitioners. However, only the last three decades have witnessed the evolution of a set of formal methods that are sufficiently elaborate for this...
Military burden sharing has been a subject of repeated debates in NATO and the UN. Despite more modest goals, the European Union’s (EU) Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) has experienced no fewer difficulties in garnering men, money, and materiel. While this may not come as a surprise, the fact that some EU member states have carried disprop...
Together with Michael Baumgartner from the University of Geneva, I will give a 1-hour cyber seminar titled ”Configurational Data Analysis with QCA and CNA for Health Researchers” at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) on 2 March. VA operates one of the largest integrated health care system in the world, with more than 1,700 hospitals, clin...
This replication script accompanies the article Thiem, Alrik. 2016. "Conducting Configurational Comparative Research With Qualitative Comparative Analysis: A Hands-On Tutorial for Applied Evaluation Scholars and Practitioners." American Journal of Evaluation. Advance online publication. DOI: 10.1177/1098214016673902. URL: http://aje.sagepub.com/con...
The analysis of necessary conditions for some outcome of interest has long been one of the main preoccupations of scholars in all disciplines of the social sciences. In this connection, the introduction of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) in the late 1980s has revolutionized the way research on necessary conditions has been carried out. Stand...
In volume 44 of Sociological Methodology, Lucas and Szatrowski argued that the method of qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) suffers from a built-in confirmation bias due to a proclivity for including conditions in its output models whose corresponding factors are not systematically correlated with the endogenous factor. The authors therefore ur...
This replication script accompanies the article Thiem, Alrik and Michael Baumgartner. 2016. "Modeling Causal Irrelevance in Evaluation of Configurational Comparative Methods." Sociological Methodology 46(1): 345-357. URL: http://smx.sagepub.com/content/46/1/345.
Even after a quarter-century of debate in political science and sociology, representatives of configurational comparative methods (CCMs) and those of regressional analytic methods (RAMs) continue talking at cross purposes. In this article, we clear up three fundamental misunderstandings that have been widespread within and between the two communiti...
We thank the editors of Comparative Political Studies for having invited us to join this symposium. Rather than addressing separate points made by Munck, Paine, and Schneider, we focus on two related problems that unite their pieces, that are of high relevance beyond this symposium, and that we have addressed only indirectly in our original article...
Even seasoned methodologists and users of Configurational Comparative Methods (CCMs) become increasingly befuddled by the vast amount of jargon that is now being used in configurational comparative research with methods such as Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and Coincidence Analysis (CNA). In an effort to gather and systematize the numerous...
A significant body of social-scientific literature has developed contextual theories. In a recent contribution to Quality & Quantity, Denk and Lehtinen (Qual Quant 48(6):3475–3487, 2014) present Comparative Multilevel Analysis (CMA) as an innovative method whereby the effects of contexts on outcomes of interest can be studied configurationally if c...
Sensitivity diagnostics has recently been put high on the agenda of methodological research into Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). Existing studies in this area rely on the technique of exhaustive enumeration, and the majority of works examine the reactivity of QCA either only to alterations in discretionary parameter values or only to data q...
The analysis of necessary conditions for some outcome of interest has long been one of the main preoccupations of scholars in all disciplines of the social sciences. In this connection, the introduction of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) in the late 1980s has revolutionized the way research on necessary conditions has been carried out. Stand...
In a recent contribution to Sociological Methods & Research, Baumgartner and Epple (B&E) employ Coincidence Analysis (CNA) to explain the outcome of the vote on the Swiss minaret initiative of 2009. Although the authors also present a substantive argument, their principal objective is to prove the superiority of CNA over Qualitative Comparative Ana...
In a recent series of simulation studies, several authors have questioned the correctness of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) as a configurational method of empirical social research, ranging from demands for curtailment to calls for outright rejection. Some representatives of QCA have replied in defense that simulated data are improper for a...
We present cna, a package for performing Coincidence Analysis (CNA). CNA is a configurational comparative method for the identification of complex causal dependencies - in particular, causal chains and common cause structures - in configurational data. After a brief introduction to the method's theoretical background and main algorithmic ideas, we...
Configurational comparative methods have gained in popularity among sociologists and political scientists. In particular, Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) has attracted considerable attention in recent years. The process of Boolean minimization by means of the Quine-McCluskey algorithm (QMC) is the central procedure in QCA, but QMC's exactitu...
Multi-value Qualitative Comparative Analysis (mvQCA) is a variant of QCA that continues to exist under the shadow of crisp and fuzzy-set QCA. The lack of support for parameters of fit and intermediate solutions has contributed to this undeserved status. This article introduces two innovations that put mvQCA on a par with its two sister variants. Fi...
Sociologists have been at the forefront of configurational causal modeling by regularly making use of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). This article contends that, although QCA methodologists have developed comprehensive guidelines to help researchers avoid many of the pitfalls that lurk along the method's procedural protocol, a severe pitfal...
Even after a quarter-century of debate in political science and sociology, representatives of Configurational-Comparative Methods (CCMs) and those of Regressional-Analytic Methods (RAMs) continue talking at cross purposes. In this article, we clear up three fundamental misunderstandings that have been widespread within and between the two communiti...
After methodological developments on several other fronts, the issue of sensitivity diagnostics has eventually been firmly put on the research agenda of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). However, the few existing studies that have tried to estimate the reactivity of QCA to perturbations in various input and throughput parameters have almost a...
Fuzzy-set theory has provided researchers with a new perspective on many social-scientific problems. In particular, the method of fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) has gained in popularity across various disciplines. However, while the methodological development of fsQCA has progressed on a number of fronts, sensitivity diagnostics...
Background:
In recent years, the method of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) has been enjoying increasing levels of popularity in evaluation and directly neighboring fields. Its holistic approach to causal data analysis resonates with researchers whose theories posit complex conjunctions of conditions and events. However, due to QCA's relativ...
After years of silence on the method of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), the journal Political Analysis—generally considered the organ of cutting-edge political methodology—lately featured an intriguing piece by one of its editorial board members. In this article, Hug (2013) criticizes (1) QCA for its reliance on Mill’s methods of agreement...
Crisp-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis, fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), and multi-value Qualitative Comparative Analysis (mvQCA) have emerged as distinct variants of QCA, with the latter still being regarded as a technique of doubtful set-theoretic status. Textbooks on configurational comparative methods have emphasized diff...
Besides an increase in the number of empirical applications, the widening landscape of tailored computer programs attests to the success of qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) as a social research method. Users now have the choice between three graphical user interface (GUI) and three command line interface (CLI) solutions. In addition to differ...
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 capabi...
In a recent contribution to this journal, Vink and van Vliet seek to raise researchers’ awareness of the potentials and pitfalls of multi-value Qualitative Comparative Analysis (MvQCA). The authors are unconvinced by the technique’s distinctness from the more established crisp-set QCA (csQCA) and fuzzy-set QCA (fsQCA) variants and question its adde...
Social science theory often builds on sets and their relations. Correlation-based methods of scientific enquiry, however, use linear algebra and are unsuited to analyzing set relations. The development of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) by Charles Ragin has given social scientists a formal tool for identifying set-theoretic connections based...
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 capab...
The increasing popularity of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) as a tool for social-scientific inquiry has also led to a proliferation of tailored software. Users now have the choice between three graphical interface (GUI) and three command line interface (CLI) solutions. In this article, we first present a short analysis of the QCA software m...
Defence cooperation between Western European countries has increased considerably since the end of the Cold War. An analytical distinction can be made between political and economic cooperation, the latter having been neglected by political scientists. This study advances the debate on economic cooperation by identifying sources of variation in the...
Interest in the application of fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) has increased markedly among political scientists in recent years. Although fsQCA is often contrasted with regression analysis, questions of functional form have thus far been hardly addressed. However, functional form matters as much in the former tool kit of social...
Questions and Answers
Question & Answers (137)
Projects
Projects (6)
Meta-analyses continue to demonstrate the pervasiveness of publication bias, the reasons for which are usually said to lie with authors, reviewers, journal editors and project sponsors. In this article, we reveal an as yet undiscovered source of publication bias, and propose a guaranteed-to-work solution. More specifically, we demonstrate why the uncritical import of the Quine-McCluskey algorithm (QMC) from electrical engineering into social-scientific data analysis with Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) in the late 1980s has put users of QCA at high risk of inducing publication bias on a large scale. Drawing on large sets of replication material for studies from political science, management and sociology that have employed QCA, we measure the exact extent this problem has assumed in empirical research. The solution we present ensures the complete elimination of this source of bias. It consists in a redefinition of the objective function under which optimization algorithms in QCA operate. More generally, our findings emphasize the importance of thoroughly evaluating the adequacy of foreign methods before putting them to uses which they were not originally designed for.
Keeping up to date with the latest methodological developments and understanding technical papers on Configurational Comparative Methods (CCMs) such as Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and Coincidence Analysis (CNA) has become challenging for applied researchers, not least because the rate with which new publications appear in political, sociological and organizational methods journals continues to increase. This project takes the classroom to the desktop of all researchers interested in CCMs. It will build up a series of videos that are based on various courses I have taught on configurational comparative data analysis over the last couple of years. In addition, reviews of QCA and CNA software will occasionally be published. The primary goal of this project is to make CCMs more widely used throughout the social sciences and to increase the methodological quality of applied CCM publications.
Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is a relatively young method of causal inference that continues to diffuse across the social sciences. However, recent methodological research has found the conservative (QCA-CS) and the intermediate solution type (QCA-IS) of QCA to fail fundamental tests of correctness. Even under conditions otherwise ideal for causal discovery, both solution types frequently committed causal fallacies by presenting inferences that were in direct disagreement with the underlying data-generating structure to be discovered by QCA. None of these problems affected the parsimonious solution type (QCA-PS). These findings conflict with conventional wisdom in the QCA literature, which has it that QCA-CS uses empirical information only, and that QCA-IS is preferable to both QCA-CS and QCA-PS. The present article resolves these contradictions. It shows that QCA-CS and QCA-IS systematically supplement empirical data with matching artificial data. These artificial data, however, regularly induce causal fallacies of severe magnitude. Researchers who employ QCA-CS or QCA-IS in empirical analyses thus always risk moving further away from the truth rather than closer to it.
