Qualitative Comparative Analysis using Fuzzy Sets (fsQCA)
Abstract
One apparent limitation of the truth table approach is that it is designed for conditions that are simple presence/absence dichotomies (i.e., Boolean or “crisp” sets—see Chapter 3) or multichotomies (mvQCA—see Chapter 4). Many of the conditions that interest social scientists, however, vary by level or degree. For example, while it is clear that some countries are democracies and some are not, there is a broad range of in-between cases. These countries are not fully in the set of democracies, nor are they fully excluded from this set.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
A consistency value of 0.8 is recommended as a minimum guideline for claims of causality.
“A value of 0.8 is recommended as a minimum guideline for claims of causality [48] and therefore is used in this study.”
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Standards of Good Practice in Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and Fuzzy-Sets
Schneider, C. Q., & Wagemann, C. (2010) · Comparative Sociology · doi:10.1163/156913210x12493538729793 · Cited by 1,473 · see citing works
Porter-Bolland, L., Ellis, E. A., Guariguata, M. R., Ruiz-Mallén, I., Negrete-Yankelevich, S., & Reyes-García, V. (2012) · Forest Ecology and Management · doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2011.05.034 · Cited by 755 · see citing works
Assessing the Robustness of Crisp-set and Fuzzy-set QCA Results
Skaaning, S.-E. (2011) · Sociological Methods & Research · doi:10.1177/0049124111404818 · Cited by 407 · see citing works
Mikalef, P., & Krogstie, J. (2020) · European Journal of Information Systems · doi:10.1080/0960085x.2020.1740618 · Cited by 331 · see citing works
Rahman, M. S., Bag, S., Hossain, M. A., Abdel Fattah, F. A. M., Gani, M. O., & Rana, N. P. (2023) · Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services · doi:10.1016/j.jretconser.2023.103273 · Cited by 170 · see citing works
Thiem, A., & Duşa, A. (2013) · Social Science Computer Review · doi:10.1177/0894439313478999 · Cited by 95 · see citing works
Khan, A., Rezaei, S., & Valaei, N. (2022) · Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services · doi:10.1016/j.jretconser.2022.102976 · Cited by 69 · see citing works
Cooper, B. R., Hill, L. G., Parker, L., Jenkins, G. J., Shrestha, G., & Funaiole, A. (2022) · Implementation Science Communications · doi:10.1186/s43058-022-00303-4 · Cited by 7 · see citing works
“8 is recommended as a minimum guideline for claims of causality [48] and therefore is used in this study.”
Method
- Authors
- Ragin, C. C.
- Corresponding author
- Ragin, Charles C.
- ORCID
- Ragin, Charles C.
- Venue
- Configurational Comparative Methods: Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and Related Techniques
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications, Inc.
- Published
- 2009
- Pages
- 87-122
- OpenAlex
- W2475463729
- Cited by
- 890
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 51 · 2025: 66 · 2024: 68 · 2023: 88 · 2022: 99 · 2021: 77 · 2020: 64 · 2019: 66 · 2018: 55 · 2017: 43 · 2016: 54 · 2015: 44 · 2014: 25 · 2013: 33 · 2012: 17
- FWCI
- 91.11
- Type
- book chapter
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Sage eBooks (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Qualitative Comparative Analysis Research
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Political Science Research and Education
- Social Sciences › General Social Sciences › Computational and Text Analysis Methods
- Keywords
- fuzzy sets, fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, qualitative comparative analysis, fuzzy set theory, fuzzy-set QCA, truth tables, membership degree
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
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