Abstract
The field of qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is witnessing a heated debate on which one of the QCA’s main solution types should be at the center of substantive interpretation. This article argues that the different QCA solutions have complementary strengths. Therefore, researchers should interpret the three solution types in an integrated way, in order to get as much information as possible on the causal structure behind the phenomenon under investigation. The parsimonious solution is capable of identifying causally relevant conditions, the conservative solution of identifying contextually irrelevant conditions. In addition to conditions for which the data provide evidence that they are causally relevant or contextually irrelevant, there will be conditions for which the data neither suggest that they are relevant nor contextually irrelevant. In line with the procedure for crafting the intermediate solution, it is possible to make clear for which of these ambiguous conditions it is not plausible that they are relevant in the context of the research.
Keywords
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
