Plümper, Thomas, Troeger, Vera E., Neumayer, Eric. 2019. Case Selection and Causal Inference in Qualitative Comparative Research. PLoS ONE. 1-18.
BibTeX
Abstract
Traditionally, social scientists perceived causality as regularity. As a consequence, qualitative comparative case study research was regarded as unsuitable for drawing causal inferences since a few cases cannot establish regularity. The dominant perception of causality has changed, however. Nowadays, social scientists define and identify causality through the counterfactual effect of a treatment. This brings causal inference in qualitative comparative research back on the agenda since comparative case studies can identify counterfactual treatment effects. We argue that the validity of causal inferences from the comparative study of cases depends on the employed case-selection algorithm. We employ Monte Carlo techniques to demonstrate that different case-selection rules strongly differ in their ex ante reliability for making valid causal inferences and identify the most and the least reliable case selection rules.
Tags
Press 'enter' for creating the tagPublication's profile
Status of publication | Published |
---|---|
Affiliation | WU |
Type of publication | Journal article |
Journal | PLoS ONE |
Citation Index | SSCI |
Language | English |
Title | Case Selection and Causal Inference in Qualitative Comparative Research |
Year | 2019 |
Page from | 1 |
Page to | 18 |
Reviewed? | Y |
URL | https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0219727&type=printable |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0219727 |
Open Access | Y |
Open Access Link | https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/comments?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0219727 |
Associations
- People
- Plümper, Thomas (Details)
- External
- Neumayer, Eric (LSE, United Kingdom)
- Troeger, Vera E. (Univesity of Warwick, United Kingdom)
- Organization
- Institute for Sociology and Social Research IN (Details)
- Research areas (ÖSTAT Classification 'Statistik Austria')
- 5118 Political science (Details)
- 5325 Political economics (Details)
- 5912 Social sciences (interdisciplinary) (Details)