QUALITATIVE EXAM

• Qualitative methods


  The process of using the facts we know, to learn about the facts we don't know
• Quantitative research


  Measures average effects across many cases, like how economic growth (IV) affects democracy (DV), to see if they are correlated and reach an inference
• Quantitative research


  • Sees the big picture, but doesn't tell a lot about why X (economic growth) affects Y (democracy)
  • Offers causal analysis and explanation, but may or may not apply to individual cases
• Qualitative research

  • Focuses on one case or group of cases, to explain a group/type of cases and each individual case within the group/type
  • Aims to create meaning and establish power relationships, often in the positivist, interpretative or critical areas
• Inference

  The process of moving from the observed to the non-observed, to explain the non-observed
• Quantitative research inference

  If X is on average associated with Y, then X (likely) matters for Y
• Qualitative cross-case comparison inference


  1. If two very different cases have the same outcome Y, the similarities in X should matter to explain Y

  2. If two very similar cases have different Y, then differences in X should matter for Y
• Qualitative within-case analysis inference


  If what we see in a case matches what we should see if explanation A was right and does not match what we should see if explanation B was right, then A is the best explanation
• Research questions


  • Why did social revolutions occur in cases as dissimilar as 18th-century France, interwar Russia, and post-World II China?
  • Why did democratic regional governments fail in some places in Italy and succeeded in other places?
• Qualitative research questions

  • Some questions might be better suited for Qualitative research
  • Some dimensions of the same question might be better suited for Qualitative research
  • Some wordings are more in tune with Qualitative research
• Research puzzle

  A research question that defies common sense or theoretical exceptions, restudy of what people think or do vs. Establishment studies, common sense
• Research puzzles

  • Buying low and selling high vs. Giving away accumulative goods
  • Obeying rules of rebels vs. Organising nonviolent resistance
  • Why are engineering students overrepresented in suicide mission?
  • Why victims of violence vote against pro-peace candidates?
• Steps to develop a research puzzle

  1. Step 1: Why Y? (Puzzling outcome)

  2. Step 2: Why not Y? Why not expect Y? (Established theory)

  3. Step 3: Why Y despite X? (Debunk the myth)
• Quantitative research can be descriptive, and Qualitative research can be explanatory
• Quantitative research deals with the effects of causes, while Qualitative research deals with the causes of effects
• Different logics of inference and explanation guide Qualitative and Quantitative research, but neither is superior, they are just different
• Qualitative and Quantitative techniques are more or less appropriate for different research questions and goals
• Different logics of inference & explanation guide Qual & Quant research
• No logic is superior, just different
• Quant & Qual techniques are +/− appropriate for different research questions/goals
• Not to drive the wedge between quant & qual, but to facilitate communication and cooperation
• People are risking to mobilise, usually the people that mobilise are not the poorest — because they have too much to loose compered to richest people
• Difference in outcomes, despite convergences in initial Conditions between the cases
• Cross case comparison

  • Explain divergences in Outcomes, despite convergences in initial Conditions
  • Explain convergences in O, despite divergences in initial Conditions
  • Identify a set of necessary & sufficient conditions for an outcome, like QCA
  • Probe wether the same path leads to the same outcomes across different cases
  • Identify different paths that lead to the same outcome — equifinality, all the paths lead to the same effects
• Common types of comparison

  • Comparison across units
  • Comparison over time
  • Comparison across ≠ functional issue areas
• Threats to good comparison

  • Comparison that lack structures and focus
  • Having too many moving parts or the wrong parts moving
• Controlled comparison

  1. Most similar design

  2. Least similar design
• Advantage of controlled comparison: help rule out alternatives explanations
• Critique to comparative research

  • Interaction of the variables
  • Focusing exclusively on positive cases
  • Selective irrelevant negative cases
• Negative case

  Contrast cases that are positive on the DV, Y
• Possibility Principle

  Outcome has a real possibility, not just a nonzero, of occurring
• Rule of Inclusion

  Relevant if value on at least one X is positively related Y
• Rule of Exclusion

  Irrelevant if value on an eliminatory X predicts non-Y
• Rule of Exclusion takes precedent over Rule of Inclusion
• Negative case for the causes of genocide study: My theory Separatism based on ethic divisions feed genocide, Rule of Inclusion Colombia or Canada?, Rule of Exclusion Is Canada still a relevant negative case?
• In "When Do the Dispossessed Protest?" Killian Clarke explores why refugees mobilize in some camps and not in others. Two of his cases are camps where refugees didn't mobilize.
• Process tracing


  1. Hypothesis that explains what happened

  2. Observed implication or a fingerprint

  3. Alternative hypothesis

  4. Evidence
• Process tracing (PT)


  A research method for tracing causal processes using detailed, within-case analysis of how causal mechanisms operate in real-world cases
• In PT we don't try to understand the causes, but how one of these variable linked to the outcome
• All of the dominoes fell down