Calibrating conditions with multiple attributes

[Charles masquelier]

Hi,

Would anyone be able to recommend a text that is helpful for calibrating conditions with multiple attributes using Ragin's 'direct method'? For example, one of my conditions is the size of a farm. We want to make sure the size is measured in terms of people working on the farm (attribute 1) and the area size of the farm (attribute 2). I've looked online and couldn't find much on how I should proceed. 

Also, most of the data I collected is qualitative (interviews with farmers). I have read a few texts but I'm yet to find one that clearly shows how I could apply the direct method to the calibration of qualitative data. Would you be able to recommend a helpful text?

Thanks a lot in advance for your help.

Charlie

[Ingo Rohlfing]

Dear Charlie,

on the first question: In the first step, I would calibrate each item individiually. In the second step, you have to decide how to combine the two attributes to derive set-membership values for 'size of a farm'. This is a conceptual matter. If you say a farm is large when many people are working on it and when the area size is large, you have to take the minimum over both attributes. If a farm is large when many people are working on it or when the area size is large, or both, you take the maximum. This is discussed in Goertz's book on concept formation (2006), for example.

On the second question. I think that direct calibration only makes sense when the variable that is calibrated is continuous. This is probably not possible based on interview data, which may explain why there are no texts on this specific element of a QCA study. If you want to work with fuzzy sets, you could manually assign set-membership values based on how you code the information in the interviews. For example, one could assign values of 0, 0.33, 0.66 and 1 as set-membership values.

I am not sure, but this text may help for calibrating qualitative data: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11135-022-01358-0

This is a useful overview of calibration techniques used in QCA: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1558689818770061

I hope this helps.

Regards

Ingo

[Charles masquelier]

This is super helpful - thanks so much Ingo! I really appreciate it.

All the best,

Charlie