Redesigning Social Inquiry: Fuzzy Sets and Beyond by Charles C. Ragin

Author:Charles C. Ragin
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Figure 6.1 Plot of membership in IMF protest against membership in the four-condition causal recipe

The procedure just outlined can be extended so that researchers can assess all possible versions of a given recipe (that is, all possible subsets of the ingredients specified in the “full” version of the recipe). In the example shown in figure 6.2, only one causal condition has been removed (P), yielding a single three-condition recipe. Altogether, in addition to the four-condition recipe, there are four three-condition recipes (when using the four-condition recipe as the starting point), six two-condition recipes, and four one-condition recipes. Using fuzzy-set methods, the degree of membership of cases in each of these fifteen possible recipes can be assessed, and these scores, in turn, can be used to assess the consistency and coverage of each recipe as a subset of the outcome. In this way, researchers can compare simpler versions of a given recipe with more complex versions. If a simpler version has comparable consistency but greater coverage than a more complex version, then it might be preferred. As an example of this type of analysis, suppose the examination of the fifteen recipes revealed that degree of membership in a two-condition recipe, say the combination of severe IMF austerity measures (A) and the perception of government corruption (P), formed a consistent subset of the outcome, IMF protest, with a consistency score of 0.90 and a coverage score of 0.71. The researcher might well prefer this more parsimonious explanation to the original, four-condition recipe. While a small amount of set-theoretic consistency has been sacrificed (0.93 for the four-condition recipe versus 0.90 for the two-condition recipe), there is a substantial increase in set-theoretic coverage (0.71 for the two-condition recipe versus 0.53 for the four-condition recipe). A coverage score of 0.71 indicates that the two-condition recipe accounts for 71 percent of the sum of the membership scores in the outcome.

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