The concept of the case is a basic feature of social science research and yet many questions about how a case should be defined, how cases should be selected and what the criteria are for a good case or set of cases are far from settled. Are cases pre-existing phenomena that need only be identified by the researcher before analysis can begin? Or are cases constructed during the course of research, only after analysis has revealed which features should be considered defining characteristics? Will cases be selected randomly from the total pool of available cases? Or will cases be chosen because...

For over twenty years Charles C. Ragin has been at the forefront of the development of innovative methods for social scientists. In "Redesigning Social Inquiry," he continues his campaign to revitalize the field, challenging major aspects of the conventional template for social science research while offering a clear alternative.
"Redesigning Social Inquiry" provides a substantive critique of the standard approach to social research namely, assessing the relative importance of causal variables drawn from competing theories. Instead, Ragin proposes the use of set-theoretic methods to find...

For over twenty years Charles C. Ragin has been at the forefront of the development of innovative methods for social scientists. In "Redesigning Social Inquiry," he continues his campaign to revitalize the field, challenging major aspects of the conventional template for social science research while offering a clear alternative.
"Redesigning Social Inquiry" provides a substantive critique of the standard approach to social research namely, assessing the relative importance of causal variables drawn from competing theories. Instead, Ragin proposes the use of set-theoretic methods to find...

Case-based methods have a long history in the social sciences. They are extensively used and raise many practical and theoretical questions. This book provides a comprehensive, critical examination of case-oriented research. It offers concrete proposals about the best research methods and provides an unparalleled guide to the emergence and complexity of the field.

For over twenty-five years, Charles C. Ragin has developed Qualitative Comparative Analysis and related set-analytic techniques as a means of bridging qualitative and quantitative methods of research. Now, with Peer C. Fiss, Ragin uses these impressive new tools to unravel the varied conditions affecting life chances.

Ragin and Fiss begin by taking up the controversy regarding the relative importance of test scores versus socioeconomic background on life chances, a debate that has raged since the 1994 publication of Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's The Bell Curve. In...

Constructing Social Research is an innovative text that can serve as an introduction to social research methods course, or as a capstone to an advanced course introducing a social scientific discipline. Rather than offer an inventory of data collection and analysis techniques, its primary goal is to show unity within the diversity of activities that are called social research.