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Exploring and evaluating the use of configurational methods in large n contexts: transitions in the English and German educational systems

  • Start date: 01 June 2009
  • End date: 02 October 2011

An individual's adult economic and social status is influenced by the pathway he or she follows through the educational system. It is therefore important to understand the factors and processes acting on the individual, social and systemic levels to produce the distribution of students across these pathways. Employing existing datasets and new interview data, the research focuses on these substantive issues. The other, equally important focus of the research is methodological, exploring the use of case-based approaches with large n datasets.

Ragin's Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) attempts to bridge the supposed divide between quantitative and qualitative research methods. Based on Boolean algebra, QCA identifies necessary and sufficient conditions for some outcome, providing a configurational account of potentially causal conditions. In this work, QCA, in its crisp and fuzzy forms, is combined with process-tracing interviews. This approach with its capacity to explore the ways in which conjunctions of factors explain educational success and failure may offer insights over and above those available from either conventional quantitative methods or from small scale qualitative work. Studies in England and Germany, two countries whose educational systems differ widely in many ways, will aim to produce configurational accounts of transitions during students' educational careers.

Grant holder

Dr Judith Glaesser

Programme name

None

Co - applicants

None

Grant amount

£218,511.76

Grant reference

RES-063-27-0240

Institution

Durham University

Discipline

Sociology

Grant type

Fellowship