Page 1 of 1

Published examples of good transparency practice

Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2016 9:23 am
by cschneid
The suggestion I would like to make for this discussion comes from the organizers of the entire deliberation process, Alan Jacobs and Tim Buethe. Among other things, they ask working groups to try and put forward published examples of good transparency practice.

Please feel free to bring references to publications that you find do a good job in specific transparency issues. If possible, please specify in 1-2 bullet point sentences what it is that you deem to be a good transparency practice. I am sure it would not be a problem if you put forward own publications.

Re: Published examples of good transparency practice

Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2016 2:52 am
by Barbara Vis
Hi all,

As "fresh" working group co-organizer, I would like to repeat Carsten's request to put forward references to published QCA studies that can be seen as examples of "good practice" in terms of transparency.

Since studies may be doing a very good in terms of transparency in one area (for example, reporting the process of calibration), yet perform less in another area (such as, not reporting which robustness analyses have been reported), the example(s) put forward do not need to be exemplary in every respect. Please indicate in 1 or 2 lines on which aspect(s) the published study does a very good job in terms of transparency.

Looking forward to your suggestions!

Best wishes, Barbara

Re: Published examples of good transparency practice

Posted: Fri Dec 16, 2016 3:48 am
by Alrik Thiem
Krook (2010) and Osa and Corduneanu-Huci (2003) are the only two applied studies I know of that have been transparent with respect to model ambiguities, that is, the degree to which multiple explanatory models fit some set of analyzed data equally well (see the following article on the problem of model ambiguities: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0049124115610351). I always recommend these two pieces to students of my courses.

The immense problem of non-transparency about model ambiguities in QCA is, however, not user-induced, but attributable to the widely-used fs/QCA software and the recommendation by many teachers of QCA courses to students to pick the prime implicants that are in accordance with their hypotheses when decomposing the PI chart in the fs/QCA software (yet, according to my experiences, many applied users and teachers of QCA courses in fact don't even know what the PI chart in fs/QCA does, how it works, or what its purpose is; they just click their way through the chart until everything that is alarmingly red has turned into comforting green).

References
Krook, Mona Lena. 2010. "Women's Representation in Parliament: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis." Political Studies 58 (5):886-908.
Osa, Maryjane, and Cristina Corduneanu-Huci. 2003. "Running Uphill: Political Opportunity in Non-Democracies." Comparative Sociology 2 (4):605-29.