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The Logic and Methodology of “Necessary but Not Sufficient Causality†: A Comment on Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA)

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  • Alrik Thiem

Abstract

Necessary condition analysis (NCA) has recently been proposed to researchers in business, management, organization, psychology, sociology, and even medicine as a new data analysis tool for identifying necessary but insufficient causes of an outcome. In this comment, I demonstrate that NCA is inadequate for performing such inferences. The reason is a mismatch between the method’s purported search target and its actual output. Moreover, I show that, even if its output corresponded to its search target, the method of qualitative comparative analysis would always outperform NCA in all relevant respects.

Suggested Citation

  • Alrik Thiem, 2021. "The Logic and Methodology of “Necessary but Not Sufficient Causality†: A Comment on Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA)," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 50(2), pages 913-925, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:somere:v:50:y:2021:i:2:p:913-925
    DOI: 10.1177/0049124118782548
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