Strategies to account for time and process in Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA)

In its original form, Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) struggles with cases that evolve over time. Temporal QCA (TQCA) and Time-Series QCA (TS/QCA) are among the older variants that try to incorporate time in the comparative analysis. Recently, many more alternative strategies have been proposed. This article provides an overview of all known strategies to account for time and process in QCA, so that researchers can make informed research design choices. We present the main strategies regarding: the research aspect to which it pertains (casing, calibration, and/or truth table analysis), data requirements, the nature of the results, and the type of research questions that can be addressed. The following eight strategies are discussed: a conventional QCA in a mixed-methods design, using temporal conditions, conducting multiple QCA analyses for different time periods, conducting one QCA for different time periods, Trajectory-Based QCA (TJ-QCA), TQCA, TS/QCA, and Linear Growth QCA (LG-QCA).