Using case-based approaches to analyse large datasets: a comparison of Ragin's fsQCA and fuzzy cluster analysis

The paper undertakes a comparison of Ragin's fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis with cluster analysis. After describing key features of both methods, it uses a simple invented example to illustrate an important algorithmic difference in the way in which these methods classify cases. It then examines the consequences of this difference via analyses of data previously calibrated as fuzzy sets. The data, taken from the National Child Development Study, concern educational achievement, social class, ability and gender. The classifications produced by fsQCA and fuzzy cluster analysis (FCA) are compared and the reasons for the observed differences between them are discussed. The predictive power of both methods is also compared, employing both correlational and set theoretic comparisons, using highest qualification achieved as the outcome. In the main, using the real data, the two methods are found to produce similar results. A final discussion considers the generalisability or otherwise of this finding

Gender, parental education and ability: their interacting roles in predicting GCSE success

We investigate the relations between gender, parental education, ability, and educational achievement in Britain, focusing on the way in which gender and parental education interact with ability to contribute to a pupil’s obtaining secondary school qualifications. This allows us to provide evidence relevant to claims concerning the effects of differences in the way in which working- and middle-class familial cultures interact with gender-specific behaviour in school. Given the configurational nature of the processes likely to be involved, we employ Ragin’s Qualitative Comparative Analysis as our method. We find that, in both academically selective and non-selective schools, high ability is a quasi-sufficient condition for obtaining certain levels of qualification, but that at lower levels of ability, either being female or having highly educated parents (or both) have to be present, too. Boys without highly educated parents perform less well than girls from a similar background

The Tribological Behaviour of Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polyaryletherketones (PAEKs) through their Glass Transitions.

yesAdvanced engineering polymers of the Polyaryletherketone (PAEK) family with carbon fibre reinforcement are finding application in engineering systems as tribological bearing surfaces under severe operating conditions that cyclically move the polymer into and beyond the glass transition temperature region. To support such an application, the friction in high speed and low load PAEK-steel sliding contacts was investigated both unlubricated and lubricated with a trinonyl trimellitate ester, a base fluid for high temperature industrial lubricants. Four polymers in the PAEK family, PEEK, PEK, PEKEKK and PEKK, with 30%wt of carbon fibre whiskers were tested against an AISI 4140 steel disc. When unlubricated, low friction depended upon the formation of a PAEK transfer film on the steel disc and when this became unstable in the glass transition region the friction increased to much higher levels with associated polymer surface damage. Frictional heating due to the high sliding speed dominated the differences in glass transition behaviour between the four PAEKs. When lubricated, the lubricant film controlled friction and there was no significant effect of the glass transition of any of the PAEKs. The irreversible nature of the glass transition in PAEKs in such tribological applications, due to high surface damage at high temperature, means that it is essential to ensure effective lubrication in both fluid film and boundary lubrication.Innovate UK, Knowledge Transfer Partnershi

Emergency Management and Tourism Stakeholder Responses to Crises: A Global Survey

This paper examines the contested area of the responsibility for destinations and tourists, within emergency settings. It incorporates a Delphi-Scenario technique to facilitate a structured discussion of emergency management for different destination stakeholders. The Delphi exercise engaged 123 senior international stakeholders, from 9 different industry sectors, across 34 countries to provide a global perspective. The study’s principal focus is on the notion of emergency management, to identify the challenges that stakeholders would face within a disaster scenario. The exercise asked stakeholders to identify with whom the responsibility rests for 18 distinct disaster-related activities. The study proposes a responsibility allocation building-block framework which could help speed up the emergency management responses by ”knowing who is going to do what” with a particular focus on dealing with international tourists as a community in a disaster zone

Framing tourist risk in UK press accounts of Hurricane Ivan

This article examines the coverage of selected UK press reports of Hurricane Ivan in September 2004 that was the most powerful storm to hit the Caribbean within the last 10 years. Quantitative content analysis has been utilised in this study to determine the main sources of information on the Hurricane and to examine the framing of tourist risk in the press accounts of this disaster. It is demonstrated that the reporting of Hurricane Ivan in the news items tended to convey information that amplified tourist vulnerability and risk. Institutional official sources were often quoted to reinforce danger and ‘no-escape’ rather than reporting on management strategies to reduce these risks or measures that were implemented to ensure visitor safety. This article therefore contends that media management strategies on disasters need to employ more precise and careful monitoring of media accounts of disasters in major generating markets. Such activities may be invaluable in providing assistance to tourism managers regarding decisions on communications strategies and marketing activity aimed at repairing damage and returning to normality in an affected country or region

correction to unpacking configurational dynamics sequence analysis and qualitative comparative analysis as a mixed method design

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How has Educational Expansion changed the Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Achieving Professional, Managerial and Technical Class Positions in Britain? A Configurational Analysis.

This paper, whose purpose is both substantive and methodological, focuses on changes over a nine year period, drawing on data from two British birth cohorts (individuals born in 1958 and 1970), and, substantively, employs set theoretic methods to explore the extent to which an upward shift in qualifications achieved led to any reduction in the roles class and gender played in the achievement of professional, managerial and technical (PMT) social class destinations in early adulthood. Our methodological purpose is to illustrate how a counterfactual modelling approach can be used together with Ragin's set theoretic methods to provide an alternative way of analysing relationships in this area. We draw on earlier work exploring the extent to which educational achievement was 'meritocratic' with respect to ability for these cohorts (Cooper 2005, 2006). Our configurational account of the causal pathways to various class destinations is set against the background of a simple model of 'meritocracy' (allocation to available class positions by qualifications alone taking account of the empirical marginal distributions). This model allows us to specify, counterfactually, what qualifications would have represented necessary and sufficient conditions in our modelled meritocracy for reaching the PMT class. By comparison of these conditions with the empirically derived necessary and sufficient conditions for achieving these outcomes (using Ragin et al's fs/QCA software) we show that while allocation processes were far from meritocratic in both cohorts, there were some changes in the way both class and gender combined with qualifications as conditions for destinations. We also show that Ragin's configurational methods, focussing on holistically-conceived cases and conjunctural causation rather than on the net effects of independent variables, provide a useful analytic technique for capturing relationships in this field