The Discovery of Causal Mechanisms: Extractive Qualitative Content Analysis as a Tool for Process Tracing

Wir möchten mit diesem Artikel zur methodologischen Diskussion über die Eignung qualitativer Methoden für spezifische Zwecke beitragen, indem wir die Rolle der extrahierenden qualitativen Inhaltsanalyse in der Entdeckung kausaler Mechanismen diskutieren. Die empirische Identifizierung kausaler Mechanismen wird in der methodologischen Literatur als Process Tracing bezeichnet. Allerdings wird die Literatur durch die Idee dominiert, Process Tracing würde das Vorhandensein eines hypothetischen Mechanismus testen. Wir betonen dagegen die Entdeckung kausaler Mechanismen auf der Basis einer kausalen Rekonstruktion, wie sie von MAYNTZ (2009 [2002], 2016) vorgeschlagen wurde. Wir identifizieren die extrahierende qualitative Inhaltsanalyse als eine distinkte qualitative Methode und spezifizieren ihr Ergebnis als eine strukturierte Informationsbasis, die für die Rekonstruktion sozialer Situationen und Prozesse genutzt werden kann. Eine solche Informationsbasis ist ein wichtiger Ausgangspunkt für die Kausalanalyse. Wir demonstrieren die Rolle der extrahierenden qualitativen Inhaltsanalyse an einer empirischen Studie von LAUDEL und BIELICK (2018), in der die Mechanismen identifiziert wurden, die zur Entstehung individueller Forschungsprogramme von Nachwuchswissenschaftler_innen führen.With this article, we seek to contribute to the methodological discussion about the fit of qualitative methods for specific purposes by examining the role that extractive qualitative content analysis (EQCA) can play in the discovery of causal mechanisms. The methodological literature on the empirical identification of causal mechanisms (an approach called process tracing) has been dominated by the idea of empirically testing the presence of hypothesized mechanisms. We argue for the discovery of causal mechanisms on the basis of causal reconstruction as suggested by MAYNTZ (2009 [2002], 2016). We establish EQCA as a distinct qualitative method and specify its outcome—namely, a structured information base that can be used for the reconstruction of social situations and processes. Such an information base is an important source for causal analysis. We demonstrate the role of EQCA in process tracing with an empirical study by LAUDEL and BIELICK (2018), who discovered the mechanisms that produce individual research programs of early career researchers

Theoriegeleitete Textanalyse? Das Potential einer variablenorientierten qualitativen Inhaltsanalyse

Die qualitative Inhaltsanalyse beansprucht, zwei einander widersprechende methodologische Prinzipien (Offenheit und theoriegeleitetes Vorgehen) zu synthetisieren und darüber hinaus durch ihr regelgeleitetes Vorgehen die systematische Einbeziehung des gesamten empirischen Materials und eine gewisse Reproduzierbarkeit der Auswertung qualitativer Daten zu gewährleisten. Sie wäre damit ein interessantes Auswertungsverfahren für qualitative Projekte, die von Theorie ausgehen und zu Theorie beitragen wollen. Das von Mayring vorgeschlagene inhaltsanalytische Verfahren (das bisher einzige) bleibt jedoch zu eng den quantitativen Vorbildern verhaftet und bietet auch keine wirkliche Synthese von Offenheit und theoriegeleitetem Vorgehen. Insbesondere die Arbeit mit geschlossenen Kategoriensystemen, bei denen alle möglichen Ausprägungen vorab feststehen, scheint unter dem Aspekt der Offenheit problematisch. Ausgehend von einer Kritik dieses Verfahrens wird deshalb eine Alternative vorgeschlagen und an einem Beispiel vorgeführt, die auf einem anderen Verständnis von soziologischen Untersuchungsvariablen beruht. Die mehrdimensionalen, nominalskalierten Konstrukte, die mitunter in der Theorie als Variablen behandelt werden, entsprechen der Komplexität des Gegenstandes qualitativer Sozialforschung viel besser als einfache, an quantitative Vorbilder angelehnte Variablen und können deshalb als Analyseraster einer Inhaltsanalyse benutzt werden. Der Verzicht auf geschlossene Kategoriensysteme garantiert die notwendige Offenheit der Analyse für unerwartete Informationen. Da die Inhaltsanalyse häufig auf große Mengen Text angewendet werden muß, lag die Anwendung eines computergestützten Verfahrens nahe. Die angebotenen Softwarepakete basieren jedoch auf einer Verkodung der Urtexte, während eine Inhaltsanalyse Informationen extrahiert und - unter Beibehaltung eines Verweises auf die Fundstelle - getrennt weiter-verarbeitet. Deshalb war es erforderlich, eigene Instrumente für die Computerunterstützung zu entwickeln. Das wurde durch die Programmierung von Makros in Word für Windows möglich.Qualitative content analysis claims to synthesise two contradictory methodological principles (openness and theory-guided investigation). Moreover, its rule-based approach is supposed to guarantee that the whole empirical basis is systematically dealt with and that the analysis is reproducible to a certain extent. For these reasons qualitative content analysis could be an interesting form of data analysis for projects that aim to start from theory and contribute to it. However, the procedure proposed by Mayring (i.e. the only one so far) remains too closely connected to its quantitative roots and does not offer a real synthesis of openness and theoretical guidance. From the perspective of openness, especially problematic is the usage of closed category systems in which all possible instances are fixed in advance. Starting from a critical review of Mayring’s approach, a procedure is proposed and demonstrated that is based upon a different understanding of variables. The multidimensional, nominally scaled constructs theoretical sociology deals with meet the complexity of qualitative research’s subject matters much better than do simple variables that are derived from quantitative idols. That is why they can be used as an analytical scheme for content analysis. The procedure’s necessary openness for unexpected information is guaranteed because no closed category systems are used. Since qualitative content analysis is often applied to large amounts of textual data, a computer-based procedure suggested itself. However, the better known software packages are based upon the coding of primary texts. Qualitative content analysis, on the contrary, extracts information and processes it separately (by carrying a link to the original source). For this reason it was necessary to develop special tools. These tools were created by programming macros in Word for Windows

Life With and Without Coding: Two Methods for Early-Stage Data Analysis in Qualitative Research Aiming at Causal Explanations

Qualitative research aimed at "mechanismic" explanations poses specific challenges to qualitative data analysis because it must integrate existing theory with patterns identified in the data. We explore the utilization of two methods—coding and qualitative content analysis—for the first steps in the data analysis process, namely "cleaning" and organizing qualitative data. Both methods produce an information base that is structured by categories and can be used in the subsequent search for patterns in the data and integration of these patterns into a systematic, theoretically embedded explanation. Used as a stand-alone method outside the grounded theory approach, coding leads to an indexed text, i.e. both the original text and the index (the system of codes describing the content of text segments) are subjected to further analysis. Qualitative content analysis extracts the relevant information, i.e. separates it from the original text, and processes only this information. We suggest that qualitative content analysis has advantages compared to coding whenever the research question is embedded in prior theory and can be answered without processing knowledge about the form of statements and their position in the text, which usually is the case in the search for "mechanismic" explanations. Coding outperforms qualitative content analysis in research that needs this information in later stages of the analysis, e.g. the exploration of meaning or the study of the construction of narratives

Governing Science

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.This review explores contributions by science policy studies and the sociology of science to our understanding of the impact of governance on research content. Contributions are subsumed under two perspectives, namely an “impact of”—perspective that searches for effects of specific governance arrangements and an “impact on”—perspective that asks what factors contribute to the construction of research content and includes governance among them. Our review shows that little is known so far about the impact of governance on knowledge content. A research agenda does not necessarily need to include additional empirical phenomena but must address the macro-micro-macro link inherent to the question in its full complexity, and systematically exploit comparative approaches in order to establish causality. This requires interdisciplinary collaboration between science policy studies, the sociology of science, and bibliometrics, which all can contribute to the necessary analytical toolbox

Interviewing Scientists

With this article, we would like to initiate a discussion about a methodological problem that is central to many empirical science studies but has received far too little attention, namely scientifically informed interviewing. To what extent do we have to understand scientists work scientifically in order to explain their behaviour sociologically? As far as it is existent at all, the methodological debate in science studies has focused on ethnographic observations. In this debate, the two approaches of naïve observation and informed observation (which sometimes takes the form of native observation) can be distinguished. The general methodology of ethnographic observation clearly favours the informed approach, as does the general methodology of qualitative interviewing. Scientifically informed interviewing specifies this general methodological insight for science studies but is also necessary because in some investigations we must systematically collect data on the content of our respondents research. This kind of interviewing requires extensive preparation of interviews, the construction of an ad hoc - pidgin for the communication during the interview and the negotiation of an appropriate level of scientific depth between the interviewer and the interviewee. We make suggestions how to solve these tasks (and how not to) and discuss limitations of the approach of informed interviewing

A bibliometric reconstruction of research trails for qualitative investigations of scientific innovations

"Abrupt changes in research content are of interest to innovation research because many innovations in general and scientific innovations in particular emerge from such changes. However, investigations of innovations emerging from research processes face the problem that the initial change of direction in research by one or few researchers is an elusive phenomenon. The method presented in this article contributes to solving this problem by supporting the in-depth analysis of individual research biographies and of the emergence of new directions of research in these. The method employs bibliometric tools for a reconstruction of individual cognitive careers, embeds these reconstructions in qualitative studies of research biographies, and provides opportunities to link cognitive careers to the dynamics of scientific fields. As we will demonstrate, the method is generic in that it supports not only the investigation of scientific innovations but also, more generally, the identification of thematic change in individual cognitive careers. Two applications in qualitative research projects illustrate the potential of the method." (author's abstract

ERC grants shaping research and academic careers: lessons for funding intellectual innovations

Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy 2011The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how and under what conditions the ERC grants serve their intended purpose. The paper is based on interviews with ‘starting’ and ‘advanced’ grantees from six countries and three discipline groups (natural sciences and engineering, life sciences, and social sciences and humanities). Additional interviews with non-grantees were conducted in order to establish a ‘control group.’EU Seventh Framework Programme and the European Research Council (ERC

What are institutional boundaries and how can they be overcome? Germany's collaborative research centres as boundary-spanning networks

Social entities create institutional frameworks, i.e. internal systems of rules which govern (but do not control) the actions of their members. Both scientific communities and scientific organisations are social entities whose institutional frameworks include rules promoting internal collaboration. Based upon a diffuse reciprocity, members of the social entities are stimulated to collaborate with other members. The tendency to prefer other members as collaborators is accompanied by a relative exclusion of non-members from collaborations. Thus, in this way institutional frameworks create institutional boundaries hindering collaboration. In order to overcome institutional boundaries both within universities and between scientific communities, in Germany collaborative research centres (CRCs) were established. These are networks of research groups from different departments of one or more universities, i.e. from different organisations and different scientific communities. They contain their own institutional framework, which overlaps with the institutional frameworks of both organisations and scientific communities. Because the network’s institutional framework includes rules promoting collaborations, these necessarily span the original institutional boundaries. A detailed discussion of these rules shows the functional equivalence of the different social entities’ (communities, organisations and networks) institutional frameworks.Scientific communities und formale Organisationen wie Forschungsinsitute oder Universitäten bilden jeweils eigene Institutionensysteme aus. Diese Institutionensysteme fördern direkt oder vermittelt Kooperationen zwischen den Mitgliedern der communities bzw. Organisationen. Indem sie Kooperationen zwischen ihren Mitgliedern fördern, errichten sie aber zugleich institutionelle Schranken für die Kooperation mit Außenstehenden. Solche Kooperationen werden durch die Institutionensysteme meist nicht unterstützt und damit relativ erschwert. Die Mitglieder einer scientific community oder Organisation wählen deshalb tendenziell Kooperationspartner aus derselben community bzw. Organisation. Um solche institutionellen Schranken zu überwinden, hat die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft das Förderprogramm ‘Sonderforschungsbereiche’ (SFB) etabliert. Dabei handelt es sich um Netzwerke von Forschungsgruppen, die aus verschiedenen Fachbereichen einer oder mehrerer Universitäten stammen. Die Sonderforschungsbereiche bilden ein eigenes Institutionensystem aus, das die der scientific communities und der Organisationen überlagert. Weil auch dieses Institutionensystem kooperationsfördernde Regeln enthält, werden innerhalb eines SFB solche Kooperationen gefördert, die die klassischen institutionellen Grenzen überschreiten. Eine Analyse der kooperationsfördernden Regeln von SFB zeigt, daß sie den in scientific communities und Organisationen entstehenden Regeln funktional äquivalent sind

Where do the actants, mangles come from?

This paper deals with the methodological problem of how to include material influences in comparative studies of research processes. Both Actor-Network-Theory and ‚Mangle-of-Practice‘ confirm convincingly enough that materiality must be taken into account in empirical investigations of research processes. However, it is not clear how material factors can be included systematically in comparative studies. In this paper, we use empirical examples from comparative institutionalist studies of research processes to discuss the difficulties that hinder comparative analyses. It turns out that neither Actor-Network-Theory nor ‚Mangle‘ support comparative analyses of material influences. As causes for this deficiency, we discuss the treatment of materiality as situationally emergent phenomenon, the absence of methodology and the theoretical models‘ level of abstraction. A methodological framework is proposed that should support systematic comparative analyses. This framework rests on an understanding of materiality as a cognitive condition of action. With the concept of cognitive conditions of action, materiality can be introduced into theories of action and into institutionalist approaches.Gegenstand dieses Aufsatzes ist das methodologische Problem der Einbeziehung materieller Einflüsse in die vergleichende Untersuchung von Forschungsprozessen. Daß solche Einflüsse berücksichtigt werden müssen, kann angesichts der neueren Befunde des Konstruktivismus (Actor-Network-Theory und Mangle of Practice) kaum in Zweifel gezogen werden. Weitgehend offengeblieben ist aber bisher, wie eine systematische vergleichende Einbeziehung von Materialität erfolgen kann. In dem Paper werden anhand empirischer Beispiele aus vergleichenden institutionalistischen Studien die Schwierigkeiten diskutiert, die in einer vergleichenden Analyse entstehen. Dabei zeigt sich, dass weder Actor-Network-Theory noch ‚Mangle’ vergleichende Analysen materieller Einflüsse unterstützen. Als Ursachen werden die Behandlung materieller Einflüsse als rein situative Faktoren, das Fehlen einer Methodologie und der Abstraktionsgrad der theoretischen Modelle diskutiert. Als Ansatz für einen methodologischen Rahmen, der die systematische vergleichende Einbeziehung materieller Einflussfaktoren ermöglicht, wird deren Konzeptualisierung als kognitive Handlungsbedingungen vorgeschlagen. Dadurch kann die Verbindung zur Handlungstheorie und zu auf Handlungstheorien beruhenden institutionalistischen Ansätzen hergestellt werden