TSQCA: Threshold-Sweep Qualitative Comparative Analysis in R

TL;DR

TSQCA is an R package that automates threshold sensitivity analysis in Qualitative Comparative Analysis, enabling researchers to systematically explore how threshold choices impact results and improve reproducibility.

Contribution

It introduces four threshold-sweep functions for comprehensive exploration of threshold effects, integrating with existing QCA tools and supporting automated reporting.

Findings

Automates threshold sensitivity analysis in QCA

Supports exploration of outcome and condition thresholds

Facilitates reproducible documentation of analyses

Abstract

Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) requires researchers to choose calibration and dichotomization thresholds, and these choices can substantially affect truth tables, minimization, and resulting solution formulas. Despite this dependency, threshold sensitivity is often examined only in an ad hoc manner because repeated analyses are time-intensive and error-prone. We present TSQCA, an R package that automates threshold-sweep analyses by treating thresholds as explicit analytical variables. It provides four sweep functions (otSweep, ctSweepS, ctSweepM, dtSweep) to explore outcome thresholds, single-condition thresholds, multi-condition threshold grids, and joint outcome-condition threshold spaces, respectively. TSQCA integrates with the established CRAN package QCA for truth table construction and Boolean minimization, while returning structured S3 objects with consistent print/summary methods and optional detailed results. The package also supports automated Markdown report generation and configuration-chart output to facilitate reproducible documentation of cross-threshold results.