English

TSQCA: Threshold-Sweep Qualitative Comparative Analysis in R

Methodology 2026-02-19 v3

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.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.11229,
  title  = {TSQCA: Threshold-Sweep Qualitative Comparative Analysis in R},
  author = {Yuki Toyoda},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.11229},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

27 pages, 2 figures, 7 tables. R package available on CRAN (https://cran.r-project.org/package=TSQCA). v3: corrected function signatures and package structure to match v1.3.1; added pre_calibrated argument to function reference tables

R2 v1 2026-07-01T09:07:27.958Z