Abstract and Keywords
This article describes how qualitative and quantitative tools can be used jointly to strengthen causal inference. It first outlines the findings of statistical analysis of civil war onsets. It then addresses the different criteria for choosing which narratives to tell. A method for structuring narratives that is complementary to the statistical work is reported. Next, the article shows in light of narrative findings the incompleteness of the statistical models that are initially ran. One narrative is emphasized as an example of its potential yield. It underlines some surprises and advantages of the random narrative approach. There are general lessons as well to be learned from the random narrative exercise. The random narrative method allows the assessment of measurement error for variables that are hard to code reliably across large numbers of cases.
Keywords: causal inference, civil war, statistical analysis, statistical models, random narrative approach, measurement error
Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of titles within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view restricted versions of this content, plus any full text content that is freely available.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .