Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis to understand complex policy problems

This article shows how Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) can be used to understand what works to address complex policy problems at a local level, using the example of tackling high rates of teenage conceptions in England’s most deprived local authority areas. QCA is a promising method for providing evidence in situations where interventions interact with contexts, enabling causal pathways to be discerned from how sets of conditions combine with particular outcomes: in this instance, whether inequalities in conception rates do or do not narrow, compared with the England average. A wide range of survey and secondary data, sourced in collaboration with practitioners, was explored to identify conditions that might show a relationship with the outcome. Applying QCA’s process of logical reduction enabled identification of sets of cases. Two narrowing sets and three not-narrowing sets are presented, showing how there are different pathways to narrowing and not-narrowing outcomes, and how conditions often combine to have causal effect. Although based on systematic cross-case comparison, the article also demonstrates the importance of judgement and interpretation in QCA.