My research is mainly focused on methodological aspects of the social science research. In particular, I have made a number of contributions to both the theory of the Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), and also to the software implementation of this research method. My R package QCA is now the default standard for this type of research, being taught in university curricula and summer schools, all over the world.
My other research interest is related to data documentation. I strongly believe that data is useless, and its value decreases over time, unless we manage to establish a long term storage containing the context in which the data was collected. Such metadata (data about data) is handled by the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) standard, for which I develop software (into another R package called DDIwR) that empowers researchs to quickly document their data and create a single XML document containing both data and metadata, for long term storage.
Finally, it needs mentioning what I consider another one of my proud-worthy accomplishments, the R package declared. It tackles what many consider a serious shortcoming of the R statistical environment, the existence of a single missing value, called NA. But social sciences have many values to explain why a certain value is missing (maybe the respondend did not know what to respond, or might not have wanted to respond because of a too sensitive question, or simply the question was not applicable). Package declared makes it possible to declare value labels and missing values, and offers a wide range of functions to deal with these additional values that base R does not cover.
Journal articles
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(2016) . Enhancing Sensitivity Diagnostics for Qualitative Comparative Analysis: A Combinatorial Approach . Political Analysis.
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(2015) . Enhancing the Minimization of Boolean and Multivalue Output Functions With eQMC . Journal of Mathematical Sociology.
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(2013) . Boolean Minimization in Social Science Research: A Review of Current Software for Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) . Social Science Computer Review.
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(2011) . The Visual Analogue Scale. An Alternative to the Likert Type Response Scales. An Alternative to the Likert Type Response Scales . International Review of Social Research.
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(2011) . Crisp-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (csQCA), Contradictions and Consistency Benchmarks for Model Specification . Methodological Innovations.
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(2006) . QCA – Analiza Calitativă Comparativă. Aplicații, instrumente și potențial . Sociologie Românească.
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(2004) . Creating data services in new democracies. Experiences from a case study and related neighbours . International Social Science Journal.
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Books
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(2014) . Facing the Future. European Research Infrastructures for the Humanities and Social Sciences . Scivero Verlag.
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Book chapters
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(2020) . Set Theoretic Methods . The SAGE Handbook of Research Methods in Political Science and International Relations.
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(2014) . A Common Agenda for the European Research Infrastructures in the Social Sciences and Humanities . Facing the Future. European Research Infrastructures for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
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(2002) . The Romanian Social Science Archive . Social Science Data Archive in Eastern Europe. Results, Potentials and Prospects of the Archival Development..