Social Inquiry and Bayesian Inference

Tasha Fairfield is an Associate Professor at the London School of Economics, with a Ph.D in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, and an M.S. in physics from Stanford University. Her publications include Private Wealth and Public Revenue in Latin America (Cambridge, 2015), which won the Donna Lee Van Cott Book Award. Andrew E. Charman is a Lecturer and Researcher in Physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and an expert in Bayesian statistics.  Beyond analyzing measurements of antimatter and the foundations of quantum mechanics, he has explored methods for optimal congressional apportionment and statistical mechanical models of gerrymandering.  His previous work with Tasha Fairfield received APSA's QMMR Sage Paper Award.

• Contents; Acknowledgements; Part I. Foundations: 1. Introduction: Bayesian reasoning for qualitative research; 2. Fundamentals of Bayesian probability; Part II. Operationalizing Bayesian Reasoning in Qualitative Research: 3. Heuristic Bayesian reasoning; 4. Explicit Bayesian analysis; 5. Bayesian analysis with multiple cases; 6. Hypotheses and priors revisited; 7. Scrutinizing qualitative research; Part III. Bayesianism in Methodological Perspective: 8. Comparing logical Bayesianism to frequentism; 9. A unified framework for inference; Part IV. Bayesian Implications for Research Design: 10. Iterative research; 11. Test strength; 12. Case selection; 13. Worked examples; References; Contents; Index.

'Social Inquiry and Bayesian Inference outlines the philosophy, logic, and mathematics of Bayesian process tracing more thoroughly than any other source to date, and it translates them into practical advice that qualitative researchers can carry out even if they don't want to wade through the details of the math. This will be the seminal statement on Bayesian process tracing for many years to come. It should be on the syllabus of everyone teaching case study methods and the bookshelf of everyone using these methods in their own research.' Andrew Bennett, Professor of International Relations, Georgetown University