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Insights and Pitfalls: Selection Bias in Qualitative Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

David Collier  and
James Mahoney
David Collier
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
James Mahoney
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Abstract

Qualitative analysts have received stern warnings that the validity of their studies may be undermined by selection bias. This article provides an overview of this problem for qualitative researchers in the field of international and comparative studies, focusing on selection bias that may result from the deliberate selection of cases by the investigator. Examples are drawn from studies of revolution, international deterrence, the politics of inflation, international terms of trade, economic growth, and industrial competitiveness. The article first explores how insights about selection bias developed in quantitative research can most productively be applied in qualitative studies. The discussion considers why qualitative researchers need to be concerned about selection bias, even if they do not care about the generality of their findings, and it considers distinctive implications of this form of bias for qualitative research, as in the problem of what is labeled “complexification based on extreme cases.” The article then considers pitfalls in recent discussions of selection bias in qualitative studies. These discussions at times get bogged down in disagreements and misunderstandings over how the dependent variable is conceptualized and what the appropriate frame of comparison should be, issues that are crucial to the assessment of bias within a given study. At certain points it becomes clear that the real issue is not just selection bias, but a larger set of trade-offs among alternative analytic goals.

Type
Research Note
Information
World Politics , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , October 1996 , pp. 56 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1996

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References

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10 Moses, Lincoln E., “Truncation and Censorship,” in Sills, David L., ed., International Encyclopedia ofthe Social Sciences, vol. 15 (New York: Macmillan and Free Press, 1968), 196Google Scholar. Moses refers to this as truncation “on the left” and “on the right.” We are not concerned with other forms of truncation, which he refers to as “inner” truncation (omitting cases within a given range of values, but including cases above and below that range) and “outer” truncation (omitting cases above and below a given range). In the discussion below, when we refer to truncation, we mean left and right truncation.

11 Heckman (fn. 2, 1976), 478–79.

12 It is important to emphasize that this does not involve the situation of causal heterogeneity discussed below, in which unit changes in the explanatory variables have different effects on the dependent variable. Rather, a different combination of extreme scores on the explanatory variables produces the high scores.

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18 Bartels offers an excellent example of such a model. See ibid.

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25 In this latter case, scholars may actually look at a range of variation at the high or low extreme of the variable, yet they treat this range of variation as a single outcome, for example, as “high” or “low” growth.

26 King, Keohane, and Verba (fn. 1), 129; Geddes (fn. 1), 132–33.

27 King, Keohane, and Verba (fn. 1), 129.

28 Ibid., 129, 130. We might add that notwithstanding this emphatic advice, these authors state their position more cautiously at a later point (p. 134). They suggest that this type of design may be a useful first step in addressing a research question and can be used to develop interesting hypotheses.

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43 George and Smoke's (fn. 40) subsequent discussion of these issues appears to underscore the idea of thinking of this variability in terms of gradations (p. 172).

44 George and Smoke (fn. 39), 503.

45 Ibid., 2. Similar statements are found on pp. 503 and 589.

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51 Ibid., 138.

52 Geddes (fn. 1), 135, introduces additional domain restrictions that seem highly appropriate, as in the exclusion of oil-exporting states.

53 See Geddes (fn. 1), 135–140, and esp. Figures 4, 5, 6.

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