Dear colleagues,
We kindly invite you to join the
virtual NCA workshop: An Introduction to Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) for Social Network
Analysis as part of the virtual SUNBELT 2020.
Date: Wednesday, June 24, 2020
Time: 8:00 AM - 9:30 AM (EDT), 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM (CEST)
Capacity: 15 participants
Workshop Description
The workshop will provide an introduction
to Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA). NCA is a novel approach that can
be used to test whether a condition (X) is necessary but not sufficient for an outcome (Y). It provides a new perspective on existing phenomena and is complementary to the regression-based modeling that we usually apply.
When a condition is necessary for an outcome, the outcome does not exist without the condition. The condition serves as a "bottleneck", "critical factor", or "constraint". This
resonates with the social networks literature in which the limitations of certain relationships or network positions are often considered. NCA allows us to quantify those limitations and to answer questions like "is a brokerage position necessary for creativity?",
"is a closed network position necessary for trust?", and "are positive ties necessary for a person's wellbeing?".
This interactive workshop will teach participants the logic and importance of necessary conditions, illustrated with examples form different fields. We will also compare NCA to other methods, such as regression analysis. The workshop will help participants
to become the first users of NCA in their field, with hands-on instructions about how to build necessity theories, and how to analyze data for testing such theories using the NCA R software.
You can sign up for the workshop
here. More information about NCA is available on the NCA website (https://www.erim.eur.nl/necessary-condition-analysis/).
Feel free to let me know if you have any questions about the workshop or NCA methodology.
Hope to see you next week,
Stefan Breet
PhD Candidate in Corporate Entrepreneurship
Department of Strategic Management & Entrepreneurship
Rotterdam School of Management
Erasmus University