configTable: Assemble cases with identical configurations in a configuration table

Description

The configTable function assembles cases with identical configurations from a crisp-set, multi-value, or fuzzy-set data frame in a table called a configuration table.

Usage

configTable(x, type = c("auto", "cs", "mv", "fs"), frequency = NULL,
            case.cutoff = 0, rm.dup.factors = FALSE, rm.const.factors = FALSE,
           .cases = NULL, verbose = TRUE)
# S3 method for configTable
print(x, show.cases = NULL, ...)

Value

An object of type “configTable”, i.e. a data.frame with additional attributes “type”, “n” and “cases”.

Arguments

x: Data frame or matrix.
type: Character vector specifying the type of x: "auto" (automatic detection; default), "cs" (crisp-set), "mv" (multi-value), or "fs" (fuzzy-set).
frequency: Numeric vector of length nrow(x). All elements must be non-negative.
case.cutoff: Minimum number of occurrences (cases) of a configuration in x. Configurations with fewer than case.cutoff occurrences (cases) are not included in the configuration table.
rm.dup.factors: Logical; if TRUE, all but the first of a set of factors with identical values in x are removed. Note: The default value has changed from TRUE to FALSE in the package's version 3.5.4.
rm.const.factors: Logical; if TRUE, factors with constant values in x are removed. Note: The default value has changed from TRUE to FALSE in the package's version 3.5.4.
.cases: Optional character vector of length nrow(x) to set case labels (row names).
verbose: Logical; if TRUE, some messages on the configuration table are printed.
show.cases: Logical; if TRUE, the attribute “cases” is printed.
...: In
print.configTable: arguments passed to print.data.frame.

Details

The first input x of the configTable function is a data frame. To ensure that no misinterpretations of issued asf and csf can occur, users are advised to use only upper case letters as factor (column) names. Column names may contain numbers, but the first sign in a column name must be a letter. Only ASCII signs should be used for column and row names.

The configTable function merges multiple rows of x featuring the same configuration into one row, such that each row of the resulting table, which is called a configuration table, corresponds to one determinate configuration of the factors in x. The number of occurrences (cases) and an enumeration of the cases are saved as attributes “n” and “cases”, respectively. The attribute “n” is always printed in the output of configTable, the attribute “cases” is printed if the argument show.cases is TRUE in the print method.

The argument type allows for manually specifying the type of data; it defaults to "auto", which induces automatic detection of the data type. "cs" stands for crisp-set data featuring factors that only take values 1 and 0; "mv" stands for multi-value data with factors that can take any non-negative integers as values; "fs" stands for fuzzy-set data comprising factors taking real values from the interval [0,1], which are interpreted as membership scores in fuzzy sets.

Instead of multiply listing identical configurations in x, the frequency argument can be used to indicate the frequency of each configuration in the data frame. frequency takes a numeric vector of length nrow(x) as value. For instance, configTable(x, frequency = c(3,4,2,3)) determines that the first configuration in x is featured in 3 cases, the second in 4, the third in 2, and the fourth in 3 cases.

The case.cutoff argument is used to determine that configurations are only included in the configuration table if they are instantiated at least as many times in x as the number assigned to case.cutoff. Or differently, configurations that are instantiated less than case.cutoff are excluded from the configuration table. For instance, configTable(x, case.cutoff = 3) entails that configurations with less than 3 cases are excluded.

rm.dup.factors and rm.const.factors allow for determining whether all but the first of a set of duplicated factors (i.e. factors with identical value distributions in x) are eliminated and whether constant factors (i.e. factors with constant values in all cases (rows) in x) are eliminated. From the perspective of configurational causal modeling, factors with constant values in all cases can neither be modeled as causes nor as outcomes; therefore, they can be removed prior to the analysis. Factors with identical value distributions cannot be distinguished configurationally, meaning they are one and the same factor as far as configurational causal modeling is concerned. When duplicate or constant factors are contained in x, a warning message is issued by default. By setting rm.dup.factors and rm.const.factors to the non-default value TRUE, configTable is given permission to automatically eliminate duplicate or constant factors.

.cases can be used to set case labels (row names). It is a character vector of length nrow(x).

The row.names argument of the print function determines whether the case labels of x are printed or not. By default, row.names is TRUE unless the (comma-separated) list of the cases exceeds 20 characters in at least one row.

References

Greckhamer, Thomas, Vilmos F. Misangyi, Heather Elms, and Rodney Lacey. 2008. “Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis in Strategic Management Research: An Examination of Combinations of Industry, Corporate, and Business-Unit Effects.” Organizational Research Methods 11 (4):695-726.

Examples

Run this code

# Manual input of cs data
# -----------------------
dat1 <- data.frame(
  A = c(1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0),
  B = c(1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0),
  C = c(1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0),
  D = c(1,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,1,1,1,0,0,0),
  E = c(1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0,1,1,1,1,1,1,0,0,0)
)

# Default return of the configTable function.
configTable(dat1)

# Recovering the cases featuring each configuration by means of the print function.
print(configTable(dat1), show.cases = TRUE)

# The same configuration table as before can be generated by using the frequency argument 
# while listing each configuration only once.
dat1 <- data.frame(
  A = c(1,1,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0),
  B = c(1,1,1,0,0,0,1,1,1,0,0),
  C = c(1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0,0),
  D = c(1,0,0,1,0,0,1,1,0,1,0),
  E = c(1,1,0,1,1,0,1,0,1,1,0)
)
configTable(dat1, frequency = c(4,3,1,3,4,1,10,1,3,3,3))

# Set (random) case labels.
print(configTable(dat1, .cases = sample(letters, nrow(dat1), replace = FALSE)),
      show.cases = TRUE)

# Configuration tables generated by configTable() can be input into the cna() function.
dat1.ct <- configTable(dat1, frequency = c(4,3,1,3,4,1,4,1,3,3,3))
cna(dat1.ct, con = .85, details = TRUE)

# By means of the case.cutoff argument configurations with less than 2 cases can
# be excluded (which yields perfect consistency and coverage scores for dat1).
dat1.ct <- configTable(dat1, frequency = c(4,3,1,3,4,1,4,1,3,3,3), case.cutoff = 2)
cna(dat1.ct, details = TRUE)



# Simulating multi-value data with biased samples (exponential distribution)
# --------------------------------------------------------------------------
dat1 <- allCombs(c(3,3,3,3,3))
set.seed(32)
m <- nrow(dat1)
wei <- rexp(m)
dat2 <- dat1[sample(nrow(dat1), 100, replace = TRUE, prob = wei),]
configTable(dat2) # 100 cases with 51 configurations instantiated only once.
configTable(dat2, case.cutoff = 2) # removing the single instances.

# Duplicated factors are not eliminated by default.
dat3 <- selectCases("(A=1+A=2+A=3 <-> C=2)*(B=3<->D=3)*(B=2<->D=2)*(A=2 + B=1 <-> E=2)",
                    dat1)
configTable(dat3)

# By setting rm.dup.factors and rm.const.factors to their non-default values,
# duplicates and constant factors can be eliminated automatically.
configTable(dat3, rm.dup.factors = TRUE, rm.const.factors = TRUE)

# The same without messages about constant and duplicated factors.
configTable(dat3, rm.dup.factors = TRUE, rm.const.factors = TRUE, verbose = FALSE)



# Large-N data with crisp sets from Greckhamer et al. (2008)
# ----------------------------------------------------------
configTable(d.performance[1:8], frequency = d.performance$frequency)

# Eliminate configurations with less than 5 cases.
configTable(d.performance[1:8], frequency = d.performance$frequency, case.cutoff = 5)

# Various large-N CNAs of d.performance with varying case cut-offs.
cna(configTable(d.performance[1:8], frequency = d.performance$frequency, case.cutoff = 4),
    ordering = "SP", con = .75, cov = .6)
cna(configTable(d.performance[1:8], frequency = d.performance$frequency, case.cutoff = 5),
    ordering = "SP", con = .75, cov = .6)
cna(configTable(d.performance[1:8], frequency = d.performance$frequency, case.cutoff = 10),
    ordering = "SP", con = .75, cov = .6)
print(cna(configTable(d.performance[1:8], frequency = d.performance$frequency, 
    case.cutoff = 15), ordering = "SP", con = .75, cov = .6, what = "a"), 
    nsolutions = "all")

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