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Time series data are chronological sequences of observations produced by regularly and repeatedly measuring some characteristic or characteristics of the same case over time (e.g., aggregate support for the government in a country, the crime rate in a city). Time series analysis is the application of statistical models to time series data. This entry defines time series analysis and distinguishes time series data from other forms of data. It defines important time series notation and terminology. It provides a discussion of the challenges of time series analysis and of key time series fundamentals: autoregression, autocorrelation, serial correlation, stationarity, exogeneity, weak dependence, trending, seasonality, structural breaks, and stability.

Political Science. --- Administration --- Civil government --- Commonwealth, The --- Government --- Political theory --- Political thought --- Politics --- Science, Political --- Social sciences --- State, The

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Data cleaning is the process of quality checking quantitative data to ensure a data set contains accurate information. Data cleaning involves a number of practical approaches to dealing with data such as checking data coding, checking data inputting, examining data distributions, and identifying issues such as extreme values. Data cleaning may be an important step of the research process in order to meet statistical assumptions for analytic techniques and is particularly important to reduce the impact of any errors made during data collection or imputation. This entry provides a detailed overview of data cleaning processes and techniques to support accurate and reliable data analysis. This includes screening data, dealing with extreme values, dealing with missing or incomplete data, and data distributions. Data cleaning is not an objective exercise and subjective decisions may need to be made during the data cleaning process. It is imperative that researchers are transparent about data cleaning processes and decisions.

Anthropology. --- Business and Management. --- Communication and Media Studies.

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Figuration draws attention to interdependence, power, and process as ubiquitous characteristics of all human relations and represents a key departure from the philosophical antinomies that inform much social science thought. The concept forms a central tenet of the unique sociological approach of the late German sociologist Norbert Elias (1897-1990). Elias developed a novel theoretical synthesis that was more long term in its scope than conventional sociological approaches. It represents a key breakthrough in terms of its integration of the sociology of human societies with the sociology of knowledge. This particular sociological paradigm has come to be known as figurational sociology or process sociology.

Sociology.

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Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) was developed by sociologist Charles C. Ragin (1987, 2000, 2008). It constitutes a genuine methodological innovation in the social sciences that explicitly aims to and has the potential to transcend the traditional division between qualitative and quantitative research approaches by developing a theoretical and methodological configurational approach based on the logic of sets and Boolean algebra. While initially the majority of theoretical and empirical applications of QCA were housed in sociology and political science, since the late 2000s organizational researchers have increasingly embraced QCA, causing organization studies to become a major field of its application. The increasing proliferation of QCA's configurational set theoretic approach in organizational research is due to the fact that the particular strengths and possibilities of QCA readily ...

Anthropology. --- Business and Management. --- Communication and Media Studies.

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Psychology.