Objectives:
• Introduce current philosophical perspectives on causality to facilitate understanding of complex causal relationships in data.
• Introduce concepts of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), a methodology assuming complex causality.
• Demonstrate QCA synthesis in systematic reviews taking account of potential benefits, challenges and limitations.


Description: We outline causal philosophical accounts and a synthesis method from sociology, QCA. QCA allows synthesis of both quantitative and qualitative data. Its use may expand the systematic review toolkit for complex interventions to explore variance across studies. We show how these causal accounts operate within the QCA set theoretic approach: equifinality, asymmetry, and configurations of causal factors (10-min presentation). Participants ‘play’ with these concepts to increase understanding (5 mins). Using examples from systematic reviews facilitators outline the method familiarising participants with the ‘truth table’ – a matrix of cases, causal factors, and outcome with set membership scores (15-min presentation). Participants will compare case examples of systematic reviews with and without a QCA synthesis to explore difference in approaches (50 mins, group work and feedback). We end with discussion using participants’ own experience of challenging, multi-component, complex interventions in complex contexts and whether QCA has utility in the systematic review environment (10-min discussion).