Social entities could refer to many
fields, such as geographical, political or education policy fields in the form of
cross-national or regional comparisons. In Group II, which focuses on a
number of study cases, researchers compare the relative effects of variables
across cases; they compare cases directly with one another, and they
compare empirical cases with counterfactual cases. The comparative
38 Pavinee Sothayapetch
method — or small-N comparison — constitutes a distinctive approach in
understanding social phenomena (Ragin & Rubinson, 2009).