Methodology of Social and Evaluation Research

The course has two objectives: 1) to provide essential elements concerning the debate on the specificity of social sciences, on their reliability, on the control of statements relating to social reality; 2) illustrate the main alternatives for projecting an empirical reserach (research design) on the basis of the initial hypotheses and available theoretical approaches.
This second part in turn has two objectives: a) providing the tools for understanding the procedures that lead to research results and for a critical assessment of their reliability, for those students who want to acquire a capacity to use the research results correctly in various fields of social sciences; b) building a basic methodology for those students who will later choose more advanced courses for the use and application of empirical quantitative and qualitative research techniques.

Knowledge and understanding of the main methodological paradigms of social research, of the developments of positivism and interpretativism, of the specificities of quantitative and qualitative research. Knowledge of the scientific research cycle. Ability to understand the theoretical elements of the research process (concepts, theories, hypotheses).
Ability to apply knowledge and understanding in relation to the construction of research designs and to literature review, to the ways of translating concepts into variables, to the main data collection methods (sample survey, secondary data, macro data) and data analysis (contingency table, linear regression). Ability to apply the main qualitative research techniques (participant observation, qualitative interview, focus group).
The course also aims to develop students' ability to communicate what they have learned by involving student groups in the preparation of an original data analysis.