Course teached as: B025884 - STRUMENTI OSSERVATIVI PER IL SERVIZIO SOCIALE Second Cycle Degree in PLANNING AND IMPLEMENTING SOCIAL POLICIES
Teaching Language
Italian
Course Content
The course will provide students with epistemological and gnoseological foundations of non-standard tools and with cognitive skills for the appropriate use of focus groups, biographical interviews and observation. Students will learn how to develop a research design appropriate to the needs of the research group in relation to the type of investigation required, the advantages and disadvantages of the use of these techniques
PIERGIORGIO CORBETTA 2003 La ricerca sociale: metodologia e tecnica (Vol.1: I paradigmi di riferimento), Bologna, Il Mulino;
IVANA ACOCELLA 2008 Il focus group: teoria e tecnica, Milano, Franco Angeli;
ERIKA CELLINI 2008 L'osservazione nelle scienze umane, Milano, Franco Angeli;
RITA BICHI 2002 Intervista biografica, Milano, Vita e Pensiero.
Attending students will replace the texts with the teaching materials that will be inserted on the moodle platform.
Learning Objectives
Students will be able to define the basic concepts of theoretical and epistemological approaches of the social sciences, as well as to critically use the main empirical techniques, with particular reference to qualitative approaches. At the end of the course students will be able to use of epistemological language and logical reasoning, as well as the main data collection and analysis techniques.
Prerequisites
No prerequisites
Teaching Methods
Lectures and discussions
Further information
Is planned workshop activities to support learning that will provide students with the skills for appropriate use of a qualitative data analysis software: Nvivo
Type of Assessment
Oral examination. Through questions concerning the student's acquired knowledge of concepts and procedures and his capacity to correctly apply them in exemplary cases, it will be evaluated the acquisition of the main conceptual and analytical categories of the epistemology and the methodology of social science. Furthermore, it will be evaluated the ability to collect and interpret data in social science research using the main qualitative data collection and analysis techniques.
Course program
The course will provide students with epistemological and gnoseological bases of standard and non-standard research; after stressing the main differences between quantitative and qualitative approaches, the focus will be on some techniques of information gathering such as biographical interviews, focus groups and participant observations. It will be analyzed how to develop a research design suitable to cognitive aims and to type of investigation required, the advantages and disadvantages of the different techniques, as well as the type of information that each of them allows you to collect