B030590 - METHODOLOGY OF QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

Italian

The course will provide with epistemological and gnoseological foundations of non-standard tools and with cognitive skills for the appropriate use of non-standardized information collection techniques. Students will learn how to develop a research design in relation to the needs of the research group, the advantages and disadvantages of the use of these techniques, as well as the type of information that each of them allows the researcher to collect.

6 cfu course:
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 above-mentioned texts with the teaching materials that will be inserted on the moodle platform.

9 cfu course:
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;
LUIGI GARIGLIO 2010 I Visual Studies e gli usi della fotografia nelle ricerche etnografiche e sociologiche, in Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia, 1: 117–140.

Attending students will replace the above-mentioned texts with the teaching materials that will be inserted on the moodle platform.

Students will be able to define the basic concepts of theoretical and epistemological approaches of the social sciences, as well as to use technical language and logical reasoning. At the end of the course, students will be able to critically use the main data collection and analysis techniques with particular reference to qualitative approaches.

No prerequisites

Lectures and discussions, as well as workshop activities to support learning that will provide students with the skills for appropriate use of a qualitative approach. The lessons will be in the classroom or online, on the basis of the University provisions relating to the COVID-19 situation.

Oral examination. Through questions concerning the student’s acquired knowledge of concepts and procedures and his/her 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.

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, participant observations and visual techniques such as photo-voice, photo-elicitation and ethnographic video. It will be analyzed how to develop a research design suitable to cognitive aims and to type of investigation required, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of the different techniques.

In the first module, features of the qualitative research design will be discussed, with particular attention to the choice of empirical cases and the preparation of the so-called concept map. The type of relationship between empirical observations and theorizing and the fallacies that can be incurred in these research designs will also be addressed. The second part of the module will be dedicated to the ethnographic approach and observation as a typical technique of this method in order to explore a phenomenon in its natural habitat.
In the second module, two reactive techniques – the focus group and the biographical interview – will be discussed. In detail, the epistemological and methodological bases of the two techniques will be presented, highlighting how the focus group allows the researcher to explore inter-subjective representations and the socially shared knowledge disseminated in particular social groups, while the biographical interview can be useful in elaborating different types of identity building processes in order to move from individual stories to sociological ideal-types.

Only for the 9 cfu course
The third module will be divided into two parts.
The first part will be dedicated to explore the tools and techniques of visual research. We will analyze the distinction between sociology (or doing research) on images (i.e. the analysis of hetero-produced images, produced by society for non-research purposes) and sociology (or doing research) with images (i.e. when images are created ad hoc for the survey; the images could be both a possible research tool and a research product). We will focus on some of the tools of visual research, namely photo-voice, photo-elicitation and ethnographic video.
The second part will be dedicated to exercises. Attending students will be able to choose between designing a research project and building and empirically testing one of the tools or techniques for collecting information proposed during the course.