Social research methodology

Social research methodology is a discipline that shows how to connect theories, hypothesis or research questions on one side, and data and techniques of analysis on the other one. As a matter of fact, social research methodology deals more with how we learn what we know about the social world, than with what we learn. A fundamental concept in this framework is that of method: in order for empirical research to be scientific, it must follow a set of rules, which are agreed-upon by the scholars community, and which grant that the results we attain are valid and reliable.
The first part of the course will present and discuss the basic concepts of social research methodology, also connecting them to the most relevant paradigms of sociology (positivism, functionalism, conflict paradigm, and so on). In this first part we will see how to design a research project, how to conceptualize the notions we are interested into, how to build typologies and indexes for summarizing the data in a meaningful way.
The second part of the course deals with the fundamentals of quantitative analysis. The most widespread tool for collecting data, ie. the survey, will be presented and discussed; examples will be given of actual surveys conducted at the international level (such as the European Social Survey, or the International Social Survey Programme), in order to favor the understanding of the complex process that characterizes survey research. The final part of the course will be devoted to applying some techniques of analysis (linear regression, cross-tabulation) and inferential statistics to analyze actual survey data.
Knowledge and understanding: The course aims at introducing students to the basics of empirical research, providing them with the main conceptual and knowledge tools for understanding how an empirical research in the social sciences is routinely designed.
Applying knowledge and understanding: Students will be able to develop their own strategy for finding evidence for supporting/disconfirming the typical claims or hypotheses that social scientists deal with (eg. concerning societal change, social movements and processes, consequences of economic and political processes, and so on).
Making judgements: By the end of the course, students should be able to evaluate on a methodological ground actual instances of empirical research, such as a research report or a research paper, in order to assess whether the methodological requirements as for the research question or hypothesis, the sampling frame and design, the sample size, the analysis and report of the results have been met, and - if not - what would be necessary to do for meeting them.
Communication skills: in the second part of the course, students will be asked to choose a topic of methodological relevance and to work on it (preferably in group) in order to give a presentation to the classroom. This will test and develop their communication skills and their ability to convey the meaning of what they learnt.
Learning skills: We will use the data from ESS and ISSP to illustrate how to conduct an analysis on already-existing data; other online data resources will be explored, such as those provided by the World Bank, the OECD, and various UN programs. This will enable students to become autonomous in looking for the data needed for testing a given hypothesis or for answering a research question.

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