The course aims at providing the students with the fundamentals, theoretical and empirical, of the qualitative social research, which doesn’t require statistics, but needs massively training, creativity, and intuitiveness, during the explorative steps and while assessing and test theoretical hypotheses. Qualitative methodology needs to select the strategies that fit the research’s purposes, and it focuses on observation the construction of social reality and of the cultural meanings of social phenomena, as well on interactive processes, testing the authenticity of the key factors, in search for the values present and explicit. Qualitative researches tend to merge theory and data analysis, and to prefer few cases or even individual subjects, in order to understand the situational constraints and social influences of the individuals. This approach leads to thematic analysis, while the researcher becomes deeply involved into the qualitative social research.

Course has four stages, focused over the following subjects:

-  Concepts, theories and the structuring of a qualitative social research;

-  Qualitative social research techniques;

-  Presenting qualitative social researches;

-  Designing a qualitative social study.

Lectures will develop the following subjects in depth:

-  Qualitative social research’ fundamentals;

-  The history of qualitative research: from the School of Chicago to nowadays;

-  Qualitative techniques: participant observation, interviews, focus group and documents analysis;

-  Ethnography research;

-  How to design a qualitative research plan;

-  How to draw an interview outline;

-  How to undertake an interview;

-  How to analyze data;

-  Compiling a working paper

applying knowledge and understanding

-  Students will have fully mastery on the fundamentals of qualitative social research, and be able to adopt the right theoretical perspective and to easily manage theories and hypotheses to control empirically, and to translate concepts into the research’s core issues.

-  Students will learn how to design a qualitative study, select and use the right techniques, and analyze and interpret data simultaneously;

making judgements

-  Students will have a greater ability on interpreting the right combination between theory and research, by mean of individual’s skills;

communication skills

-  Discussions over the designing of a qualitative social research project will improve the student’s communication skills as well as the use of the qualitative research language;

-  Students will be asked to design a qualitative social research that will give them mastery on discussing and presenting the research’s outcomes;

learning skills

-  By the end of the course students will own strong expertise on learning activities from social research designing and empirical work they are asked to undertake during the course.

The teaching material prepared by the lecturer in addition to recommended textbooks (such as for instance slides, lecture notes, exercises, bibliography) and communications from the lecturer specific to the course can be found inside the Moodle platform › blended.uniurb.it

Empirical work.

Undertaking interview.

Teaching

Lectures with the support of multimedia

Attendance

Participation at least to 3/4 of lectures and the study of text books

Empirical work.

Undertaking interview.

Course books

Cardano M. (2011), La ricerca qualitativa, Il Mulino, Bologna

A selection of chapters to study will be provided by the lecturer at the beginning of the course.

Assessment

Assessment of this course is by means of three different tests:

-  Designing and presenting the student’s qualitative study;

-  A written examination on the topics developed during the course;

-  An oral exam on the topics developed during the course.

Disability and Specific Learning Disorders (SLD)

Students who have registered their disability certification or SLD certification with the Inclusion and Right to Study Office can request to use conceptual maps (for keywords) during exams.

To this end, it is necessary to send the maps, two weeks before the exam date, to the course instructor, who will verify their compliance with the university guidelines and may request modifications.

Teaching

Study of the text books

Attendance

Participation to less than 3/4 of lectures

Course books

Cardano M. (2011), La ricerca qualitativa, Il Mulino, Bologna

Assessment

Oral exam

Disability and Specific Learning Disorders (SLD)

Students who have registered their disability certification or SLD certification with the Inclusion and Right to Study Office can request to use conceptual maps (for keywords) during exams.

To this end, it is necessary to send the maps, two weeks before the exam date, to the course instructor, who will verify their compliance with the university guidelines and may request modifications.