RESEARCH METHODS

This course is part of the three curricula of the Master's Degree in Management. It aims at developing students’ research conceptualization, writing and understanding capabilities and at enriching their critical thinking and methodological skills. Through an introduction to research design, data collection and curation techniques, as well as to qualitative and quantitative analysis and modelling methods, the course allows master students to explore what it is like to do research in the management field and in the socio-economic sciences. Through case studies, hands-on interactive sessions and group works, students will face the concrete challenges and choices faced while doing research. 

By the end of this course you will be able to:
- refine ideas to define a suitable research topic and express it as a set of research questions, research aims and research objectives;
- recognise the role of theory, data, methods and critical thinking in developing a research strategy and in defining a research design;
- develop a research proposal that outlines a research project, from the choice of the data strategy to that of the methods to be applied;
- understand the differences between quantitative, qualitative and mixed research methods;
- understand the differences between exploratory, descriptive, explanatory and evaluative research;
- identify possible research strategies and define a research design;
- reflect on your own epistemological, ontological and axiological stance and understand the paradigms that are significant for business and economic research;
- distinguish between deductive, inductive, abductive and retroductive approaches to theory development.
- consider privacy, ethical and other practical issues implied by your data strategy and by your research design choices;
- understand what is meant by being critical when reviewing the literature and understand the purpose of a literature review;
- plan your literature search strategy, draft a literature review and evaluate the relevance and sufficiency of selected references;
- access, collect, aggregate, store, manage and protect qualitative and quantitative data coming from a variety of sources, ranging from national statistical services to social media APIs;
- explore and visualise data of different types (textual data, survey data, statistical data, audio data);
- structure and present your research in an effective way;

There are no prerequisites.

The course will introduce the students to doing research in the management field and in the socio-economic sciences. Through the lectures we will address the following issues:
- Doing research in the management field: what, how, when, who, where and why.
- Paradigms and approaches for studying and understanding markets, businesses and socio-economic phenomena;
- Management research methodologies;
- Literature exploration, critical reading and review;
- Designing and planning a research;
- Data sources, data collection and data curation;
- API querying and web data scraping;
- Data exploration, visualisation and descriptive statistics;
- Qualitative analysis and modeling methods;
- Quantitative analysis and modeling methods;
- Making inferences and testing hypotheses;
- Understanding research philosophy and approaches to theory development;
- Evaluating the reliability, validity, generalisability of your research results;
- Writing and presenting a dissertation;
- Privacy, ethics, real-world impact, intellectual property and other issues related to doing research;

The textbook for this course is:
- Saunders, M., Lewis, P. and Thornhill, A., 2009. Research methods for business students. Pearson education, 8th edition.
The lecturer will provide more detailed information on the chapters and sections to be studied for the exam during the lectures and on Moodle.
In addition to the textbook, students should refer to the lecturer's slides, which will be uploaded to Moodle before each lecture.

FOR ATTENDING STUDENTS (those participating in presence to at least 80% of the total number of lectures), the final grade is based on:
- A reduced version of the final exam (50% = 15 points);
- Group assignments (25% = 7.5 points);
- In-class presentation of your group project (25% = 7.5 points);

In addition, your insightful contributions to the discussions in class will enter into your grade through a bonus up to 3 points.

FOR DISTANCE LEARNING STUDENTS (those participating in presence to less than 80% of the total number of lectures), the grade will be based on:
- The full version of the final exam (100% = 30 points);

GROUP ASSIGNMENTS:
You are encouraged to collaborate as much as you can during group assignments, but each student must return his/her own assignment answers. You should always acknowledge all your collaborators (group members) on the header of your answers.
Each group assignment will be made available on Moodle at least seven (7) days before the deadline for submitting it. You will submit your answers by uploading them on the course page on Moodle before the deadline, emails will not be accepted.

The course will feature lectures with interactive sessions and open discussions. Experiential learning methods, such as role playing on specific research techniques, may be employed during the lectures. Attending students will be asked to do group assignments on topics and methods introduced during the lectures. The research strategy, the analyses and eventual hypothesis testing, may be based on the data collected by the students from the web or through other collection methods (interviews, questionnaires, etc.). Students will be guided in the individual and group learning process through suggestions, teaching materials, codes and examples provided by the lecturer through the course page on Moodle.

English

written and oral

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Human capital, health, education" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development