====== 1255. sredin seminar, 2. december 2015 ======
Rita Cimmino <ritacimmino@gmail.com>

**Mixed-methods approach for the analysis of scientific
  collaboration networks.
  A case study of sociologists in Campania Region**

In the social sciences, the last years have witnessed the emergence of
methodological debates about the opportunity for mixing methods in
Social Network Analysis (SNA).

Recent mathematical developments and computing technologies have
enabled statistical computations of large network structures. Despite
much of development of SNA has occurred using a quantitative
perspective, however, more researchers have studied the social
networks using qualitative methods. In this prospective, the social
network is “social world”, a world of shared meanings, feelings,
conventions, norms and identities. The qualitative methods allow to
understand the process of creating of social network. For this reason,
networks are both structure and process at same time and a mixing
methods can be more useful when considering the various aspects of
networks.

This research concerns an analysis of sociologists’ co-authorship
network in Campania Region adopting a mixed approach. On the hand, we
have chose to analyze the co-authorship network to detect the formal
collaboration between the authors and, on the other hand, have used
in-depth interviews to understand informal collaboration. We will show
how a mixed approach made it possible to detect in depth the dynamics
related to the scientific collaboration network.

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