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.