Statistics, Economics, and Social Sciences

The main objective of the course is s to offer the knowledge and skills useful for carrying out projects, research and evaluations in the field of public policies with a focus on social innovation, in a pluralist and democratic perspective of evaluation. The student will acquire the ability to carry out functions of planning, coordination and implementation of evaluation research in the sectors of social innovation, sustainability and gender policies. The course includes the following specific training objectives: 1) knowledge of the main design and evaluation approaches for social innovation and territorial development in terms of their application in terms of empirical research. 2) ability to design, coordinate and apply design and evaluation methodologies in the social innovation sector. 3) development of soft skills: problem solving, critical analysis and evaluation of public policies will be solicited in the theoretical lessons and in the workshop. A part of the theoretical lessons will be dedicated to illustration and discussion in class with students of projects for social innovation and evaluation surveys in order to stimulate students' meta-evaluation skills. In the laboratory, students will be divided into working groups for carrying out exercises on data design and analysis in class, in order to produce a final project work that will be evaluated with the peer evaluation methodology. 4) ability to correctly communicate the results of an evaluative research for the purpose of scientific dissemination and the usability of evaluation evidence in the field of design for social innovation. In the exercises and in the laboratory, students will be involved in activities of presentation and discussion in class of the results of the projects developed in the group work. 5) during the lectures, the participation of the students will be solicited, with the objective of ongoing assessment of learning, as well as for the accompaniment to the laboratory activities. Specifically, the workshop part will allow the acquisition of practical skills that orientate to the planning an evaluative research focused on the social innovation. Expected learning outcomes: at the end of the course, students will be able to carry out social innovation projects and empirical evaluative surveys using the different approaches to evaluation. The students will acquire skills in the construction and application of evaluative research designs in the following phases: definition of the evaluative object, definition of the evaluation mandate with the client, selection of the evaluative approach to the context of the analysis, construction and selection of evaluative questions, design evaluation techniques and data collection, analysis of evaluative data with the support of the main software for empirical research.