MUSA-SOCIAL CHANGES, EVALUATIONS AND METHODS – Istituto di Ricerche sulla Popolazione e le Politiche Sociali

Social Changes, Evaluation and Methods (MUSA)

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GUIDE Gender stereotypes. Recognizing them to break them down

Social Changes, Evaluation and Methods (MUSA) is a multidisciplinary group that conducts scientific research in the field of social changes, on human attitudes, behaviors and conditioning, particularly among young people. It deals with the evaluation of social policies, quantitative and qualitative research methodologies applied to socio-psychological research, and advanced training. Below are the four lines of MUSA activity:

Social changes
The activity launched an innovative national research strand in the field of socio-psychological studies in 2014. The main phenomena of study include: real and virtual human interaction, lifestyles, general well-being; negative deviance (bullying, cyberbullying, discriminatory attitudes and violence), hyper-connectivity, risky consumption, self-esteem, prosociality, aggressiveness, distress, identity, values and social conditioning (gender and belonging stereotypes). The activity manages two national Observatories: the MSA-COVID-19 Observatory and the Observatory on Youth Trends.
Evaluation of social policies and interventions
Activity aimed at analyzing aspects of innovation and evaluation of social policies and interventions in order to understand the effects of social, educational, training and welfare interventions in relation to specific variables of interest. It is associated with research, consultancy and training activities in the field of social and educational services.
Application and development of qualitative-quantitative social research methodologies
Activity concerning both the Institute's well-established and innovative research methodologies. These include univariate, bivariate and multivariate quantitative analysis methods (factorial and classification techniques), and qualitative methods, such as SWOT and PEST analysis, content analysis, focus groups and in-depth interviews, and scenario planning methods for the construction of future scenarios (CNR-Irpps Delphi MIX).
Training
Activity transversally associated with the previous ones concerning training in schools and advanced training for teachers, trainers, operators and professionals, as well as university education on the following subjects: Social Science Methodology (Tintori), Sociology of Welfare (Accorinti), Statistics (Cerbara), Sociology of Work (Pugliese). At the same time, the activity makes use of high-level expertise in the organization of scientific dissemination, awareness-raising, training and education events addressed to the general public and created through innovative formats (LIGHT; Inv-Factor, Mentimeter).