Qualitative research in social and organizational psychology: the Italian way

ABSTRACT

This article provides a description of the presence of qualitative research in Italian social and organisational psychology. The first section of the article identifies three major phases of qualitative methods and the factors that, from the 1990s, played a major role in their development: the legitimisation of qualitative research in sociology, the rising of theoretical perspectives expressing a critical stance toward the hegemonic quantitative and experimental approach of the discipline, and the demand for qualitative studies from public and private clients. In the second section, we present a review of the scientific articles published in the last five years. Our analysis shows that the health field stands out as having the greatest number of publications, both for social and organizational psychology; the absolute prevalence of the interview as a data collection method; and that Grounded theory, Discourse analysis, and Conversation analysis are the most cited references for data analysis. We discuss these results in relation to the set of rules that regulates the careers of researchers in Italy (and abroad), and to the only partial acceptance of qualitative research in Italian psychology.

KEYWORDS:

• Qualitative research
• Italy
• history
• research traditions

Acknowledgment

We wish to thank Caterina Ariciacono, Norma De Piccoli, Silvia Gattino and Terri Mannarini for the time they dedicated to us during an interview carried out for gathering some data on their qualitative research.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lorenzo Montali

Lorenzo Montali, PhD, is Associate professor of social psychology at the Department of psychology of the University of Milan-Bicocca, where he teaches "Qualitative Methodologies" and "Social psychology". His research interests are in the area of social psychology of health and illness, focusing on how patients, caregiver and public opinion understand/manage/have experience of medical and technological issues.

Angelo Benozzo

Angelo Benozzo (PhD) teaches work and organizational psychology and qualitative research methods at the University of Valle d’Aosta, Italy. His current research interests include gender and sexual identity in organizations, coming out in the workplace and postqualitative research methodologies. He is an associate editor of Journal of Qualitative Research in Organization and Management. He organizes the Special Interest Group (SIG) in Psychology within the International Conference of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI).

Silvio Carlo Ripamonti

Silvio Ripamonti is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Psychology, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. His research interests regard symbolic processes and work changes related to technological innovation, family business transitions, organizational restructuring and externalization. He joins in the tradition of the action-research approach, the analysis of narratives and conversations. He has published in: Systemic Practice and Action Research, Management Learning.

Alessandra Frigerio

Alessandra Frigerio, PhD, is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Psychology of University of Milan Bicocca. Her research interests include the social psychology of health and illness, parenthood, post-structural theories and qualitative research methodology.

Laura Galuppo

Laura Galuppo, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology at the Faculty of Psychology, Catholic University of Milan, Italy. Her research interests include corporate social responsibility and sustainability management, knowledge sharing processes in collaborative organizational settings (FabLabs and co-working spaces), reflexive practices in education, qualitative research methods, action research.

Marco Gemignani

Marco Gemignani is Associate professor of psychology at the Universidad Loyola Andalucía, Seville, Spain, where he specializes in qualitative methodologies and clinical community psychology. Working from cultural, discursive, and critical perspectives, his research concerns social discourses, narratives, and constructions of refugees and irregularized migrants.

Ilaria Vergine

Ilaria Vergine is a Ph.D. student in Psychology at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano. She is interested in Computer-Mediated Discourse, audience’s engagement phenomena in media studies and organizational issues as Health and Safety at Work. Ilaria adopts the psychosociology of communication perspective in her studies. She also focuses on methodological questions concerning the articulation among different qualitative methods, especially in the discourse analysis field.