Speaker
Description
This study traces a decade of collaboration among Italian scholars across four macro sectors-two in economics and statistics and two in political and social sciences. It examines how formal collaborations, retrieved from Scopus, and informal collaborations, gathered through an ego-network questionnaire, influence academic performance. Drawing on Scopus records of all co-authored publications within these four macro sectors, published between 2012 and 2022, we can accurately map established networks. The questionnaire, distributed to scholars identified through these records, captures the informal side of collaboration.
The questionnaire is administered using a computer-assisted web interviewing (CAWI) approach via M.a.Sco.Net, a web application designed specifically to collect ego-centered network data. The web-based questionnaire comprises two sections:
1. The first evaluates both the formal and informal collaborations that have led to publications (one page per co-author);
2. The second measures informal ties with colleagues who have never co-published, mapping broader professional networks.
Within the web app, the researcher can choose between two options: either show respondents the full list of their co-authors or a subset selected by the researcher. If only a subset is shown, once the questions for those names have been completed, the app allows the respondent to add one co-author they consider most representative and to answer the same questions for that person.
Egos were sampled using a stratified design-based on scientific-disciplinary sector, academic role, gender, and co-authorship activity ( 5 vs. > 5 co-authors), drawn from MUR Population Data 2022. For each ego, up to four alters were randomly selected, with probabilities proportional to prior co-authorship frequency. Preliminary results from the ongoing investigation into how formal and informal collaborations influence academic performance in Italy will be presented and discussed.
Keywords/Topics
Formal Collaborations, Informal Collaborations, Ego-network, CAWI (Computer-Assisted Web Interviewing), Italian Higher Education
