LIBRI DI MARIA STELLA AGNOLI

Nella gestione di progetti e programmi, nelle grandi organizzazioni, non c’è ormai contesto amministrativo o decisionale in cui non sia richiesto di fornire dati e progettare indicatori. Il volume, nato da una giornata di studio tenutasi a Roma fra sociologi ed economisti, metodologi e valutatori, vuole offrire un sistema di indicatori efficace, chiaramente collegato all’oggetto da monitorare o valutare, adeguatamente argomentato e non improvvisato.

The article introduces theoretical and methodological issues at the center of the debate surrounding Big Data, which are then discussed and examined in the essays that follow. In considering these, the author refers to the maxims and recommendations that Charles Wright Mills, in the appendix to The Sociological Imagination, addresses to a young scholar at the beginning of his/her studies in the field of social science. The article highlights their enduring relevance in the context of the challenges and opportunities presented to social research by the growing, and presumed, availability, of information stored and organized in large digitized data banks.