CITILab’s overall methodology incorporates quantitative and qualitative approaches and triangulation strategies into an integrated research design appropriate to be used in comparative policy research and governance patterns, and for the analysis of policy impact and diffusion in specific contexts. This research strategy permits to build a comprehensive representation of the investigated problems and to carry out a multidimensional comparative analysis and wide in-depth understanding.
All different approaches contribute to assessing social investment policy developments and complementarities, to address research questions and contribute from different angles to a cumulative understanding of inequality dynamics and policy outcomes in the investigated cities.
In particular, after having refined the theoretical tools to calibrate the social investment framework to the city level and to target the tree investigated vulnerable groups (WP1), quantitative and qualitative research run in parallel:
- Quantitative exploration (WP2) is devoted at investigating the economic and social context in terms of social and labour market characteristics, the employment quantity and quality and disadvantages of the three investigated social groups (e.g., employment/unemployment trends, sectors, types of contracts, relative poverty and risk of social exclusion) and also the required skills for the local economy. The analyses will be based on multiple sources and data provided by regional and municipal statistics offices.
These different sources will allow to develop a new kit of territorial indicators of inequality to measure and evaluate the compound inequalities experienced by the three vulnerable groups and the impact of existing policies on them in Milan and Amsterdam. - Qualitative case study comparison (WP3) will be adopted to map the developments of social investment policies in the last decade in the two cities to reduce overlapping disadvantages of the three investigates social
groups (i.e., lifelong learning and activation policies, matching services, digital skills provision, care and work-life balance policies, minimum-income benefits).
Case studies are an empirical enquiry that have the advantage of investigating phenomena in depth and in context through a plurality of complementary qualitative tools:
(1) on desk policy documents analysis (e.g., regional and municipal policy programmes, measures, schemes and regulations)
(2) process tracing
(3) semi-structured interviews and
(4) focus groups with key informants focus groups (e.g., local policy-makers, trade unions and employers’ organization local representative, disability organization members, employment center staff).
- Finally, triangulation of quantitative and qualitative collected data, case studies comparison and interpretation of results (which will be also discussed with the advisory board and local stakeholders) are aimed at identifying strengths and weaknesses of existing city policies, shed light on policy impact, develop policy learning processes that increase understanding of policy effects and solutions, to finally build a context-specific policy agenda fitting the context of Milan (WP4).