  We consider a Fermi gas confined by a harmonic trapping potential and we
highlight the role of the Fermi-Dirac statistics by studying frequency and
damping of collective oscillations of quadrupole type in the framework of the
quantum Boltzmann equation, in which statistical corrections are taken into
account in the collisional integral. We are able to describe the crossover from
the collisionless regime to the hydrodynamic one by introducing a
temperature-dependent relaxation time $\tau_Q$. We show that, in the degenerate
regime, the relaxation rate $1/\tau_Q$ exhibits a temperature dependence
different from the collision rate $\gamma$. We finally compare the collisional
properties of the Fermi gas with the ones of the Bose gas for temperatures
above the Bose-Einstein condensation.
