Graduate Program - Requirements
Predoctoral Training at the PSTC
The Population Studies and Training Center is well-established as a leading center for demographic training. A hallmark of the center is its emphasis on interdisciplinary social science training.
Students apply to, and are admitted to Ph.D. programs in the Sociology, Anthropology, and Economics departments. Admission to the PhD programs in our affiliated disciplines is extremely competitive, with only 8-10% of applicants offered admission. The PSTC does not grant degrees; rather, students in these affiliated Ph.D. programs complete requirements for a specialization in demography.
Students who wish to become PSTC trainees (our term for those graduate students associated with the PSTC) must fulfill the degree requirements of their home departments, as well as take specialized courses in demography.
Each year approximately 35-40 trainees are active in the program. The structure of the training program is intended to enrich the trainees’ educational experience, to enhance the close interaction between trainees and faculty, and to launch trainees early and intensively into research.
There are three sets of requirements that predoctoral PSTC trainees complete:
1. Graduate school requirements
2. PSTC requirements
3. Department-specific requirementsPlease see below for more detailed information on each set of requirements.
Graduate School Requirements:
The graduate school of Brown University handles all student applications, admissions, and aid on the basis of recommendations by each academic department. It has certain requirements that all students, including those in demography, must fulfill to earn the Ph.D.:
- three years (24 tuition units; four courses or research credits each semester) of full-time graduate study beyond the bachelor’s degree (reduced to two years for students who enter with a master’s degree that the department judges to be of satisfactory quality)
- advancement to candidacy through satisfactory completion of qualifying examinations
- completion, public presentation, and defense of a dissertation on a topic related to the student’s area of specialization which embodies the results of original research and gives evidence of high quality.
Students in Sociology and Economics typically take five years to complete this program of study: three years of coursework and research apprenticeship, one year for examinations and preparation of the dissertation proposal, and one year for researching and writing the dissertation. Anthropology students often take six years because of additional program requirements for language training and especially fieldwork, although every effort is made to allow students to complete the program in five years.
PSTC Requirements:
All PSTC trainees must complete the following requirements. With these expectations come many benefits, including, most significantly, the opportunity to participate in a dynamic interdisciplinary research and training community. Trainees are eligible for space in Mencoff Hall during certain stages of their studies, and for center support for various professional development activities. Students should consult PSTC staff and the Associate Director for further information about these resources.
- Complete the population-related training requirements of their own departments. These are outlined below.
- Take at least one population-related course outside their own discipline. A list of approved population-related courses is available here. Students can petition the Associate Director to have other appropriate courses added to this list.
- Work on a population-related topic for their dissertation research and have a mentor (usually their primary advisor, but not necessarily so) who is a PSTC-affiliated faculty member.
- Attend the weekly PSTC colloquium on Thursdays at noon and other activities relevant to the life of the PSTC. It is expected that students will actively engage with visiting colloquium speakers at times made available for individual and group meetings. Trainees are also required to attend and participate in the 3-4 student-organized workshops that occur during each academic year, and in general are trusted to be good intellectual citizens of the center. Students are also expected to attend the annual meetings of the Population Association of America at least once, for which the PSTC will provide support. Students are strongly encouraged to submit proposals for paper and/or poster presentations at this meeting and at other relevant population-related conferences.
- Obtain training in the responsible conduct of research. All trainees are expected to complete the online Collaborative IRB Training Initiative (CITI) program in human subjects research. (Broad information about this program is available on Brown’s Office of Sponsored Projects website here. The online training program website is here.) All trainees are also expected to attend workshops on responsible research and human subjects protection as offered and/or sponsored by the PSTC. (These may be part of the student-organized workshops mentioned in the paragraph above.)
- With these expectations come many benefits, including, most significantly, the opportunity to participate in a dynamic interdisciplinary research and training community. Trainees are eligible for space in Mencoff Hall during certain stages of their studies, and for center support for various professional development activities. If you have questions about how to apply for support or what the criteria are for supporting requests, please feel free to contact Associate Director Dan Smith.
- Complete requirements specific to home department as outlined below.
Department-Specific Requirements:
Anthropology
(Visit the Anthropology Department's graduate program website here.)
All anthropology students who affiliate with the PSTC are required to take a total of seven courses (five mandatory and two from a menu of electives) that are directly geared to preparation for research in anthropological demography. The five required courses include: two broad methodological courses, geared to prepare students for master’s and dissertation research, respectively; two specialized courses in anthropological demography; and Principles of Population in Sociology. The first required course, Methods of Anthropological Research, is taken in the second semester of the first year, and provides students with training in research design, methodology, proposal writing, and the responsible conduct of research. The second required course, Advanced Field Methods, is typically taken in the student’s second year, in preparation for dissertation research. The course combines more in-depth methodological training with a focus on data analysis and dissertation grant writing. Anthropological demography graduate students normally submit proposals for external funding early in the third year.
All trainees take a sequence of two courses in anthropological demography. The first course, Anthropological Demography, is designed to introduce students to the basic concepts and theoretical approaches in the sub-discipline and provide an overview of relevant literature, including fertility, migration, mortality, and public health. The second course, Anthropology and Population Issues, provides more specialization, with students reading extended case studies (often in the form of ethnographic monographs) of scholarship in anthropological demography. These courses are rotated among the anthropology faculty who are PSTC associates, and all trainees take both before the end of their third year.
In addition to the four mandatory courses in the Department of Anthropology, anthropological demography trainees are, as described above, expected to take the Principles of Population course in the Department of Sociology and two additional electives in population studies, one in another department and one in Anthropology. In most cases, the additional elective outside of Anthropology will be the Techniques in Demographic Analysis course, but students may petition the PSTC Associate Director/DGS for permission to substitute another class if it makes sense in terms of their training and interests. Finally, all students in Anthropology are required to prepare for and take examinations in three fields in their third year, and for demography trainees one of those fields must be anthropological demography.
Anthropology trainees are also expected to attend the regular Working Group on Anthropology and Population series and other related events that are organized from time to time.
Economics
(Visit the Economics Department's graduate program website here.)
The population track in Economics consists of one foundational course required of all economic demography trainees and approximately a half-dozen approved electives, from which trainees choose at least two courses. Trainees must also complete one course outside of the discipline. The foundational course – Applied Econometrics for Labor and Population Economics – typically offered in the fall semester with Professor Ken Chay – focuses on the application of econometric methods to empirical problems in economics and policy research. The list of elective courses in the population track includes Topics in Labor and Health, Economic Development I, Economic Development II, Economic Growth I, and Economic Growth II, Urban Economics I, and Urban Economics II.
By the third year, students are expected to be completing coursework and engaged in research activities. Students are required to complete a substantive and original paper at the end of their third year. Students are also expected to attend an appropriate lunch workshop and seminar in the department, as well as the PSTC colloquium. Examples of seminar series relevant to population trainees are “Applied Microeconomics,” “Race and Inequality,” and “Macroeconomics.” A lunch workshop provides a less formal environment for students to present work at various stages of completion to others in the department. There are lunch workshops in “Urban Economics,” “Applied Microeconomics,” and “Macroeconomics.” In the fourth and fifth year students are expected to be fully engaged in research for their dissertations.
Sociology
(Visit the Sociology Department's graduate program website here.)
The population track in Sociology consists of six courses: two foundational courses; one course in the methods of data collection and measurement; one course in advanced methods of data analysis; and two seminars covering core issues in population (including one course in either Anthropology or Economics). Typically these courses are spread out over the first two to three years of the doctoral program, depending upon whether a student enters the program with a bachelor’s or a master’s degree. The track is designed to provide students with disciplinary depth in the theories and methods of Sociology as they are applied to study of population, and special expertise in selected core contemporary issues of population. It builds on a core training program required of all PhD students in Sociology during the first year, and incorporates exposure to theoretical and methodological approaches to population issues in affiliated disciplines through coursework, guest lectures in selected Sociology courses, and an interdisciplinary focus in the foundation courses.
During their first year all students in Sociology take a rigorous program of coursework in sociological theory and research methods, which includes: a two course sequence in classical and contemporary sociological theory, a two course sequence in intermediate and advanced multivariate statistics, a course in qualitative research methods, and a course in research design. The two course sequence in statistics is accompanied by a required (non-credit) two-semester course in statistical computing and data management using the statistical software package STATA. In the first semester of the second year students in the population track are required to take a one semester (non-credit) course in the SAS programming language. These two packages are used in the vast majority of research projects, and thus position the student well for both the job market and analytical work to come. Of course, students often master even more specialized software.
During the first year, students who intend on concentrating in demography will typically take the foundation courses, Principles of Population, and Techniques in Demographic Analysis, or a substantive course in sociology. Students who enter the PhD program with a master’s degree will complete two years of coursework and will dedicate most of their second year to advanced coursework in population. Students who enter the program with an undergraduate degree will spread their coursework in population across their second and third years and take more courses in advanced research methods, substantive courses in other subfields of Sociology, and faculty directed independent studies.
In their second and third year students continue their methodological training with one course in the methods of data collection and measurement selected from the following three courses: Spatial Thinking in Social Science, Survey Research, and Methods of Anthropological Research, and one course in the methods of data analysis (selected from the following three courses: Spatial Data Analysis Techniques in the Social Sciences, Event History Analysis, and Multilevel Regression Models). An integral element of the analysis courses is the completion of a manuscript that is designed to result in a conference paper, a paper submission to a journal, and/or a dissertation chapter.
Students will also take two advanced seminars on substantive issues in population, with at least one course selected from the following four core courses: Households and Families, Migration and Population Redistribution, Fertility and Reproductive Health, and Mortality and Child and Infant Health. In addition to the four core courses, students can choose from a variety of courses offered on an occasional basis in Sociology, and population courses offered in Economics and Anthropology.
One of the six population track courses must be from a discipline other than Sociology. Often this course will be Anthropology and Population Issues, a common recent choice, or it may be a course in population issues chosen from Economics. Beyond this required foray into Economics or Anthropology, many students take additional coursework in Community Health, Environmental Studies, and other areas that connect with their research interests and complement their core disciplinary training.
Individual, faculty-directed research is an indispensable component of the population track in Sociology. Students work directly with one or more faculty members, and the work should lead to a paper for submission to a conference and/or a scholarly journal. It may also constitute work on a dissertation chapter. NICHD trainees are required to enroll in a two-semester faculty-directed Research Practicum. This requirement may also be satisfied by completing a one-year Research Assistantship for students who have been funded through this mechanism.