Social Statistics Program

Masters in Social Statistics

Welcome to the virtual home of the McGill Social Statistics Program, a joint venture of the departments of Economics and Sociology.

The program's major focus is the MA Option in Social Statistics. Students enrolled in the option participate in a vibrant interdisciplinary environment where quantitative analysts from across the Social Sciences share ideas, technical expertise and a common interest in rigorous quantitative research. The MA option is designed to prepare students for research positions in the public and private sector (government and not for profit agencies as well as business) where the specialized skills they acquire are highly in demand. It also provides an advanced training for future doctoral studies.

Students enrolled in the MA option pursue disciplinary coursework with a focus on quantitative methods. Methods classes may be taken from any of those offered in participating departments depending on the student’s interest and level of expertise. Funding is also available on a competitive basis for students interested in attending specialized summer courses in advanced quantitative methods. Students in the option also participate in an interdisciplinary capstone seminar, which is a forum for discussing statistical presentations and developing and working through their own quantitative Masters research paper. Dedicated workspace is provided for students in the graduate laboratory to facilitate their studies and research, where they interact with Masters and Doctoral students pursuing quantitative social analysis from across all the disciplines.

A fundamental part of the capstone seminar is a senior level speaker series featuring prominent social scientists doing research that uses statistical techniques. Currently in its third year, this series is attended not only by students but also by faculty from across McGill and is one of the most successful seminars at the University.

In exciting news, Social Statistics program is opening in 2005 a branch of the Quebec Inter-University Centre for Social Statistics (QICSS) , the Quebec component of the Statistics Canada Research Data Centre Network . The QICSS provides researchers with access to Statistics Canada microdata from population and household surveys, and with training in advanced statistical methods. The McGill Branch will house data files from the six major Canadian longitudinal surveys: the National Population Health Survey (NPHS), the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID), the Workplace and Employee Survey (WES), the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY), the Youth in Transition Survey (YITS), and Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC). It will also contain micro-detailed data files from a variety of cross-sectional surveys, such as the Aboriginal Peoples Survey (APS), the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS), the Ethnic Diversity Survey (EDS), the General Social Survey (GSS), the National Graduates Survey (NGS), the Participation and Activity Limitation Survey (PALS), and the Survey of Household Spending (SPS). Click here for more details. A substantial collection of Statistics Canada public use data files and a wide range of other data from around the world are also available to students and researchers through the McGill Electronic Data Resources Service (EDRS) .

Good luck, and we hope to see you in Montreal!

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