Deadline: February 28, 2020

Synopsis of Program: As part of its effort to encourage and support projects that explicitly integrate education and basic research, the Sociology Program provides support to improve the conduct of doctoral dissertation projects undertaken by doctoral students enrolled in U.S. Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) when the dissertation research is conducted in a scientifically sound manner and it offers strong potential for enhancing more general scientific knowledge. The Sociology Program funds doctoral dissertation research to defray direct costs associated with conducting research, for example, dataset acquisition, additional statistical or methodological training, meeting with scholars associated with original datasets, and fieldwork away from the student’s home campus. Projects are evaluated using the two Foundation-wide criteria, intellectual merit and broader impacts. In assessing the intellectual merit of proposed research, four components are key to securing support from the Sociology Program: (1) the issues investigated must be theoretically grounded; (2) the research should be based on empirical observation or be subject to empirical validation or illustration; (3) the research design must be appropriate to the questions asked; and (4) the proposed research must advance understanding of social processes, structures and methods.

For more information: https://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=505118&org=NSF