Masters Degree Requirements
Coursework
All first year graduate students are required to enroll in the first-semester course Fields and Methods of Social Research (SOC 2430). Coursework for the M.A. shall consist of a balanced program of eight (8) courses in sociological theory, methods, and substantive areas taken for graduate credit. Four of these courses must be 2000-level or 1870-level courses. Sociology 1000-level courses also count for graduate credit and where appropriate may be taken. With the approval of the Graduate Committee, two of the eight courses may be in other departments.
Masters Thesis
All candidates for the M.A. degree are required to write a Masters Thesis. The purpose of the thesis is to provide a structured research experience of limited scope that covers the main elements of research, including selecting a research problem, reviewing current knowledge in the field, generating hypotheses or key points that require exploration, examining these hypotheses or key points with evidence and drawing conclusions. The Masters Thesis, therefore, comprises important preparation for the doctoral thesis. The quality of the thesis at the Masters levels is one of the components used to evaluate the continuation of students for the doctorate.
Students are strongly encouraged to initiate research for their M.A. thesis as early as possible in their program of studies. The preferred way to do so is in conjunction with on-going course work, so an excellent term paper forms the core of a Masters thesis. Research in conjunction with the sequence in Fields and Methods of Social Research is also expected to shape the development of the Masters thesis. Students are encouraged to use publicly-available data resources such as census tapes, cross-national data files, and longitudinal surveys for their M.A. papers. Much of this data is available from the University Library, or is published and freely available online.
The Masters thesis should be the quality and length of a published paper in a major sociology journal. As such, the thesis should be the length of a research manuscript, typically about 30-35 pages of text, with a modest number of tables, figures, and references, as appropriate. The M.A. thesis, however, would usually contain more information on methods and review of the literature than would a journal article.
The M.A. thesis must be approved by a thesis committee which normally consists of two faculty members in the sociology department selected by the student, one of whom serves as the supervisor of the paper and the second as the reader. With prior permission and under exceptional circumstances, the second reader may have a faculty appointment in another department at Brown. This committee must be selected by the end of the second semester of graduate study in consultation with the faculty advisor assigned from among the members of the sociology department faculty. A final draft of the thesis must be submitted to the committee by the beginning of semester 4 of graduate study (end of January of the second year). Failure to meet these deadlines jeopardizes funding for continuing students.
Following acceptance of the Masters thesis, a copy signed by the committee members must be submitted to the Department. A one-page abstract of the thesis shall be distributed to all members of the sociology faculty and sent electronically to all graduate students. The names of the faculty committee should be listed on the abstract. A final approved bound copy of the M.A. thesis must be deposited with the department's Graduate Secretary to be put on file.