Social science research may involve complex surveys from which underlying structure is extracted, experiments to investigate impacts of education or health policy, and innovative approaches to measuring educational attainment. Economic data pose many challenges of data collection, synthesis, and analysis. Statistics faculty are engaged in cutting edge research in quantitative methodology for the social sciences. Key areas of research include:

• Latent variables and multilevel modeling
• Educational measurement and cognitive assessment
• Multivariate methods for complex statistical surveys and instruments
• Econometric methods
• Finance
• Policy analysis
• Risk analysis