Precandidate doctoral students are required to:

• Complete 18 credits of survey and data science graduate coursework (non-990, non-visit, graded), including four terms of the doctoral seminar;
• fulfill 3-hours of graduate cognate coursework (grade B- or better);
• Minimum cumulative GPA must be a 3.0 (B) or higher

Ph.D. candidates are registered in the fall and winter terms for 995,  “Dissertation/candidate,” which consists of 8 credit hours for a full term. No part-time enrollment is possible. A candidate who registers for a course must seek prior approval from the faculty advisor and also register for 995. A candidate may elect either one course per term, or more than one course for a total of no more than four credits, without paying additional tuition. Courses may be taken for credit or as a visit (audit).

All precandidate doctoral students are required to complete training in the responsible conduct of research and scholarship before advancing to candidacy.  For MPSDS doctoral students, this training is offered in academic years that begin in fall of an odd numbered years.

To advance to doctoral candidacy, a doctoral student must:

1. Complete all course requirements in accordance with their home program’s policy;
2. earn a passing grade on the Qualifying Exam within twelve months of entering the program, or complete all conditions required by the program faculty if given a “conditional pass” grade;
3. complete four terms in the Doctoral Seminar; and
4. earn a passing grade on the candidacy paper and its presentation, which will occur at either the end of the last term of the Doctoral Seminar or at a later date after conditions required for passing the Qualifying Exam have been satisfied.

Students applying to the PhD program in survey and data science come from a variety of backgrounds. The  purpose of the Qualifying Examination (QE) is to test students on their mastery of survey and data science at a level equivalent to that of the successful MS students from the Joint Program in Survey Methodology (JPSM) and the Michigan Program in Survey and Data Science (MPSDS). To ensure that all PhD students are equally  prepared for the next stages of their doctoral degree, they must pass the QE.

The doctoral seminar is designed to help students:

• Gain a thorough knowledge of important literature;
• identify gaps in the survey and data science literature worthy of further investigation;
• formulate research aims with questions and hypotheses centered on the identified gaps;
• design a research study including planned statistical analyses (experimental, quasi-experimental,  observational) for addressing the research aims; and
• communicate the study’s rationale and design in writing as well as in an oral presentation followed by questions.

The Doctoral Seminar is designed to assess whether a student has sufficient knowledge and creativity to develop and complete a dissertation. To that end, each student will prepare a Candidacy Paper to be presented to the candidacy paper exam committee at the end of the student’s 4th term in the Doctoral Seminar or after meeting the conditions of the Qualifying Exam.

Final decisions about Candidacy will be made following the student’s presentation in the Doctoral Seminar at the May JPSM/MPSDS joint faculty meeting. The program directors will communicate the candidacy decision to each student no later than May 31.  If approved, the student will be recommended for candidacy to Rackham Graduate School (Rackham Graduate School Candidacy Guidelines).

The prospectus is a doctoral candidate’s proposal or plan for dissertation research and writing. In unison with writing a prospectus, a student must assemble a dissertation committee following Rackham Graduate School Guidelines and work with the designated MPSDS administrative contact to submit the required committee paperwork.

The student is expected to work closely with the dissertation committee chair and other committee members to formulate a dissertation topic and to write the prospectus. The student provides the dissertation committee with a written prospectus and makes an oral presentation of the proposed research.

A dissertation prospectus is a proposal for research that has not yet been completed. The prospectus should contain:

1. an abstract of the specific aims of the investigation;
2. the background and significance of the proposed research, including the conceptual framework;
3. the research design and methods of procedure, including measurement techniques to be used, if applicable;
4. analysis strategies to be followed;
5. a tentative timetable.

Students are required to meet this milestone before the end of the 3rd year of their doctoral studies (end of winter term).

The dissertation is a document in which a student presents his or her research and findings.  It is a comprehensive scholarly product that represents the student’s own work. The dissertation should consist of material suitable for one or more journal articles or chapters, though it will generally be more detailed; most dissertations will report an experiment or a series of experiments, non-experimental studies including new statistical methodology or innovative modeling, secondary analyses, or simulations.

The final steps for the completion of the doctoral degree entail preparing the dissertation for oral defense, conducting the oral defense and submitting the final copy of the dissertation to Rackham Graduate School.

Students are required to complete this milestone before the end of the 4th year of their doctoral studies (end of winter term).

Rackham Graduate School provides many resources related to the completion of this milestone including The Dissertation Handbook, which will provide details about the process of completing the dissertation.