The Methodology Center at Purdue (MCAP) is an interdisciplinary, cross-college network of methodologists in the health and social sciences. The Methodology Center includes 115 faculty affiliates from across Purdue and is co-directed by sociologist Dr. Trenton Mize.
Center on Aging and the Life Course (CALC) is designed as a university-wide entity to strengthen interdisciplinary inquiry on aging. CALC has two central aims advance research to optimize the aging experience of diverse populations, and prepare future leaders for the field of gerontology. CALC is directed by sociologist Dr. Cathy Liu.
Labs
Purdue Sociology graduate students have access to the Joe and Maggie Kernan Experimental Social Science Lab (JMK Lab), a dedicated facility for collecting original data. Run jointly by the Departments of Sociology and Political Science, the lab gives faculty, postdocs, and graduate students the space and equipment to run experiments and to conduct and record interviews and focus groups. The lab maintains a steady pool of undergraduate participants, so researchers don't have to recruit subjects from scratch. Beyond computers and recording equipment, it offers tools for collecting physiological measures, virtual reality headsets, and even 3D printers, which make a wide range of experimental manipulations possible. Few sociology graduate programs offer a facility like this. At Purdue, graduate students can design and carry out their own primary research. This is further facilitated by the JMK Lab being an affiliate of the Methodology Center at Purdue (MCAP) which offers small grants to graduate students to aid in original data collection.