The Sociology department encourages faculty-student collaboration in the conduct of research outside the classroom. Several research and training facilities are for this purpose.

1. The USC Andurus Gerontology Center is an interdisciplinary research institute which includes faculty and students from fields such as sociology, psychology, architecture, and biology. The center provides support for graduate students in aging, family, socialization, and human development. Federal traineeships and research assistantships are available.
2. The USC Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life supports research that aims to spur dialogue and achieve greater understanding not only about what it means to be Jewish in America, but what it means to be American in a pluralistic society.
3. The USC Gender Studies Program (GSP) explores, across disciplines and cultures, the changing relations, identitie,s and images of women and men. Roughly 30 sociology Ph.D. students are simultaneously working for an interdisciplinary Graduate Certificate in Gender Studies. The research arm of the Gender Studies Program, the Center for Feminist Research, organizes and sponsors conferences and speakers, and offers a limited number of research-related travel grants for graduate students.
4. The USC Department of American Studies & Ethnicity integrates humanistic and social scientific perspectives and brings them to bear on an examination of the United States with a particular emphasis on comparative study of the peoples, cultures, history, and social issues of the Western United States. The department offers four separate majors and minors in American Studies, African American Studies, Asian American Studies, and Chicano/Latino Studies, as well as a minor in Jewish American Studies. The graduate program offers a Ph.D. for students interested in broad interdisciplinary training at an advanced level for the study of people, cultures, and institutions of the United States in courses that integrate modes of inquiry from the humanities and social sciences. Sociology students might take courses offered through the program to facilitate their research endeavors.
5. The USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture (CRCC) is a multi-disciplinary research unit of the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences. Its mission expresses the high priority which the university assigns to the academic study of its host region and to the development of civic leadership within this region. Research activities at CRCC document the civic role of religion in Southern California (especially Los Angeles), interpreting faith-based community development and organizing for scholars, religious institutions, funders, public officials, and the media. The center collaborates with faith-based community organizations in identifying and analyzing public policy issues; documenting faith-based human sevices and community organizing programs; creating archival resources; developing planning and evaluation models; and facilitating cooperative relationships among community leaders, funders, and public officials.
6. The ONE Institute & Archives is the world's largest research center for gay and lesbian studies. Graduate students with research interests related to gay and lesbian studies might access the institute’s vast collection in order to further their projects.
7. USC Longitudinal Study of Generations