My point was that a lot of other humanity subject graduates are applying to the same jobs that sociology students are applying to regarding research and analytics positions, though I'm not sure how much so at the PhD level. I got a B.S. in sociology with a minor in statistics last year and have applied to all kinds of research and data jobs. CareerBuilder shows you the summary qualification statistics of others in the applicant pool with the Insider Report feature. Now, I know this varies greatly between cities and states, which is why I will say this is just something to keep in mind, but the largest city in my state had anywhere between 400-600 applicants for some of the most basic entry level research positions. It even states the majors, and they are all over the place, usually with around 25% having a masters and 0-5% have PhDs. If you’re confident in your statistics abilities, the good news is that you can email a bunch of nonprofits requesting to do a free program evaluation and 75% in my experience will respond if you’re looking for more experience.
Regarding the other side of the coin, competitive big data and corporate analysis positions usually require a graduate degree in statistics or something similar with programming skills, usually being SAS, R, or Python (SAS apparently being more popular on the East coast and R in the West, though R is gaining ground quickly all over). SAS is really popular in my area, and if they are asking for SAS experience, they likely also want you to have some SQL experience as well. Areas that can benefit from programming skills are Six Sigma type positions (which even the deeper experimental design aspect of quality control can be invaluable to human research studies at times as I have found btw), credit card modeling and logistic regression, analyzing web API’s, work force analyst positions, collaborative analytic work, engineering, raw datasets of all kinds, etc. even more standard human research positions having large datasets. On a side note, programming is a pain to learn and takes a lot of practice, but it can make things so much easier and faster (yet alone allow you to work with any kind of file) with R being my favorite.
Yet, when you go just one hour outside of this city, however, you can apply to the same type of professional market research based jobs requiring something like SPSS and they will have had 0-6 applicants. I was offered a couple salary based positions around $60k with just my qualifications, but I turned them down due to them being in an area I was not interested in. But again, it largely depends on your area so this is something that future graduates should consider.