The Cox proportional hazards model is a statistical technique used to analyze the time until an event occurs, such as death or failure. It helps researchers understand the relationship between the survival time of subjects and one or more predictor variables, without needing to specify the underlying survival distribution. This model assumes that the effect of the predictor variables on the hazard rate is constant over time, meaning that the ratio of hazards for different groups remains the same. It is widely used in fields like medicine, epidemiology, and social sciences to evaluate the impact of treatments or risk factors on survival outcomes.