I was funded for three, but I took three years and eleven months to do it; wrote it all up in my "fourth" year, and just passed viva the other day. It was frustrating and hard (esp. with no money). However, don't feel bad, as not many finish in exactly three years, and the outcome will be the same! Don't go into the fifth year if poss tho; at my uni they fine you severely for doing this (sprout)

Hi all, well, I passed my Viva with minor corrections on Thursday. What a relief! There's been many a time when I thought I might give it all up. And the last bit... the three month wait, then "the fear" of the Viva process... well that nearly finished me! My experience of this was certainly *far* more positive than I expected, I actually came away feeling cheerful :) Of course I have some corrections to do, but not nearly as many as I expected. So anyway... four years later, a new discipline, methodology, topic, it's all finally paid off :) So now, if I can offer any words of wisdom, or you want to know what I did for preparation etc. please let me know! (up)

Hi Chuff, I'd recommend Tabachnick and Fidell's "Using Multivariate Statistics":

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Using-Multivariate-Statistics-Barbara-Tabachnick/dp/0205459382/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1287394187&sr=8-3

It's very statsy but served me well as it covers a wide range of analytical methods. There are probably loads of other, more friendly, books out there too.

Hi the_master, sounds like you have a very similar data to me! Sorry for the plug, but weirdly enough, the statistician in my department at the University of Sheffield is running courses on both SEM and MLM over the next few months; they sound like they might be useful for you. I also assist on teaching these courses that are aimed at postgrads and postdocs, and they are suitable for people with some idea about stats but want to learn about new analytical approaches. If you're interested, check out: http://www.offbeat.group.shef.ac.uk/FIO/trainingcourses.htm In the meantime, hope you get somewhere with learning about these analyses :)

Hi Sneaks, I think you've found a solution already, but if not here's my advice. You're only testing one hypothesis, as one of your hypotheses you mention is known as the "null hypothesis", whilst the other is the one you expect to find support for. You should probably go with the two-tailed test because you don't hypotheses a direction in the differences, just that there will be a difference.

Hi Charlene, I've just completed a PhD in performance management (well, performance monitoring, which relates to performance management). My field is occupational psychology, and I did my masters in this area originally, though I did do a BA in Management originally. Anyway, I can't recommend HR courses personally, but may I suggest you consider occupational psychology as another potential discipline for the subject you're interested in? The Institute of Work Psychology at the University of Sheffield runs excellent courses (I would say that though, I went there! (up)). For HR courses specifically, you want to find a good business or management school instead. Aston, Manchester, Warwick and Cranfield are up there, so I've heard. Good luck!

Get your first PhD done first and then decide... if you still fancy another 3years of research then go for it! I know a few people who are studying for their second PhDs. Mad people. 8-)

Succinctness is always a winner with examiners so I here. So what is your word limit then? You've got 62k and still two chapters to write? In my field at my uni, the recommended word-count is between 75-100k without refs or bibliography. I did 78k (tho not had my viva yet so not sure if that's OK or not!), but other friends have passed with only around 50k! I think you're having a down day today. Forget the word limit issue and concentrate on getting a theory chapter you're happy with before submission... as this is quite an important part. Get someone else to read it if needs be, talk about it in person and clarify your ideas.

It can be done! Just have faith in yourself. At the worst (or maybe the best?) times I managed over 1,000 words a day, and it may be possible to write more. Sounds like you're all 75% there with your theses so just keep going! It'll be the hardest thing you've ever done, but you *can* do it (up)

Thanks guys! :-)

I think you need to get advice from people other than your main supervisor. Have you got a second supervisor, graduate research office or postgraduate tutor? This is not a failing of you in particular, your main supervisor's job is to support and advise, and make sure you're not doing something that isn't up to standard. I have just finished my PhD at the end of nearly 4 years, with only three years funded. If you have to go back to the drawing board to get data then so be it - you can probably go over the 3 year allocated time with extenuating circumstances. You must do something about it soon though, it'll not get better in these circumstances.

Well... I submitted yesterday :) Was a bit of a rush job at the end, but managed it. Good luck to all you PhDers out there who are going through it at the moment. You will get there eventually!

Yes. You can do this with GLM Anova in SPSS. If you have three categories, two of the interactions need to go in the model, and the reference category is left out. I'm afraid I don't have time to go into detail (I'm handing in my Thesis on Tuesday and have mad-crazy amounts of work to do!) but follow the links to the courses I posted; on here are details of the statistician. He may be able to help (for a fee). The Regression course we run also covers how to examined moderated regression with categorical moderators. Sorry I can't be of more help right now.

No, you don't need to use SEM. SEM is good for when you have a complex model that includes multiple mediators and multiple outcomes, and when you want to use latent rather than observed variables. I think you can do what you want to in SPSS.

If your categorical moderator is ordinal, you can assume it is continuous for the purpose of the analysis. If your categorical moderator is discrete (e.g., completely different groups such as political preferences, locations) which it sounds like it is, you need to dummy code your categories.

Do a search for categorical moderation in Google - there's plenty of useful stuff on there. There are even books dedicated to the subject.

Hi Sneaks, Is it that you need advice on how to use AMOS, how to do SEM, or both? I use SEM but in Mplus software. However, the statistician in my department runs public statistical training courses that may be useful for you (I help teach in them). In the past we ran one on EFA/CFA, and the CFA component was done in AMOS. CFA is the pre-cursor to SEM, the only difference being that the first has only correlational paths (i.e., associations between constructs), and the second integrates structural paths (i.e., one way, predictive). He *also* runs a course on how to do SEM in Mplus. If you are interested in these, have a look at this: http://www.offbeat.group.shef.ac.uk/FIO/trainingcourses.htm 8-)