I can totally appreciate your frustration but I wouldn't read anything too negative into the situation. I'm sure there are plenty of examiners who are hard pushed to read the theses they agree to examine - maybe this one was just exceptionally busy or used the length as an excuse to step down.

Take your cues from your supervisors - ask them honestly about how this affects your chances, and trust them. Try not to add additional stress to an already stressful experience.

Interesting. Some of them I matched via taxonomy, others I matched cos of shared texture etc, even though I knew the other one was 'more related'.

Good luck

I'd address it 'Dear Sir/Madam,' or do a little digging just to check whether there is a named person buried in the job description.

It probably depends on which funding body you've applied to - there are probably different levels of competition for funding in different organisations.

Either way, freaking out isn't going to change your chances. Maybe channel that energy into coming up with a Plan B just in case?

Good luck

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You're right it isn't longitudinal as you're not following up a cohort of specific people. Similarly it's not retrospective as that's like a backwards longitudinal.

It does depend on the data you have, and whether your exposure (being on the receiving end of policy) is measured at the individual level or the population level. Ditto the outcome (employment status).

I would say that if you are looking at individual people and what policies were targeted to them, and what their employment status was, it's a serial cross sectional study (i.e. repeated snapshots, different people at each measurement point).

If, however, you are just looking at population level changes in policy, and population level changes in employment at different time points, then I would say it was an ecological/correlational study (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_study). Be careful what you infer from the associations as you do not know the 'exposure' and 'outcome' at the individual level.

I suspect the latter is more likely.

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While it might be a nice idea to name them after Waterloo Road characters, it's not without problems. You're keen to make sure that it's *their* voice that comes across, rather than a bland FP1, FP2 etc, but if you give one kid the name 'Donte' for example, firstly you cloud the reader's mind by putting an image of a known character in their heads and secondly it could be perceived that you think the child resembles that character, in which case his own identity is replaced by one you've appear to have created.

For example, would you read a quote the same way if the name had been changed to Kat Slater, or Margot Fonteyn? Very few name labels are truly neutral.

First check any ethics applications to see if anything is specified there.

If it's ambiguous, I would be inclined towards 'female participant' etc. Firstly, naming people who have agreed to be named is a problem if they subsequently withdraw their consent to be named. Secondly, making up your own names for people isn't a neutral process - it may be influenced by your own perception of people's names, or your readers may interpret them in a certain way. The important thing to get across is *what* they said and you don't want to distract from that.

Ah now that one's been a cult classic for a while:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8061031.stm

But the product you found - extra points for being so esoteric!

Awesome :) (up)

I've just started using Mendeley as we don't have any ref management software on the uni network/in my department BUT turns out the citation functions don't support Office 2010 64 bit version which is what the computer they've given me runs! Hmmm

#2 is only an abstract, accessible via the doc here: http://www.jospt.org/issues/articleID.1194,type.2/article_detail.asp (pA18-19)

Let me know if you can't access it.

The Research Assessment Exercise gives a feel for the size and strength of UK research departments. Here's the 2008 assessment for epi:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/table/2008/dec/18/rae-2008-medicine-epidemiology
It's not the be all and end all though. In the UK the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) probably has the best reputation nationally and internationally. In the US it's probably Harvard and Johns Hopkins.

If you were thinking of doing a masters course then in the UK your options are LSHTM (MSc Epi), Imperial (MSc Modern Epi), Nottingham (MSc Applied Epi), Leeds (MSc Statistical Epi and MSc Spatial Epi) and Cambridge (MPhil Epi). (Sheffield and UCL also run programmes but they specialise in genetics and social epi respectively, so not really relevant to you). If you're interested in infectious disease modelling I would suggest your best bet would probably be LSHTM or Imperial, but you should get other opinions too. LSHTM's programme is also available as a distance learning course via the University of London.

If you don't decide to do a masters I would still suggest undertaking a short course or two. As I have said, epi is very interdisciplinary, which makes for interesting working environments, but it also requires good communication between people from different backgrounds. Even if you decide to base yourself in a mathematics department (if, indeed that is possible for such a topic) it would be important for you to be able to communicate your research to less mathematical researchers, so an appreciation of the 'common language' of epi would be useful. Academia isn't just about getting on and doing your own bit of research either - you might make good contacts on short courses which would help you develop networking links in the future.

Overall the good news is that compared to some fields there is a reasonable amount of funding for this kind of research and it is even possible to get funding to do a masters, which is quite unusual, because it's an in-demand skill, so look out for institutions offering MRC Advanced Course Studentships if you go down the masters route. Also the average age of students in this field tends to be older as very few people get into it straight out of undergraduate study anyway.

Good luck!

I'm currently doing an epidemiology PhD, having completed an MSc in Epidemiology last year.

I really don't think that your background would be a hindrance. On my MSc course around 50% of the students were clinical doctors and the non clinical students had backgrounds that ranged from basic biomedical sciences to mathematics, anthropology, economics... It's actually a subject area that benefits from having a diverse range of perspectives contributing within a research group so a mathematician would not stand out in a bad way.

I must admit I'm not 100% sure what you mean by 'mathematical epidemiology' - it's not a subdiscipline term that's used in the UK. Perhaps you mean the modelling component of epidemiology? People from a variety of epi research areas employ modelling techniques. You might also want to consider Medical Statistics as a discipline depending on what exactly it is you can see yourself doing in the long term.

I would recommend that you get in touch with institutions that offer epi masters programmes or have strong epi research and ask them whether your current qualifications would be enough to enter into a PhD or whether it would be advisable to do a masters. Even if your qualifications are adequate I would strongly recommend trying to get a job/some practical experience in a health research environment first before committing yourself to a PhD - it will give you a flavour of whether academia is for you and help you develop some understanding of the health context in which you might be trying to work.

Please ask if you have any more questions or if any of the above didn't make sense. :)