Overview of Hugh on PostgraduateForum.com

Overview of Hugh

Signup date: 12 Mar 2010 at 9:38am

Last login: 24 May 2017 at 8:31pm

Post count: 1264

Recent Posts

Please help me decide my life/studies

Hugh 1264 posts
8 years ago

Quote From hollymolly:

If I do the Msc in Politics and do well, I can also do a 3 year Phd after that with funding.

Is this guaranteed?

Please help me decide my life/studies

Hugh 1264 posts
8 years ago

Quote From hollymolly:
Personally, I think I wanna go for the PhD. But I have very limited research skills (only did some applied research, mostly qualitative surveys, triangulation of techniques, and wrote a qualitative 40 page dessertation, etc). Will it be hard to learn the more technical research stuff? Such as meta analysis, regression analysis, etc?.

The fact that they offered you means you are good enough. Don't worry about others.

In terms of research skills, is there any reason why you can't do qualitative or mixed methods?

I had absolutely no background on qualitative or quantitative research skills, and I've had to go to research method courses and attend modules to learn. It has been really enjoyable so far and worked well.

Postgraduate Diploma awarded if MA dissertation not submitted?

Hugh 1264 posts
8 years ago

You need to speak to the course leader or an administrator. Go and speak to them in person, and get the confirmation in email. you could request an extension which you may be awarded.

New to the forum... Advice on PhD and pregnancy

Hugh 1264 posts
8 years ago

Why can't you take a post-doc straight after your PhD and fall pregnant? Why do you need to take a year out to get pregnant? If the institution doesn't take into consideration the need for women to have babies, then its time they changed that.

And also, there is always the risk that a woman will fall pregnant unexpectedly. Surely, people can't expect you to give guarantees that you wont fall pregnant.

Final year support thread

Hugh 1264 posts
8 years ago

Quote From chickpea:

I think I probably write for a couple of hours at a time, plus all the time you spend mulling it over and generally thinking of ways to re-phrase things. What about you? I like to have a day of being in the writing 'zone' and being able to think about it properly, rather than jumping from one sort of task to another. The one type of writing that I find really slow and painstaking is when you need a reference every other sentence and have to keep checking and re-reading things.

yes, I can spend a couple of hours too, but like you, I prefer to concentrate on one task. I don't even like jumping between chapters and tasks, I like to finish one chapter/task and then move to the next one. But sometimes it is good to take a break and look at the piece of writing after a week or two, but I don't seem to have the patience to do that!

Write, back to analysis for me! :)

Please help me decide my life/studies

Hugh 1264 posts
8 years ago

AOE, has got it spot on!

I don't think your BSc degree will hinder you. No need to transfer it, Your postgraduate degree is what people will look at. Whichever option you will take, you will be fine.

Only take number 1 route if you are sure you don't want to do a PhD, as a funded PhD is hard to come by.

top 20 or top 40 global university is not very different!

And I wouldn't do a PhD unless you want to work in academia. A PhD is not that advantageous anymore outside of academia.

Final year support thread

Hugh 1264 posts
8 years ago

I understand what you mean chickpea, plus data collection is so much dependent on others too, and some things are out of ones control, like recruitment rates or speed for example.

How long do you find you can write for in one go?

At what point in your PhD did you know what you were really doing?

Hugh 1264 posts
8 years ago

1 year and 4 months into the PhD. That is when I submitted a proposal to ethics too. In hindsight, it should have all been sorted much earlier.

Final year support thread

Hugh 1264 posts
8 years ago

Quote From charmlessman:
A little over 6 months out. One draft chapter submitted, great progress on another (and I write very quickly) so happy with that.

Pleased to hear you are progressing very well!

I've started on the next chapter. Its going slower than I expected, because I've still got a bit of analysis to do. How are the rest of you doing?

Potential postdoc versus potential lectureship

Hugh 1264 posts
8 years ago

GM, I think you should think about this when/if you get offered the job!

Best of luck :)

How much of the SPSS Output goes into the thesis appendices?

Hugh 1264 posts
8 years ago

Quote From pd1598:
but is incorporated to the text. So for each analysis I have the classification table and the variables in the analysis table, that's all the data on SPSS really? Also, shouldn't you also report non-significant IVs?

you are right, I will mention the IVs that showed an association with chi square test but not significant in the logistic regression. I've read two stats books now, both have mentioned that only the "variables in equation" (the final table) goes in Appendices of the thesis. Maybe it varies according to discipline?

How much of the SPSS Output goes into the thesis appendices?

Hugh 1264 posts
8 years ago

Quote From pd1598:
I'm using SPSS for log regression, and I'm not putting anything in my appendices. All the tables (classification, r2, variables) are going into my results chapter. The appendices are for things that aren't ...

Thanks!

Isn't that way too much in the text? I'm using the format suggested in the book: Presenting Medical Statistics from Proposal to Publication: A Step-by-step Guide by Janet Peacock

She recommends presenting a table with columns Variables, Odd ratio, 95% CI and P value for the variables that are found to be significant, and not the whole SPSS output. I have an image of the relevant text, but I'm not sure I can attach it here? If you want it, PM me.

How much of the SPSS Output goes into the thesis appendices?

Hugh 1264 posts
8 years ago

Hi,

I am conducting a logistic regression for one of my studies,and I'm wondering how much of the output goes into the appendices of the thesis? I've kept the results in the results section quite simple (Variable, Odds ratio, 95% CI, P value). What do I include or not include in the Appendices?

Thanks!

Final year support thread

Hugh 1264 posts
8 years ago

Quote From chickpea:
[quote]Quote From Hugh:

That's what I thought, but then I wondered if that was too much 'common sense' for academia and if it would be classed as self-plagiarism!

I'm sure it wouldn't, because that's why the papers are acknowledged at the beginning of the thesis, and if that was the case, people would avoid publishing before thesis submission?

Final year support thread

Hugh 1264 posts
8 years ago

Quote From chickpea:
I got a chapter draft back this week with a note saying it doesn't need to be seen again - equal parts 'yay' and 'eek'! It would be nice if I could do that with all my chapters but we'll see!

Hugh, my supervisor seems to think that writing chapters/papers in tandem doesn't involve much more work than just writing the chapter, so I'm hoping to have a go at a couple of papers as I'm writing. I'm not clear yet about whether or not the paper needs to be a complete re-wording from the chapter though, which I imagine would be a bit annoying to do.

Very well done chickpea! That must feel amazing :)

I think your supervisor might be correct. I have found that converting chapter to journal paper makes the chapter much more focused and succinct, especially the results and discussion section. The only thing that requires full writing is the introduction and literature review part in the paper, which isn't normally very long.

I am certainly not re-wording, unless I really need to. I think my thesis chapter will have more details, especially in methods and in the results (more results will be recorded), but otherwise, I expect the results and discussion to be the same, even close to identical. I don't see why you would need to re-write it all, both are your own pieces of work on the exact same study.