I know what you mean, it's difficult to review without repeating yourself but I reckon examiners will appreciate that.

No worries! I've not done much really, you'd done it already! :-) Plus, it helps me too as it's nice to know what others are doing, etc. To be honest, it's nice to know your discussion is fairly long, so is mine;-)

When are you submitting Delta?

I see what you mean now... I'm not sure to be honest. I've just been asked to write a conclusion page rather than a chapter. Like you said, I don't think I can write a final conclusion without repeating myself so I'll just summarise the whole thing - this is what I set out to do, this is what I did, what I achieved, and this is what I've told you in the report. How do your sups want you to finish the thesis? Would your final discussion do?

I know what you mean, it's hard to discuss and not conclude, that's why I've done them together, on my number 2.

The way I did it was to initially write everything I wanted regardless of structure, more like long bullet points full of info, then broke this text down into the required sections and moved the bullets to their appropriate section if that makes sense.

What are you having difficulties with exactly? If it's just the blurring you mentioned, rest assured you can have them together ;-)

Here are the tips for structure from my sups:
1) tell them what you told them - i.e. review findings
2) what this means theoretically, how your findings fit with current theories, what's new, etc
3) critically evaluate your research - what was good/bad of approach/methodology
4) implications for practice if applicable
5) future studies

That's the order they told me but I've been doing 3, 1, 2, 4, 5 as I felt the flow was better this way but I don't think it matters as long it contains all the info and it flows.

Extra things to add:
anything that you expected to find and didn't find
did you achieve your research goals?

Good luck!

Morning all

Like Batfink I'm also moving on with my data, I think I'm almost there. I'm unsure what else I need to do analysis wise so I might just do what I know I have to do and then have a think about what else I can do if that makes sense. Bit confusing, I know. I'm confused too!

I was a bit cheeky and sent a chapter for some sup feedback the other day (I need to send a last draft of the whole report this wkd so I shouldn't reeeally have sent a sneaky chapter but hey ho), I just got it back so will look into it as well.

And I've lost a document so will need to have a look for it as well, I hate paper sometimes.

Thanks for the compliment but I much prefer my subject than proofreading 8-)

I think your Q15 could be clearer to be honest. I can see why you've framed the questions the way you did (from the researcher's point of view) but from the respondents' point of view it might not make sense and you may want to change a bit. Maybe add 'prior to completing this survey' at the end of the statements? I'm sure there are better options but none I can think of right now.

As for postcodes, if you ask them to reveal the first part and the number or just the first part alone, you'll probably get more answers eg. AA1 1 or AA1 - you'll need to provide examples within the question though.

As for missing answers, you don't necessarily need to filter out manually, computer programmes do that for you and you can ask them to ignore missing data when doing your stats, etc if that's of any help but the survey is yours so up to you.

Good luck!

Me too, internet can be such a distraction and I like to think I worked better when I didn't have broadband (I moved so had to live off a dongle for a bit) but it was so frustrating when looking for papers etc! You just can't win ;-)

It looks like we're all having a productive day today (up)

How is everyone's long list going? I crossed something off my list yesterday and it felt so weird, slightly unsettling, but not sure why.

Hi Emmaki,

I'm sorry to hear things are not great that end. I think many go through a time during their PhD when they feel that way. That certainly happened to me!

I'm not sure if this helps at all but I felt like that for a few months until the discussions about results, etc with sups came about. I then realised that I really knew the stuff because they'd ask questions that I could easily answer and put points across that I didn't feel I could before, we had some great debates. It was a great moment to be honest, a bit like a light bulb lighting up. So for me it was the realisation that I knew more than I'd thought that helped me to feel more confident about my work but you may need to see what exactly is it that you're worried about? Is it that you don't know the stuff?

I don't think anyone can do a PhD and not know their topic, seriously! Not sure anyone can write dozens of thousands of words on nothing. Maybe it's just a phase, I don't know, but it really sounds you need some reassurance and you could get this through maybe asking your sup to look at what you've written so far like Pink_numbers suggested? Or maybe just knowing that others here feel/felt that way will help you?

If you're struggling working on your thesis I'd probably recommend the tomatoes/pomodoro technique and just tell yourself that you'll do X tomatoes. It really doesn't matter if you only do 2 or 3, any is better than none and a PhD is a process so sometimes we can do 12/13 a day and sometimes none... it happens;-) honestly!

Good luck!

Morning everyone!!

@Sneaks - I'm with you on this one, the order is a bit weird and it's a shame you can't do it your way, after all it's your research. But all things considered, as long as you can defend it, let's get this submitted ;-)

Goals for today:
1) Spend 2 tomatoes on final editing of a chapter, refs and formatting, etc
2) continue my analysis and results

Q12, 4th down 'it's' instead of 'its'
Q15, 2nd down 'there' instead of 'their' - the first couple of statements sound a bit odd. Do you mean 'I'm not sure if local food is available?' What are you trying to find out? Your using the past so are you asking about their experience on something? This needs to be a bit more clearer I think.
Qs19 and 20,your first option had 'Page' starting with a capital instead of 'page'

As for the compulsory or not compulsory, I'm not aware of any research I'm afraid, just speaking from my own experience as I had an online questionnaire with quite a few missing answers. I'll never know whether these were randomly missed or not (statistics tell me they weren't but this is just probability ;-) but I can tell you that a couple of people missed a whole page and I don't think this was a mistake as the questions were quite personal. They chose not to but they continued with the survey so I got to use their data on other answers still. Maybe you could think about how many participants you'll need, how easy sampling will be, etc before you decide?

Good luck!

PS. I also think it's nice to have a choice of whether or not to answer but that's a personal opinion and I have been known for being a bit of a rebel!

It sounds like you're trying to predict something so I'd say regression but even though you're writing clear English I can't understand it, sorry, this isn't my area at all, just trying to help so you might need to change info into stats talk? I'm guessing desire for local food is categorical as either they have or they dont. How did you measure online channel preference?

I'm not best at stats but I'm confused about your variables. Are you trying to predict something? Or just comparing four variables? I think you can use chi-square if you're comparing yes... but with 23 participants and the number of variables I'm not sure the power will be that great to be honest.

Sneaks, is your methods for your first study or methodology of the research? Does it go: first study lit review, hypotheses, methods, results and then you talk about your 2nd study?

Squaredot, you know yourself best but I really don't recommend sleeping less. I know I can't as I definitely see a difference in my concentration so I'd rather sleep what I need and be able to study all day than 'gain' an hour of waking time as this wouldn't be as productive for me, but I know I'm different from most people and I really NEED my sleep;-)

Squaredot, although Ady and I shared our experiences, you may need to find what works best for you! And by the way, I don't want to put words in Ady's mouth but I think she meant she's not sleeping because she's stressed, not that she cut down on her sleep so she could study (??) I might be wrong on this one though. I'm not sure cutting down on sleep is a good idea, especially if you're stressed and not sleeping well already! It affects concentration and overall wellbeing... as for your viva before Xmas, you don't necessarily need to way to submit before you book it so you might be able to still arrange it for November?

Sneaks, sounds like your thesis is progressing along just fine! Good work! As for the lengths, I'm not sure myself as I've been given specific guidelines for these but one thing that I've learn is to trust myself, so if you think the lit review is too long AND you have time to edit it, go for it!

Work this end is moving along ok and although timing is very tight, I'm still hoping to get everything done in time but that obviously depends on the feedback I receive ;-)

Hope everyone else is having a productive day.

Just wanted to say good luck to Batfink and Sneaks with their tests and scans... keeping fingers and toes crossed for you guys!