Overview of TerryCH on PostgraduateForum.com

T

Signup date: 13 Jun 2011 at 9:04pm

Last login: 12 Jul 2014 at 5:39am

Post count: 43

TerryCH 43 posts
13 years ago

Quote From Doodles:

I can see where you are coming from so it would be more scary approaching people for help. I agree with Dunni's advice which is good. As your supervisor has agreed to getting you external help it should be ok - trying other people in your dept/uni is a good place to start. Unis (some staff) are funny about external people helping incase of problems with ownership of results and students being associated with other depts if there are informal collaborations so this something to be aware off. My project isn't part of a larger project - it's just an ambitious idea, perhaps a bit too ambitious given all the areas I covered and the hassle of trying to co-ordinate everything. The people that helped with it were known to my supervisor so I suppose it's not like I was just asking random people. Does your supervisor know of people who could help? That would also be a good point to follow up as academia is very small!

Since this is an issue in relation to my writing-up that has been raised during the progression meeting, we (my supervisor, other academic staffs and myself) have had an agreement on finding an external staff to help this out. We even think that the person could be a post-doc who worked on a similar topic when doing her/his PhD study, as such a person would know fairly more than us about the theoretical background. My supervisor does not know anyone in the area, this means I will also have to find an external examiner myself in the near future. We have considered, just as Dunni has suggested, first listing people who might be able to support and then trying to contact them. Aware of the difficulty if I contacted those people personally, my department has agreed to make an official request -- well, that's more than to be appreciated!! Hope everything will be fine!!!

Thanks guys for your comments and encouragement!!!

Terry

T

TerryCH 43 posts
13 years ago

Quote From Doodles:

I had a big project which covered a broad area and many topics so I used other people who were willing to help for the different sections that I needed help with that my main supervisor who couldn't/wouldn't help with. It was like a team effort and I wouldn't have got through it if it wasn't for the help these people.

Hope you get the help you need. ;-)

Thanks for reply Doodles! I am aware that some project such as yours involves effort from lots of people. But my case is that it is me who initiated this project but not my supervisor, and it is not a project covering a very broad area -- well, I may say so because at least it covers Psychology and Philosophy . I think you research had been a group project since the start point, but mine is not. So now I have to ask other people for the main purpose of writing-up. Anyway, what else choice I have?! I will just try to ask.

T

TerryCH 43 posts
13 years ago

Hi all,

I just finished my 3rd year progression meeting and receive feedback from the research committee regarding the final thesis writing-up. My supervisor is not the expert of the field that I am working on, so now we are both concerned about writing on the introduction and discussion chapter. For the last three years, I have been pretty much independently working on my project, though my supervisor is definitely able to guide me through statistical analysis. That means all my understanding of the research topic could be very likely to miss some essential points, in which case an examiner would be strongly critical of my thesis and I would fail right out...

I've been recommended to try to find someone that I think would be the experts in my research topic, who, desirably, would be able also willing to help us. I was wondering if anyone had a similar experience and how do you handle this?

Thanks!!
Terry

T

TerryCH 43 posts
13 years ago

Hi all,

I just finished my 3rd year progression meeting and receive feedback from the research committee regarding the final thesis writing-up. My supervisor is not the expert of the field that I am working on, so now we are both concerned about writing on the introduction and discussion chapter. For the last three years, I have been pretty much independently working on my project, though my supervisor is definitely able to guide me through statistical analysis. That means all my understanding of the research topic could be very likely to miss some essential points, in which case an examiner would be strongly critical of my thesis and I would fail right out...

I've been recommended to try to find someone that I think would be the experts in my research topic, who, desirably, would be able also willing to help us. I was wondering if anyone had a similar experience and how do you handle this?

Thanks!!
Terry

T

TerryCH 43 posts
13 years ago

Quote From sneaks:

I think it depends how you write it up. My hubs had a middle chapter where he had a negative result (in his case, it was that the model he'd built didn't work under a certain circumstance). He passed his viva, but one comment he did have was that he'd kind of built the study up, saying how important it was to investigate and then there was a sudden surprise negative result - in hindsight it would have been better to signpost at the beginning that it was a negative result or something, so the examiners weren't waiting for a nice juicy result, only to find it to be negative (if that makes sense?)

So maybe position the entire thesis around the fact you are disproving ideas rather than proving them?

Hi, that makes sense! Thanks!

Indeed I need to think a lot regarding how to present these result to examiners in the (not long) future viva. Someone also said that when giving the presentation, it is better to give a general idea about your research and then introduce each study in the way that how they fit the general picture.

T

TerryCH 43 posts
13 years ago

Quote From Doodles:

Negative results are still results so I would not be too overly worried about them. They are probably not as satisfying as positive results but as long as you can explain them it shouldn't be too much of a problem. PhD research just states that you need to have some original ideas and new contribution to knowledge but doesn't say whether they have to be positive/negative! I would still try to get the results published especially as you put so much effort in. I was at a meeting once where they said that it was good that are people were willing to publish negative results as that saves other people from going down the same road.

As for your supervisor moving uni there should be arrangements made for your supervision as he shouldn't just abandon you especially at this stage when you need to write up. Have you discussed the matter - is he willing to do long distance supervision if you e-mail him work to look at? Or will your dept allocate you a substitute supervisor who preferably knows your work?

Thanks for your suggestion! My supervisor and I had discussed this and we decide to finish the main body of the thesis before he leaves. But I think I will still talk with people in the school afterward about the lack of supervision.

Good luck
(up)

T

TerryCH 43 posts
13 years ago

Quote From keenbean:

Hey Terry! What exactly do you mean by 'positive' and 'negative' results? Do you mean that you didn't find anything that was statistically significant in one way or another? If this is the case then it doesn't necessarily matter- if your studies are sound then don't worry about not finding anything 'new'- even finding nothing can be a new finding if it disproves existing theories or contradicts previous studies etc. I've got a whole chapter where I don't find anything (i.e. no associations between variables or significant differences between two groups) but because this flies in the face of every piece of theoretical literature out there I'm still going to submit it for publication because in finding 'nothing' it potentially disproves a lot of theoretical work. So if that is the case then don't worry about it. If you haven't found anything because your experiments were flawed in some way then that would be different, but I don't think this is what you're suggesting. It might help if you could elaborate a little! What field are you in? Best, KB

oh, just to reply you for the last question .. I am studying Psychology

T

TerryCH 43 posts
13 years ago

Quote From keenbean:

Hey Terry! What exactly do you mean by 'positive' and 'negative' results? Do you mean that you didn't find anything that was statistically significant in one way or another? If this is the case then it doesn't necessarily matter- if your studies are sound then don't worry about not finding anything 'new'- even finding nothing can be a new finding if it disproves existing theories or contradicts previous studies etc. I've got a whole chapter where I don't find anything (i.e. no associations between variables or significant differences between two groups) but because this flies in the face of every piece of theoretical literature out there I'm still going to submit it for publication because in finding 'nothing' it potentially disproves a lot of theoretical work. So if that is the case then don't worry about it. If you haven't found anything because your experiments were flawed in some way then that would be different, but I don't think this is what you're suggesting. It might help if you could elaborate a little! What field are you in? Best, KB

Hi Keenbean,Thanks for your kind reply and encouraging suggestion!You are right that by 'negative result' I meant result that's non-significant in statistical term. I think I've got kind of frustrated not only because there is no 'significant' result, but more because there is always a trend ... that is, something in between ... this let me worry that it might be due to certain flawed method...Also, my supervisor is not the expert of the topic of my research. Initially he thought my idea was very interesting and encouraged me to pursue it. But given that both of us are new to my topic, we always face a dilemma of continuing or stop one experiment when some 'trend' appeared...

Something I feel indefensible ... along the course, my supervisor is definitely not someone to be complained. He did tried to help me (could not say 'tried his best', which is however understandable because my project is not his main) especially considering that he nearly had no idea about this research area. I am his first student actually and I think he was over-optimistic at the beginning. gradually I just find he is optimistic about nearly everything. According to him, PhD is a course of learning and that's the aim. Alas, examiner committee would not think the same!

T

TerryCH 43 posts
13 years ago

Quote From sneaks:

No it didn't work ;-) only joking (up)

Sorry - that probably confuses everything haha!

cool :), I guess I just need to track comments as soon as possible after they are posted so that i would know which user they were from.

T

TerryCH 43 posts
13 years ago

ok, thanks! (see if this reply to you works :) )

T

TerryCH 43 posts
13 years ago

Hi all,

sorry for this annoying simple question, but I could not find a link button for replying to comments from others on my own post. Could anyone let me know?

Thanks!
Terry

T

TerryCH 43 posts
13 years ago

(test)

T

TerryCH 43 posts
13 years ago

Hi all,

something I wish to have suggestions on...

I am now starting to write my thesis and, the more I write the more I worry about it. This is mainly because All my experiments did not achieve even a slightly positive result (i.e. certain result that would satisfy a publication criterion). I have now given up the desire of publishing my research since so... but my primary concern now is it would be very much troublesome when an examiner reads such a 'disappointing' thesis. I am at the third year and do not see a chance to have enough time refining any of those studies ... plus .. my supervisor had indicated that he would be leaving for another uni soon. I think this means I have to solely rely on all negative results at hand ...

Does anyone have any suggestion on such a case? Any comment would be greatly appreciated!!!

Thanks!

Terry

Overview of TerryCH

Recent Posts

finding an external staff to help with thesis writing-up

finding an external staff to help with thesis writing-up

finding an external staff to help with thesis writing-up

finding an external staff to help with thesis writing-up

no positive result to be included in my final thesis...

no positive result to be included in my final thesis...

no positive result to be included in my final thesis...

no positive result to be included in my final thesis...

how to reply to others' comments on your own post

how to reply to others' comments on your own post

how to reply to others' comments on your own post

no positive result to be included in my final thesis...

no positive result to be included in my final thesis...