thanks for your responses!
I think I'm quite clear about the theoretical framework, but my problem is to narrow down the research problem and operationalize better -- and it seems to me that I need to have a bit more focused idea about the research problem before any further reading and literature reviewing will be actually useful.

I think you're right, Smilodon, I will have a closer look at some available data and see if that gives me some clues as to which limits to draw. Just agreed with my supervisor a deadline to re-write my research proposal, hope that will also help give me focus and clarify the next steps..

Thanks all for your input and helpful thoughts!

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Argh, don't know why there's no breaks in between paragraphs, somehow they disappeared after I posted the text!?! Thanks to everyone who's still willing to read the babbling :$

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Hello dear forum people!

Was wondering if you could help me with some brainstorming as to how to get focus into my research project. Although I'm not having problems with motivation, it seems to me that I'm getting lost in reading and my focus is getting blurrier rather than sharpening. I'm getting somewhat panicky as time is passing and I feel that I should have achieved more (immediately useful things) than I think I have.


To my background:
- I'm about 14 months into my social sciences PhD but would say that 6 months of that was spent working on a different project (finishing something from my time as an RA at the same dept)

- I've got a background both in sociology (where I had always a liking for both statistics and theory) and in (continental) philosophy

- I'm based in a European country (not UK), without almost any externally imposed deadlines or requirements, e.g. no upgrade reports or any of these rituals, so an institutional structure to the PhD process is (sadly) almost missing


What I've done so far:

- 8000 words literature review on methodological issues, which at this point however seems more or less obsolete, or not immediately relevant
- 6000 words reviewing literature on a few very general aspects of the research topic, but I feel it's not sufficiently deep nor broad coverage of the literature.
(-submitted journal article for this other project from RA times)
(-prepared paper for conference only tangentially related to PhD topic)

My dilemma: I don't quite know what to do next and feel I badly need to get some focus into my PhD.
- I feel my literature review is too vague to help me establish the conceptual framework and the more precise focus for the research problem -- so at the moment I'm stuck in the hermeneutic circle: in order to write a better literature review I should be more focused, but in order to be more focused, I need to get my ideas in order via the literature review.
- In the same way, I'm torn between trying to continue to read/write or start with finding out what kind of (quantitative) data is available (for secondary analysis) -- but I think that when I'm not sure what exactly I'm looking for and have my conceptual framework in order, this won't help too much.

What I think I might do next:
- stop writing the lit rev and instead go back to the provisional research proposal (with which I started the PhD) and take a month to re-write it, also trying to come up with a chapter outline. Discuss this with supervisor.
- look at some data for a preliminary exploration of how the general idea can be operationalized

Question:
- what do you think would be the wisest thing to do next? My supervisor is helpful but somehow leaving it to my judgment most of the time how to do things, which then again isn't always helpful.

Sorry for this long litany :$

To me it seems as if she simply wants to make you feel bad in order to maybe get some benefit from it (i.e. part of the compensation without actually taking part in the research)... I can imagine that this must be a rather annoying and uncomfortable situation, but my personal opinion is that you shouldn't allow her to blackmail/pressure you or make you feel insecure. Her claims to some compensation are unsubstantiated in my opinion.

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Did she actually participate in the research already, or did you simply cancel her future participation in it? If it's the former, then I think their time needs to be compensated despite you being unable to use it for your research. But if it's the latter, I'm not quite sure how her time has been effectively wasted.. and I'd personally think that it's quite exaggerated to demand compensation, since you had very good reasons for cancelling that were outside your control. It's not that you acted on a whim to exclude her, so to my mind, apologizing for the inconvenience should be enough... I wouldn't think it appropriate if you paid her out of your own pocket if all she did was sign up to something and then didn't get in in the end.

======= Date Modified 09 Jan 2009 10:11:19 =======
Can very well understand your frustration! I had a somewhat similar experience in another context when my teaching assistant position was discontinued although the prof had seemed until then very satisfied with how I did the job. As I found out gradually, the reason for his decision was not that I wasn't good enough, but that his intention is to normally make sure that several of his students get the chance of gaining teaching experience, and that I had it for several terms was because he was indeed satisfied with my performance (mixed with being too lazy to ask another student to do it and organize that transition). If you've had it for three years, that equals the length of a full-time PhD. Maybe the reason the lecturer is looking for someone else relates more to the fact that normally people don't hold that post for longer than 3 years (during their full-time PhD)? I can very well imagine that you did a great job, but maybe the idea is simply to give someone else a chance, in which case it's nothing to do with you or your performance?

Do you think you can just try to ask them whether they had something to complain about or whether it's just for these more administrative reasons that you don't get to teach anymore? I can really sympathize with how you feel about the situation, and it's really easy to get paranoid in this context, but maybe there's a much simpler explanation? I'd think it's always best to try to find a way to (diplomatically) ask them directly what's the issue..

All the best! (up)

I definitely recommend LaTeX, it makes typesetting so much easier, looks professional, and you'll never again have to worry about chapter/caption numbers or other bits of your formatting doing things you didn't tell them to do.

LaTeX is very easily learned actually, you'll need one afternoon or maybe a weekend max. Here's some overview of LaTeX introduction documents: http://www.latexeditor.org/links_tex.html

I'd recommend simply reading the first introduction chapter of any of these intros and then go through your dissertation and look up the specifics you need (e.g. footnotes, tables, bibliography etc.)

If you're using Windows, you need to download both the editor TexnicCenter (there's others of course, this is just what I'm using and have been very happy with it, in fact I find it better than most Linux-based editors for LaTeX), as well as the "actual" LaTeX for Windows, which is Miktex. Just google them, download and install them. The programme to typeset your document is then Texniccenter.

There's also programmes (or add-ons for Word) on the internet that convert a .doc-document to LaTeX, which might come handy for your purposes, but it'll still need a lot of polishing (don't remember the name unfortunately).

If you're looking for help on specific statistics issues or methods, I can recommend Sage's University Paper Series "quantitative applications in the social sciences". It's a series of little green books each concentrating on a specific issue/method and geared for applied researchers. The series covers more or less every imaginable topic relevant to applied statistics -- granted, with a focus on social sciences, but I would think that many statistical needs of psychologists would be covered there too. You get the booklets for a few pounds e.g. from bookdepository (online bookshop with free shipping).

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Also Jabref works well together with LaTeX, it has a nice graphical user interface.

jabref.sourceforge.net/

You can download all kinds of packages for LaTeX for using non-latin characters, it's easily done, best is to google for it, I'd say (or search in the software package manager of your linux-distribution). (Distribution: e.g. Ubuntu, RedHat, Debian, SuSE etc.)

Thanks a lot, alicepalace and missspacey!

Yes, abstract and biographical note are included on the first page (they asked for two title pages for each print, one without and one with the personal details). I just thought it feels a bit silly to simply stick the paper copies into the envelope without any accompanying letter. But I think you are right and I'll just keep the letter short, matter-of-factly and not redundant.

Also I'm thinking to include two versions of the file on the disk, one with my details the other one without my name etc for blind review. Is this a good idea? Or are the author details normally stated in the cover letter and the article file is without any names etc.?

Sorry if this is a daft question to ask, thing is the journal doesn't state any e-mail address of the coordinating editor (otherwise I would have asked her) and my supervisors are away.

Hi there..

I'm having my first encounter with trying to publish something, and am a bit confused regarding the role of the cover letter for the submission of articles. The journal I'm targeting wants four copies of the article in paper for first submission, and doesn't state anything about cover letter policies. I have read conflicting information about this on the net -- some say you should advertise your paper and state why the journal should publish it, others say a few lines of "enclosed you find blabla for your consideration" would suffice. My supervisor seemed to think the latter variant ok, but I'm still a bit confused. How do you normally do it? I'm in the social sciences, in case that's relevant.

Just read your msg again -- don't know if layout of user interfaces is such a minor thing really, depending on your discipline maybe?

Hi!

Yes, comforting to hear that you made similar experiences (although in my case the arguments concern mainly theoretical/conceptual issues). I'm myself a bit confused about this topic. On the one hand I think it's a good thing to discuss openly about issues and explain your opinions and the reasons for your disagreement, and I think it's a mistake to just do as you're told, if you have good reasons to disagree. But then I'm also nervous about coming across as "arrogant" or stubborn, so I think it's something that needs careful negotiating in order to not damage the relationship with the sup in the long run. Quite tricky. I'd say that if it's stuff like layout it might be maybe easier to give in to their wishes. That might "save" the atmosphere so that you can better argue your case when there's substantial disagreement? But that's just a thought. Good luck in any case (and thanks for your reply in the other thread )!!