Thanks I needed this! Personally I think there is a difference between being an independent researcher and doing it all on your own. If you get a job as a research assistant for example, you generally work within a team and play to your strengths, stats is not my strength but it is hers so of course I took her advice. I do appreciate what everyone is saying and to be honest I already feel better after discussing it with people who understand what I'm talking about. I'm so sick of hearing the same "just don't think about it" or "it'll be fine" from family who don't really know what difference is makes.

Family not understanding PhD... the worst for me was when I have loads and loads of work left to do and not much time left, and they were like "don't worry, it'll go really quickly!"

Just what you needed to hear eh?!

My gran asked me when I would be finished so she could start telling people she was proud of me. Aye thanks for that ya old bag lol.

To be honest I don't concern myself with what the family think of it but at stressful times it's nice to be able to offload.

No problem :)

I am not sure the advice I was trying to give you came out in my posts - I have a reputation for being pretty direct.

All I really wanted to advise was that if you are questioned (and you should be) about why you chose those methods she suggested, you want to avoid any hint that she made those decisions. I am assuming though, that you probably already know that.

I know this is stressful for you but if you haven't got that covered then it might be good to take a moment to think about how you'd handle it. In the pressure cooker of a viva it can be really easy to say things you might regret. I had a full-blown argument with my own internal examiner right at the end and the external had to step in. My internal used an unfortunate phrase which suggested that he thought I might have faked some results and I went from 0 to 100 mph in a split second. It's funny to think about it now but at the time it was nearly a disaster. He just didn't know that a tool I was using could give certain results and claimed it COULDN'T give those results, rather than asking whether it was the best tool to make those calculations. He was wrong to make a definitive claim like that and the external had to correct him.

Anway, that story probably isn't helping you much either =:-O....

I stopped talking to people in the weeks before my viva for that same reason. Nobody can really help at this point. You've just got to remember what the viva is there to test and to make sure you feel you can defend your decisions.

You mentioned in another post that you over-ruled your supervisor because you didn't buy into their argument and suggested I might be from the same cloth. You are quite correct. There were many times where my supervisor said X and when I went to check it I came back to him and said actually it is Y and here is why. That was from my second month onwards and became a regular thing. The point was that I was doing the work and uncovering problems with his methods. Fortunately he was very good about it or that would have caused a real problem.
To be fair to him, we had a conversation right at the start about what we expected of each other and that made the relationship an absolute breeze.

What did your protocol/ statistical analysis plan state in terms of analysing data?

What tests did you use and what do you think you should have used?

I haven't told anyone when my viva is apart from my other half. I don't want the extra pressure of people bringing it up all the time leading up to it or asking how it went if it goes horrible.

In terms of arguing with her over decisions, the stats section is literally the only input she has had throughout the whole thing, she has been off sick for the majority of my PhD and dis-interested when she returned and I am confident enough with the qual analysis that I didn't need any guidance from her.

When she explained to me how I had got the stats wrong originally she seemed entirely plausible and I genuinely think she understands those reasons and I just tried to learn her way and her justification for it because I did assume I had mixed it all up. The way I have corrected it I DO understand and I can justify my reasons for those new tests but she disagrees with them and that's where I'm still worried that I have it entirely wrong.

Going into the viva with them "corrected" I can justify my reasons for those, but explaining why I have done them the way I have now totally contradicts the way I had done them to begin with. Also, because none of the original tests showed anything significant I have basically ignored them and focused on the qual findings which are really novel and interesting, some of them at least but it turns out my tests are significant so I should have focused on them more.

It's all just a big mess and a big stress and I can't wait to get it over with. If I don't get major corrections then I don't think I have it in me to rewrite and resubmit the whole thing.

In which case you might be worrying for nothing.
It would have been a lot worse if those results had predicted something which had to then be fully refuted. THAT may have justified a rewrite.

Yeah that's a good point, fingers crossed they just add it to the list of corrections and move on to the next section. I'll be glad when it's over.