Oh, that really sucks! am sorry to hear that Algae. :-(

stop, get away from it for a few minutes and take a deep breath... and don't panic!

4 days is a long time: 3 days to discussion and overall abstract, 1 day: appendices and references. proofread as you go along.

trying to negotiate for Monday morning given he had said Wednesday.. either way, you can do it. just focus and shut everything out! am doing the same.

* hope you are not at an early stage of discussion. if you are.. find a way of keeping wednesday.... you can get a note from student's counselling allowing you more days if the pressure is affecting your health.

best of luck(up)

lol I still have to even start the discussion! I have *nothing* written for it. I'm going to phone the submissions office in the morning to see what the story is exactly, it's ridiculous that the date keeps changing. Can't believe it.

Sorry for kind of hijacking your thread Sneaks..

Hi Sneaks! I am sure you will get it done. There is nothing like a deadline to focus the mind--and remember--there ain't nothing as powerful as a made up mind...just set your mind to make the deadline and you will.

On the constructivist/positivist thing--I did constructivist work with interviews in part of my thesis, so am gonna make an attempt to give you the short version of the whole thing.

A couple of books that are helpful if you need to reference these methods/paradigms--I like Creswell and his Mixed Methods book, also helpful is Guba and Lincoln, in a couple of books by Sage on Qualitative Methods. There is a giant book with an orange cover and a little green paperback--I would suggest the giant orange book, because half way through its got some great charts that lay out exactly the difference between constructivism and positivism.

Positivism: Generally what we think of with "scientific method" --you as the researcher are neutral and apart from your work, a detached observer, who believes that there is a "truth" to be discovered through testing an hypothesis. Testing relies on reliability and validity for validation. Your reasoning is deductive, that is from general to specific.

Constructivism: Instead of thinking there is some universal truth out there to discover, you as the researcher think that meaning is created through social interactive ( sometimes the word transactional is used) processes. Meaning changes and is dynamic. Constructivism is often thought to be inductive or interpretive--sometimes reasoning from the specific to the general.

Another great book that quickly and easily lays out the diff between constructivism and positivism is by Kathy Charmaz, on Constructivist Grounded Theory. Even if you are not using grounded theory, if you can get hold of her book, she has a clear and easy to follow distinction between each of them and her discussion is general enough to apply to any kind of research--whether or not you make use of grounded theory methodology.

Hope that helps. If you need anything more, please feel free to PM!

wow, thanks for the help with positivist/constructavist. I guess I'm having difficulty with it becasue I think I'm using positivist BUT because I am not a member of my participant group i.e. I don't have red hair (for example), I am also saying as a researcher I need to take that into account because it may effect my interpretation of the work - which sounds constructavist!

Can I say 'I used both'?

Hi, am glad that helped. Constructivist does not require you be a part of the participant group--its not so literal as that. Rather, it takes the view that the researcher's own life, values, etc can influence the research, and sees the researcher as involved in the transactional process, rather than positivist, which says the opposite.

I suppose there is some way you could fashion an argument that you used both, but I am not sure how that would get received if you are examined by people who are big on methodology....it could be a clunker ( to say the least).

I often describe methodology as one of three legs of a research "paradigm". Your overall research design, whether you articulate it specifically or not, also includes ontology and epistimology ( sorry cannot spell, coffee has not kicked in!) as well as methods. The three fall together to create the design of your project--and that overall design is the paradigm. Positivism and constructivism are more than methods--they are, if you will, a bigger package that include certain standpoints of ontology, espestimology and method--method is often pointed to for the research but the others are equally present in what you did. As well, there is not a single method for positivism or constructivism--there are many methods that would fall under the ambit of each paradigm. Grounded theory for instance can be positivistic or constructivist, depends on how you use it....

The problem in trying to say you used both positivism and constructivism is that their methods clash, their ontology and epistimology are very different--they are different broad paradigms as opposed to methods in and of themselves....It would be like trying to convince someone that an apple pie is the same as fish and chips...

Try the Lincoln and Guba book if you can find it--it will explain in their charts much more clearly than I have.

I hope that helps....

Thanks Olivia, I have PMd you with my specific dilemma.

On another note - having a VERY bad day as my statistics have decided to play up and become non-significant, I have no idea how this has happened :-s

oh its all going horribly wrong!

I at last thought I had my stats sorted today and now having major doubts. I have really unequal sample sizes, but don't know whether to cut 100 participants from 1 sample, or do all sorts to correct it, mainly bootstrap the data.

And there is no one I can turn to for advice on the matter - my supervisor asks me to do her stats for her. whaaaaaaa!