Some biases are universal but some biases depend on the question being asked.

For example, if the qu is
"Are students in Dept X happier than those in Dept Y at Uni Z?"
then only sampling students in Dept X and Dept Y at Uni Z is totally appropriate

but if the qu is
"Are students who study X happier than those who study Y?"
Then yes, you could get biases from only studying one uni, and there would be a limit to how far you could generalise your findings.

So, first explicitly define your research question, THEN work out the sampling frame.

At a conference you are not just representing yourself/your work but also your department and PI (whether you make that explicit or not). So I'd be reluctant to submit an abstract without running it past my supervisor first. I am aware, though, that there are different cultures in different fields - e.g. in science you hardly ever see anything single author, whereas I gather in arts/humanities it's more usual for a piece of work to just have one author. In the latter case, perhaps there is less pressure to get permission, but I'd still be inclined to check first.

======= Date Modified 13 Jan 2012 13:59:48 =======
[deleted duplicate post]

Sampling frame depends on the question you are trying to answer. If you want a generalised view of Economics students' behaviour then it may be inappropriate to just sample from one uni. But if you're primarily interested in one uni then one faculty in one uni is fine (unless you want a comparison/control group)

So have a clearly defined research qu first, and then your sampling frame should reflect that.

======= Date Modified 11 Jan 2012 00:08:50 =======

I think T&Cs of stipends do put a cap on number of hours worked outside. I think it's partly for your own protection - e.g. to stop students getting burdened with a ridiculous teaching load or failing to complete on time as they have too many other commitments. You might find it hard to keep up 14 hrs PT work on top of your project in the long run, so just be mindful of that.

I can't think of any specific references but one approach might be to look at applied journals in a given field (e.g. http://mdm.sagepub.com/ or http://www.jmir.org/) and look for examples of evaluations of software and how they were conducted. The evaluations might range from qualitative assessment of a user interface to randomised trials of whether a piece of software affected real world practice. I doubt you'd have time to do the latter, but the former may be a relevant approach. What is your area of application?

Don't have it to hand, but I have a Samsung NC10 which seems to have 1GB according to the specs online. It's served me well enough.

Not really had any problems with web pages loading. Maybe it's a model specific issue but the only problem I've had is that if I catch the trackpad in the wrong way sometimes it zooms in/out rather than scrolling, but that's a minor point.

Happy shopping!

I have a netbook and it far exceeded my expectations. It's getting a little slow now after nearly 4 years but I have been pleasantly surprised at what I could do with it (e.g. running statistical analysis software via a remote desktop). It's still more than adequate for surfing and downloading/reading/editing documents.

I confess I'm a bit skeptical about i-Products. Yes, they are beautiful and yes they do lots of 'cool' things but I think there are plenty of other options out there that probably provide the same or superior functionality for the stuff you actually want/need to do. For the amount of money you would spend on an iPad you could get a really good netbook.

======= Date Modified 03 Jan 2012 15:21:29 =======
Just a few things you said I'd like to pick up on...

Congratulations. It's a great achievement to have completed your PhD and a nice relief for you to have no corrections. But no, I would never put that on a CV. If I was reviewing CVs I wouldn't think any less of someone with minor corrections, and thus wouldn't think any more of someone with no corrections.

I've used Endnote and Reference Manager when they've been available to me. I now use Mendeley because it's free. It's not bad. A little wonky in places and you have to be mindful of some errors that can creep in, but it's a very useful way of inserting citations, plus it has a number of other useful functions. Zotero is another free alternative.

Why anyone would willingly insert references by hand in this day and age is beyond me. Yes it requires effort to learn to use the software but it really is worth it. I don't want to have to renumber references when I swap paragraphs around or reformat references in different ways according to different journal requirements. Mendeley doesn't even require complicated importing - if you install the desktop version then dragging and dropping a pdf from your browser will work about 70% of the time.

======= Date Modified 24 Nov 2011 19:05:36 =======
Given that you're asking for some sensitive information there, you might like to put a front page to your survey detailing data privacy policies and stating what ethical approvals you have for the study. Otherwise you may well end up with a very biased sample of people who haven't experienced any issues.

While I'm pretty sure research councils will give you maternity pay *during* your PhD I very much doubt they would grant it right at the end. I mean, the point of it is to enable you to return to the position you were holding previously, so if you're not returning to that position, why should they fund you for that period? Same would be true of a fixed term contract job I assume.

Maybe try signing up to this list:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=EVIDENCE-BASED-HEALTH
and you might find some other people interested.