Actually do you mean that you shaded in the cells of the table? Cos that'd make it pretty darn clear I imagine.

Depends on how myopic your examiners are and whether they will notice the blue/black difference. I'd go for italics instead/as well.

Congrats on finishing. Good luck with the next stage of your career :)

I don't use this or LinkedIn, but I'm starting to think I should. I have an aversion to 'putting myself on the internet' (my Facebook profile is very private, I tweet semi-anonymously and blog anonymously) but I'm starting to think I should be a bit more open with some aspects, in the interests of professional networking. If nothing else, there are two people in UK research with the same name as me, who I could be confused with by people who know a little about my academic background (one is even at the same uni as me). Perhaps I should do something to take charge of my online identity?

Congratulations! You should definitely go for it - you've already done the hard work, so reshaping it into a paper will make good use of your efforts. The redrafting process is something that you'll do a lot in your PhD so it'll be good practice. It might also be nice to have something like that to do alongside the early days of the PhD, which can otherwise feel a bit vague and directionless.

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It's nothing about academia - it's about good t'internet etiquette. I know non-academic forums where you'd have been pulled up for the same thing. The way you put it, it sounded like you'd done your own analysis of the Times Data and were presenting a finding that you thought was interesting. All you had to do what put quotation marks. Not exactly rocket science.

To be honest I don't really give a monkeys in this instance, but you didn't seem to get why someone mentioned plagiarism, hence why I gave an explanation.

That's great to hear. Thanks for letting us know that there is life the other side. :)

I hope it continues in a similar positive way.

I started my PhD in January. I had the choice between October or January and I went for the latter cos I wanted a break after my masters and also it involved moving somewhere new and I didn’t want to have to rush everything. I certainly wasn’t the only one and I was fortunate that there was another student starting in my group at the same time.

My course doesn’t have any formal taught components, but there are sufficient numbers of mid-year starters at my uni that they run the intro to PhD courses at the start of each term. Some of the specific methodology courses do fit a more Sept-June schedule, but look outside of your uni to see what else is available. If your department is reasonable they should be amenable to funding you to attend training if no locally run courses are available.

It is a little more difficult starting in the middle of the year but it doesn’t have to be a big deal. My main issue was that I found it difficult to motivate myself to get out and explore my new environment in the middle of winter! Take advantage of any welcome events that occur at that time but don’t worry if they don’t lead to lifelong friendships – just be open to opportunities to meet people and see what happens. I’d also recommend finding an activity/hobby outside of uni life to give you social contact and help you meet new people. Actually I’d recommend that regardless of when you start – life should not revolve entirely around uni and your student friends. It’s good to do ‘real world’ stuff to keep you sane.

Don’t get too anxious about it. It’s good to acknowledge that it might be more challenging than if you had started in September, but there’s nothing you can do about it, so focus your energy on positive ways of preparing to start your PhD.

Learning to work in a team is another important skill you will get develop during your masters.

I've talked you through the process of going from a general topic to choosing a study design. The first thing you should do is meet with your group to come up with a topic and discuss how you're going to approach the work in the time allowed. Hopefully within your group you will have people with a range of experience and knowledge, which you can bring together and make a stronger project than as individuals.

Do you have a personal tutor/course director? If so, you might like to talk with him/her about any general study concerns you have and get some guidance. Librarians can also be very helpful at teaching you how to find the information you're looking for. You should also ask the person who set the assignment for more guidance if you are confused.

Good luck.

I think what you've said is pretty conventional - the only thing I can think of is if your variable is categorical rather than ordinal it might be better to report the 4 categories as it's not like they're on a standard scale. Maybe you also need to justify why it's Galaxy, not Cadbury, that's the reference category?

Hi Emily

The first thing I would suggest is getting your hands on a good introductory epidemiology book as this will help you appreciate the relevant issues in study design and interpretation
As for your current project (which seems a bit full on for the start of the year!) I’d suggest going through a process like the one I will outline below. I’ll give a (silly) example and then you can figure out how your own idea fits.

1. Identify a general topic (e.g. effect of weather on health)
2. Identify a more specific question within that (e.g. Does exposure to rain cause respiratory infections?)
3. Identify the ‘outcome’ you want to measure (e.g. frequency of respiratory infections over a 12 month period) and how you want to measure it (e.g. self-report by survey at 12 months? GP records? Hospital admissions?)
4. Figure out how to measure your ‘exposure’ (rain exposure). Direct or indirect measurement?
5. Identify other factors which may mediate the relationship between the exposure and outcome (‘effect modifiers’) or provide an alternative explanation for some or all of any association you might detect (‘confounders’). In the example I’ve given these might be things like: umbrella ownership, primary mode of transport, person’s surface area. Work out how/when to measure these.
6. In terms of study design… this will be determined by what is already known on a topic. If the link between rain exposure and catching a cold is not well established, you might do a cohort study (follow a bunch of people for a year, measuring their rain exposure and illness frequency), or a case control study (identify people with respiratory infections and retrospectively determine their rain exposure, in comparison with people who don’t have respiratory infections). Or if the link is well established, you might design a public health intervention and do a trial of it (e.g. giving free umbrellas to half the households in a city and seeing whether their infection incidence is lower than the control group). All study designs have their strengths and limitations and you need to address these.
7. Whether you do quantitative or qualitative analysis will depend on the outcome you’ve chosen and how you measure it. For example, if you want to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention above, you might count the number of days lost due to ill health (quantitative) or run a focus group to find out why people didn’t use the free umbrella you gave them (qualitative).

Good luck

No, it's a helpful forum, but there are people from a wide range of disciplines, some of whom might not have the right subject knowledge or experience to help. Also, if you post a question at 9.30 in the evening there's no point in stressing when your question hasn't been answered in 2 hours. You're more likely to get support here if you don't get snarky.

I can help you but it's late. I'll reply properly in the morning. In the mean time I suggest you at least come up with some ideas for a broad topic area (air pollution? radiation? climate change?) Defining a research question is an important skill you will learn through your masters.