My PhD is on visitor interpretation at geosites. I've just had informal feedback on my formal submission of my proposal to the Research Committee and as I expected the methodology section needs more work. Apparently i's unclear what I am "actually going to do" - I am well aware of this but until I start doing some fact finding fieldwork (this summer) I can't develop my methodology, define sites, samples size and so on.
Can anyone suggest some good Research methods texts that I can use to at least show some engagement with methodologies. I am aiming to use a range of methods - interpretation content analysis, interviews with site mangers, observations of visitors, visitor questionnaires.

Hi everyone
I've just started my PhD and my employer (university A) is making a contribution to fees (University B). The part time fees are £1720 per year and uni A will pay £1500 maximum per year (subject to satisfactory reports etc). They will make no further contribution to travel or resources. In exchange for this I have had to sign a contract which says that in the event of my leaving the university I have to pay back all the fees paid by them for the duration of my PhD and 2 years beyond that. After that there is one year when I would have to pay back 50%.
My supervisors are really shocked and have said they have never come across this. My lead super also thinks that my employer should be more generous regarding resources, travel etc (I did get costs to go to a conf form res committee but can't get anything for fieldwork costs).
Has anyone come across this before? It seems very harsh to me but I had no choice but to sign. Uni A requires me to do the PhD but is not resourced to supervise it themselves and Uni B is better for my subject. They also benefit from recruiting newly / part qualified PhDs (is doing what they are preventing me from doing). They will also get benefit from my publishing during my PhD
Uni B is also 30 miles nearer to my home and is better for my subject and so my hope is I will be able to get a job at uni B (they have in previous interviews indicated that the lack of PhD progress is all that stopped me getting the jobs).
I contacted UCU branch rep who took it up with region and they came back with the view that they can do what they want.

I'd be interested in other people's experiences.

Hi
I'm only just starting out but can I join - my boss at work (not my supervisor but my work uni are paying some of the costs of my part-time phd so obviously have a stake in my outputs) has set me a target of 10,000 word to be written this year - in light of what is said is this excessive - it is a humanities / management topic and I have got 5 years part-time funding contribution but compared to people who're submitting this year it seems a lot. When I have writing to do (conference papers etc) I put my word count on my facebook status which shames me into doing more.
Wordcount today 0

You aren't too old but you may have to take sideways step to achieve what you want to do.  I have just started my PhD (my proposal went to the university research committee this afternoon) and I am 44. I did my BA in Economics straight form school, then qualified as an accountant whiel working.  At 29 I decided to do an MA in American Studies for fun part time (at Birkbeck in the evenings while working full time). I had my son three weeks after handing in my dissertation.  At 38 I had the opportunity to take redundancy and so went back to uni to do an MSc in Tourism Management after which I started hourly lecturing before getting a permanent job. It has taken me a few years to decide on a subject area for my PhD, and as I am doing it part-time I have set a target of completing it before i am 50.  You aren't too old but it may be harder to just apply and get a position (I tried to get research assistant jobs and was not even short listed as I was not in academia).
Can you get a foot in a door at the university? Doing my MSc got me some contacts which resulted in a job - a guy on teh course who was in hs 50s did a similar thing.
Good Luck

Not sure how much help this will be - I hardly ever use my uni library or at least the building - I go in to pick up books, take books back but other than that I avoid it like the plague as it is always full of undergrads texting and talking.  Also i like to have a cup of tea when I am working. I tend to work either in my office at the uni where I work (not the same uni as my PhD), if I am in my PhD uni, at my desk in one of the (overcrowded) PhD corridors (sorry that should say rooms but it is a glorified corridor with a door on it).  Most likely I am at home in my dining room surrounded by piles of books, articles etc.

What I do use extensively is the on-line journal, database etc access (and the on-line library access for my subject was a key factor in my selecting the uni for my PhD).

What would I like the library to offer - silence, space, more books (but then doesn't everyone want that), free photocopying etc etc.
I would recommend new students to get to know their subject librarian - they can be great for lit searches - sometimes a conversation with one of them can throw up a synonym that you haven't thought of and which opens up a whole raft of articles.

I'd also recommend browsing the shelves as occasionally books in a close classmark can also throw up a new strand of enquiry.

Oh and most of all I would love (but this is never going to happen) for little elves to reshelve books overnight so that the books that sneaky students have hidden in an obscure corner get returned to where they belong.

Scary - I'm not a scientist, I hate star trek etc and can only use a computer in windows but i got 18.73767%
Wonder what my (not an academic) husband got...

Funded PhDs are hard to get - your best chance is to look for one that is advertsied BUT you are going to be competing with people who firsts or 2.1s and distinctions. I have a 2.1, distinctions in MA and MSc and I am self funding my PhD. Maybe in science you can get one where it is already funded but your overseas fee status will count against you. Sorry not to be more encouraging.

I think you need to decide on your priorities - not working and having a wife and child is a luxury that few can afford.  Why can't your wife work - yes I know you have a child but can't she work while you look after the child and vice versa? (and before anyone says I don't know what it is like with children - I sat my MA finals 5 months pregnant, waddled round the Capital Region 6 month pregnant collecting data, started my maternity leave with 12,000 words of a 15,000 word dissertation to finish and handed in my dissertation 3 weeks before my son was born - oh and I was working full time in a full on job in accountancy and was doing my MA part time. For most of my children's lives I have been studying)  She could have the child during the day if that is when you are studying and then she could work evenings while you look after the child - OK so you might not see each other much but something has to give.
Yes in an ideal world you would get a nice well paid job in the university which you could fit around you family and your PhD but life isn't ideal. You have to decide what is important and that might mean you spend less time than you would like with your wife and child or it might mean you spend less time on your PhD or you might run up debts.  I currently work full time an hour and half commute away from home, bring marking home and spend evenings and weekends on PhD - my husband is self employed so can do the school run etc. At the moment he is supervising the children's homework while I am preparing a lecture for 9am.  I am very focussed in my PhD - I can't afford the luxury of going off in interesting tangents which ultimately might lead no where; I just juggle what is the priority at a point in time - so at the moment it is PhD and a conference paper. At easter vacation it will be family and so on; a few weeks ago it was my health as I had an operation.

I'm far less experienced than most posters here (having only discovered the forum yesterday) and I am only 2 months registered into a part-time PhD.  However maybe this will help. I submitted my draft proposal (the formal one for research committee not the one for the application) and I got feedback fomr my supervisors saying there was too much, they couldn't see how it fitted together, why was I doing x when the thesis was about Y and so on.  I really struggled to explain it even though I knew that x was an essential component. In the end I doodled on paper and came up with a diagram (model is far to sophisticated a term for my random scribbles) which showed how x and y fitted in, how the elements linked together where the existing theory fits in, where a new model (which I have already come up with even though I haven't collected any data yet) fits and so on - this all then links to outcomes (both academic and practitioner).  It also demonstrated how each fitted into the aims. Since I did that and sent it to my supervisors (as a nice powerpoint diagram with boxes, clouds, links, dotted links and so on) I have had no questions about why these seemingly (to them) random elements are being included.  I don't know your subject area and I don't know whether you are a doodler (I am always doodling when I am reading) and so don't know whether this approach would work but it worked for me.

Oh and make sure that the grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalisation etc are all correct. No text speak, not all lower case.

Ok here's some advice then.
You need to go through your cv and experience and look at it as though you knew nothing about you and think what things jump out then you need to address them.  Yes you need to highlight your key skills, attributes reasons why you want to do the PhD etc but you also need to answer any anomalies - for example 6 years ago I gave up a very highly paid job as an accountant to return to studying so in my personal statement I explained why. I also in my recent part-time PhD application covered the question of how a 44 year old woman with 2 children and a full time job was going to fit the PhD in as well by making reference to the fact that my MA was done part time while working full time.  That way anyone looking at the statement can see that I have thought through the difficulties.
I think you need to give examples of the attributes etc - it isn't enough to say you are hard working, a team player, committed etc since no one is going to put I am not a team player I am lazy etc.  So you need to make it stand out. Is this an application for a self funded PhD or are you competing against others for a funded one - if you are self funding then I suspect the requirements are less onerous than for a funded one where you are not just showing you can do the PhD but also that you are the best person out of all the other people who have applied.
I also think it is worth having an introducion and a conclusion where you highlight the key message and then sum up at the end.
Good Luck

can you get the full paper from iner-library loans, British library (or similar) etc?

and any pictures you ahve taken yourself just so it is clear.

Don't know if you are in the UK but there is a website called peopleperhour.com where people advertise work and you bid for it - quite a lot is research based so that might be something to look into.  A lot of it is small companies who cant afford consultants.

Sorry to hear of you bad experience - a similar thing happened to me when I first started lecturing - I was "asked" to give a research seminar on the subject of my MSc dissertation (for which I got a distinction) - no one in the department gave me any advice, I had never been to a research seminar before and I was totally ripped to pieces.  I subsequently found out that this was not totally unusual and that members of the department used these opportunities to score points, settle scores or engage in arguments over quantitative vs qualitative approaches, hard science versus social science etc.

As a result I refused to do another one for over 3 years (even though I was presenting research at international conferences).  I eventually had to do one but I refused to take questions until the end (so I wasn't constantly saying I 'm covering that later), wore my best (pre-academia) power suit and heels and hit back the criticisms with a smile and a "thank you for that contribution; it's an idea I haven't thought of but will look into" etc (mainly with no intention of so doing!). It kinda disturbs people if you do that.

I don't think making a complaint is the answer as you have to continue to work with him but next time you have to do one why not seek his advice beforehand then there's no way he can criticise you.