Do you think there might be the danger of too much leaning towards subjective bias if you are conducting research in your own office and that consists of observation only?

I am assuming that you are the observer? Are you allowed to video or record participants or are you relying on 'field notes'?

My own preference would be to have at least one other source of 'rich' data that you collect where participants are more 'active' and have the ability to shape responses more than if just being 'observed', (even if you are applying a rigorous methodology to the analysis). Although when interviewing in your own workplace, you also need to be careful about the 'balance of power' and confidentiality of participants and participant data. But this would also apply to observations as well. Or maybe observed participants could be given the opportunity to comment on and validate your records and observations of conflicts in action.

In my own study, I have had to remove my own workplace as a source of external data and could only use it as part of my own experience (in the small sections in introduction where I include my own experiences). This was ruled out in the ethics committee application. My supervisor tended to think it would be okay which was why I included my workplace along with others initially. However, she comes from a different methods background and I am her first doctoral student. The ethics committee included several academics from a wide range of research experience and some of them had a different perspective.

Hi Burla,

I can't offer advice on specific universities in the UK or which doctorate would be best for you but I can provide a perspective.

I was struggling with some of these issues related to my career as an educator. I had an eight year gap from uni , had a very demanding role as a head of a team that coordinated the teachers, assistants, volunteers and families of students with special learning needs and really (at the time) wanted to go back to see whether academia was a possibility. I had to do a Masters-as had not completed the separate year for honours (in Aust unis) not due to results or awards but purely for financial reasons (mother of three young children and needed a steady income) and the gap seemed a bit too large. I also believed I needed to 'get back into it' before trying out for a doctorate.

So I went back and did my masters with a 50 percent component of thesis plus a couple of coursework units. It was quite hard to balance the two (my job and the study and family)but I did complete it to a level where I was eligible to apply for either professional doctorates or PhDs- not to the highest scholarship level but the one just below. I first applied and accepted for a educational doctorate as well as successfully applying for a role as curriculum coordinator in my professional life -bit of a promotion -but I still had not let go of the possibility for academia and on my supervisor's advice-applied for a transfer to a PhD and was accepted. I have been on this course of study for 2 years (1 year fulltime-2 years parttime).

However, I seem to have completed a 180 degree turn on my feelings about the PhD and academia, as well as how much I value my professional work. The upshot is- I have been applying for a few jobs over the years-one per year and received favourable interviews but no position. One of these was as a seconded academic -teacher practitioner. I have also realised that my perspective about academic life and the work and writing that I wish to ultimately do has changed. I recently received a promotion for a very large job in my workplace (for which all of my study including the doctorate really counted!!) and I intend to slowly complete my PhD over the next 3-4 years. I no longer wish for academia but I value all of the learning opportunities that doctoral study offers. I see younger people who have studied PhD's fulltime as being given those few opportunities for entrance lecturer positions-and I am happy about this, especially given the current employment climate.

Finally, on getting the latest position only a few days ago, I reflected that an educational doctorate would have been just as useful and more manageable but I am sticking with my current PhD course now as I am too far on the pathway to change again. Hope this is helpful. Good luck with your decisions and ultimately you have to make the right choice for you and your own hopes and dreams.

Would you consider tutoring-not necessarily tutoring in your department (obviously would be great but not always available) but tutoring second language speakers and international students or possibly A level students. Universities and private tutoring companies often have flexible tutoring positions that you can fit around your study and research and could be useful on a resume later on. Good luck with it all.

Fantastic news Pineapple-well done! Hope you do lots of celebrating!!! :)

Burrahobbit, if you think of your chapters each like a 15 page conference paper (or two combined) it might be a bit easier to get into the zone. Each chapter is a separate piece of writing, even if it links to and develops the chapter before it.

Secondly, I find that I have to use my holiday time (I'm a secondary school teacher and administrator) and so often I need to write for 6 hours a day or so in long blocks. What I do though is break it up. I write for three hours and then spend a bit of time doing other things, exercise, housework, shopping or errands or similar and after a couple of hours, go back into another 2 hour block before dinner and maybe spend an hour on it after dinner as well.

I get up fairly early in the holidays so I can start writing-actual work by around 8 at the latest-sometimes it is 7.15 or so.

It might be a little late to go back and take many notes, but you could find spending a bit of time organising your key sources into groups and then writing a very short (paragraph) summary of each source, really helpful. Or you could just look at key themes that you are evaluating and group all of your authors and sources into these themes. Then work out which group belongs primarily in which chapter.

Don't get hung up on perfectionism-academic writing and research is all about process-finished product is only ever a snapshot in time of where you are on the journey. And it is hard -academic writing that is. I recently had to do a bout of professional writing for a new job application that required a very long selection criteria statement (around 6-7thousand words). I managed this over a weekend and it required very little redrafting and I only had around a half dozen minor typos to weed out in total. It was much easier because I knew my stuff, really wanted the new position and could write for professionals not academics (harder audience). This reassured me that the difficulties often experienced with academic writing did not occur because I was losing my writing ability, but because academic writing is very challenging.

You can perfect and polish once you have your drafts out-just get the words and ideas out. Good luck with it all.

"I feel so stupid because I said a lot of non sensical things, and now, I keep thinking about how bad the meeting was. I cannot even concentrate anymore.what to do?"

Dear Politiks student, don't worry about what you said or whether it seemed nonsensical or not. This sort of fretting can be really destructive but is often not 'real'. Your supervisor is a really busy person and probably isn't even thinking about what you said. Most of us are our own worst critics. Take Tulips advice and make a list of things you can do to catch up and resolve to work on the things on the list, one step at a time.

Exercise is also really helpful. Both the 'long walk' type where you think things through and the intensive type where you don't think about anything at all but getting through the exercise!

We all say and do things that we regret or believe are 'silly' because we are human. Remember the worst critic you will ever have is probably yourself and it is your work that eventually your supervisor gets to assess or help-not you yourself-you are absolutely fine.

Hi Burrahobbit, just checking about the timelines you mentioned in order to clarify where you are so it's easier to respond...

You are in the US or Canada (you mentioned the 'fall') and doing your PhD dissertation?
When you talk about doing it in one year-do you mean that you have been working on it and related courses for some years and now wish to write and submit your dissertational thesis in one year?

You might need to explain a bit more about where you are with the writing as well. Are your final three chapters, results, discussion/analysis and conclusion chapters?

Have you done the analysis of results yet? You mention that you have too many sources.

What type of dissertation are you writing- a humanities one based on literature or texts, a social science one based on quantitative or qualitative data or a scientific one-based on experiments, lab results? Sounds like one of the first two but not sure.

Did you have an original hypothesis or did you develop research questions-if it all seems 'diffuse' go back to those reseach questions or hypothesis to help you sharpen up the focus when you look at sources and evidence. Ignore all of the really interesting side bits that distract you from your main topic.

Others might be able to provide you with some good advice about finishing in short timeframes ( mine is a longer one and I am still collecting data)-but if you clarify a few things, it might be easier for others to respond with specific advice.

Hi Mahesh,

In Australia (which has a system in many ways similar to UK-possibly also Canada), you can apply for credit for advanced degrees but what you often have to do is actually apply for entry into a Masters program, and wait for acceptance, then apply for accreditation of units undertaken in the PGDip, on a unit by unit basis, once you have commenced the course. You can establish with the university ahead of time that this is what you will be doing, but they usually still follow set processes for these sorts of applications.

If you received a Postgraduate Diploma based on a thesis, it might be difficult to establish exactly what area of study your thesis was equivalent to as your thesis would not necessarily correspond to any units. If the Masters was a program that included a couple of research methods units with the thesis, you could possibly apply for advanced credit for these, claiming work you have done as similar to the course load in a Research Methods 1 and 2 course (courses usually based around creating draft lit reviews, proposals and methods outlines for your research). That might equal around 25 percent of your course 'loading' or you may be able to establish around 50 percent of the course based on what you can establish you have already done which matches the universities criteria.

You also might be able to just apply for the Masters and then use your thesis study to accelerate the whole Masters process-so you do it in one year rather than two say but you might need to make your topic a little different from what it was in the Post grad dip-and review the reasons why you were not awarded a Masters for this-so that you could address these issues in your next attempt.

I think in all cases, as Satchi has indicated, you would need to contact the universities of your choice and discuss your case with the course advisor in your area, to get an idea of exactly what options are available to you-there may be more than one option that is suitable for you and your particular circumstances.

Good luck with it all.

In Australia, the government supports two main tiers of funding-one called the APA (which provides a living grant for Master of Research or any kind of doctorate between 1-3 years or so-with a 6 month extension). As well as this there is Research Training Scheme funding (where the government pays your fees).

Many students obtain the RTS funding (with fees paid) but the APA living stipends (and any other extra individual university scholarship or top up) are really competitive. So there are few more cudos when you get an APA scholarship and into a very elite university. But beyond that, I don't think people really mind.

I would have to agree with Ian, that if I had had to pay full fees for my PhD (even though doing it part-time as a full time paid employee), I would have thought twice about doing it. The fees being paid made this particular study far more appealing than otherwise.However, I have paid fees for all of my other tertiary qualifications including the Masters-so perhaps not.

I also believe, that once you are doing it, it really is the quality of the work that you are doing that matters and the skills and knowledge you gain while doing this. I know that my dissertation research actually really empowers me as a professional in a personal sense-it has made me far more confident in my judgement and abilities as a teacher. I also know though, that unlike Natassia, this year I had to make a decision to focus on my work (paid work) and my part time doctorate and put off any potential articles or similar-simply to create a much needed balance in my life. Luckily, I can do this without worrying too much about the publications this year as I am not expecting to move to academia when I finish. If I did want that goal and felt compelled to publish right now, I think I would really be stretching it.

The link was great Bilbo, thank you.

Sorry about that, and thanks for clarification.

I agree very much with Satchi, with one main exception. While it is true that ensuring that she has nothing to pick on might spur you on to greater heights, it might also spur you on to quite a bit of frustration and angst. This is predominantly YOUR work. You do need her help, support and advice but....

You also need to remember she is your supervisor and mentor not your employer or boss. It is a different relationship. You do need to listen to what she says and yes, sounds like her style is critical, so she is always probably going to 'default' to this critical position. It can be especially hard when you follow or respond better to a different more 'open ended' or encouraging personal model of teaching or learning.

However, there will be times when you might need to learn to ignore her politely or nod wisely and say you will look into it, and then do what you think is best anyway.

Hello, I'm not sure whether you are saying you don't have much of an idea about your selected research topic (you have a draft proposal though) or you have no idea about what to do?

I'm going for the former because you say you have drafted a research proposal and your supervisor has helped you...so you must have a general area you are researching and you must have outlined some parameters for that research in your proposal as well?

Not only that, you have a supervisor so this person might have been selected because of their knowledge in your general area of interest?

If this is the case, you need to read now all the seminal (significant) literature in your general area and try to identify any gaps in the research-they will just be little things nowadays. Once you have identified a gap (an area in the general topic that hasn't really been looked at in depth-or through a particular research philosophy or methodological 'lens' or perspective), exploring that area becomes your topic. But you sucessively narrow it down over several weeks and months of reading and exploration.

So if you were looking at the politics in a particular geographical area, over a period of time, from the perspective of say whether neo conservatism had shaped the development of local and regional goverment processes post 9/11 in Wales (just a random topic-don't expect it to make sense-just providing an example)- you would be looking at what research had already been conducted in this area and whether there was an aspect that hadn't really been explored. I've deliberately chosen the example above because for many of us, PhD topics come from quite ordinary areas of real life-that seem quite mundane but when really examined fully turn out to be more complex and rather different than our 'common sense' understanding of them leads us to believe. Don't think your topic needs to be 'earth shaking'-most of them are not.

This aspect might lead you to factors that needed to be considered that had been previously overlooked. You then might relate these factors back to a particular political theory or look at it from the perspective of various theories to see whether they shed any light on what had happened. It might be politics but would include some historiography as well.

But 'nutting' out this topic and area would probably take you three months or more, so your real research proposal and plan would form more solidly around half way into your first year perhaps. Does this make sense? Don't think that you are expected to have all of your topic sorted before you start. Part of the research journey is determining and 'nailing' down the actual topic. Hope this is helpful ? :)

Hi Derose, thanks for letting us know how it has all gone. It sounds like this was absolutely the right decision for you...nice to hear a positive end to your present postgrad journey. Good luck with job, life and future plans and goals,

P.

When you present people with news like this, you have to be very convinced in your heart that you intend to do this and go through with it. If you are, then delivering the news will not take long and needs to be done in a neutral tone.

I've found (from personal experience) that everytime I have had to do this in life when I have been totally convinced that this is what I must do for my own wellbeing, then it has taken about 10 minutes to deliver this news and people have accepted it pretty quickly (even though expressing disappointment or anger).

After I have listened to their expression of disappointment or anger-I have calmly said something like

"I'm sorry you are so (angry-disappointed-sad) but this is the right thing for me to do." sometimes Ive added something like, "is there anything I can do to make this easier for you...or are there things I need to do to make this process go smoothly"

something like that depending on what it is I am or are not doing...

People are usually disappointed and often express this verbally to you but they know in their own hearts when you really mean something and usually the conversation doesn't go on for a long time. Then you leave and go somewhere and take several deep breaths and do something like see a friend or have a coffee or something like that.

Next time you see the person, you both will have moved on and it gets easier to deal with all of the final planning-finishing up stuff.

If they say things that are unkind to you...don't take it personally, just accept that they are angry and or disappointed and this is their way of dealing with it. Just repeat that you are sorry that they feel that way but this is what you need to do for yourself.

If they say things that make you feel guilty-then don't take this on board. This is a form of manipulation and it is understandable why people use it but it is unacceptable as a reason for you to change your mind. See it as part of their anger and disappointment and ignore it -or accept it by listening but don't respond to the guilt ridden arguments-you don't have to respond to them, you have a right to ignore them.

Good luck...:).

Satchi, I am so sorry to learn about how tough it is for you at the moment. You have earned (and deserve) so much respect on this forum.

I'm not going to add to the job advice (which has been excellent) but thought that I would offer encouragement regarding your publications-which you mention (see quote below).

"I have also had trouble publishing--I need to get back to my journal manuscripts as well. It has been difficult dealing with myself because I became so depressed".

Don't let the long turn around between journal replies and the usual list of 'reject' or 'major corrections or rewrite' stop you from travelling on the publication trail. It is hard to work through depression, but I'm worried that all of the usual stuff that happens to us when we are trying to get something published, you might feel in your present state that it is because your stuff isn't good enough. Which would not be true at all-it is all just part and parcel of academic publishing.

If you can work through this and just keep polishing up one or two articles and submitting-then rewriting-you will get published. And your university affilliation is still mentioned in the bio-or byline- even if you are no longer with that university. Not that getting published is going to be the answer to everything...but it might be something that is helpful in one way or another-even if it is just reestablishing your 'voice' and presence as a writer and thinker in the public world. (Although a learning community forum is a version of a public world and you have a very strong and valued voice here).

Can I ask one other thing-which might be not possible at present-but could you move at all? You say your nearest university is an hour away and travel fare is hard to find-but is there some way you could move closer to a busier centre? Even if it took a bit of planning in terms of logistics and finances (like a few months or so).