For me this all links into the 'impact' debate of research. I'm in a VERY applied area and as researchers we are very much encourged to do research that will impact the industry - that's fine. But now we have consultants who work in the industry saying to academics that we need to not only research, but also then tell the consultants what our research means for them and how they should apply our findings. And for a while lots of academics have been desparately trying to do this. But now there has started to be a core of people saying "hang on a minute, as consultants, its THEIR job to 'translate' our academic research into something they can use", or at least a bit of give and take, not just us doing everything and them cashing in :-s

Anyhow, I quite agree, if you want a degree to be training for a job, then call it something else i.e, the KPMG training programme.

ok - if its YOUR thesis and they're just tagging along with what you've done then you MUST be 1st author. Make sure you are!

oh and i've found a study that explains how you can compare the organisations stats against stats for the questionanire - so I can test sampling adequacy.

Its just the actual response rate I'm confused about!

no, I spent 3 months trying to get it on a @staff type email list, but you had to put a 'business case' forward - which involved a 30 page document, meeting with senior partners, getting your department to budget it (its an F***ing email!!!) etc. and as a 'student' rather than an employee I just couldn't do it.

In the end I just emailed it to people who had been interested in previous studies and got them to forward it on. It did go out to a network of people in the oganisation, but that was to make sure I got enough of that specific sample e.g. green haired people, I still need to say it adequatly (or not) samples the WHOLE organisation - I know it adequatly samples the green haired people.

How the (sprout)(mince)(turkey) do I work out a response rate of an online survey that went out in an organisation?

I don't think I can say it went out to EVERYONE (30,000 employees) in that organisation.

I started with sending it out to 50 people say and then got it snowballed. Final sample is N=240, but I have no idea how many people SAW the questionnaire and didn't fill it out.

(please mods can we have some more smilies)

never heard of windows explorer - have you tried turning it on and off again ;-)

Drop box seems ok - I'm just putting my writing in there - which is all a bit rubbish lol I doubt anyone would want it!

i have no idea about 'ibids'??? and I would never dream of not using endnote - I wouldn't remember if I'd cited peopel before in a previous chapter or something and therefore would get confused over et als and full references.

Although I have a thesis I look at sometimes for structure tips - and I tried to find some of the references and the bloke had referenced them completely wrong, wrong date and authors etc! and he passed with no corrections so...

anyways, that isn't very helpful, sorry!

do you have your horse in london? will you bring it to a london meet? :p

I really want a horse, but I've never even ridden one haha! Actually maybe once when I was little.

surely you can't be on here if you haven't got internet explorer? or are you using some new-fangled phone gadget?

Scandalous!

sorry I'm thick, I've just joined dropbox, but I should have got someone some free space and got them to invite me - sowweeee (down) (sprout)

god I am SO slow today. I've done 1/5! :-(

I think its because degrees shouldn't necessarily be mills where students get pushed out as worker bees - they are to advance your knowledge (well originally).

I think that there just needs to be a whole new classification and a lot more vocational stuff for people who want to get away from home etc. but don't want to be writing essays and doing 'traditional' subjects.

people who use dropbox - do you pay for more storage? or just stick with the 2gb option?