ah ok, so you mean an Mres, rather than an MSc in research methods?

I have no idea what the requirements are for those. What I would say is try not to be defeatist. Presumably you have put a lot of time, effort and money towards trying to get this qualification. you owe it to yourself to at least TRY and get it in.

haha I don't think so, there was a vague form I found once that was to record supervisor meetings, e.g. when they happen etc. but I don't think they are compulsary. I'm in my 3rd year now and no one has ever requested any info from me, or sup. I think my last meeting was October. I think she will start reading stuff when it looks more like a thesis. The main problem I have is that when I have ideas to progress my PhD, she doesn't know enough about what I'm doing and the literature behind it (because she hasn't read it) so she usually points me in the wrong direction, I waste months and then go and do what I wanted anyway, but with a load of delay in between - and in the mean time all my potential participants I had lined up have all gone :-s

I have now been given a 2nd supervisor though (I used to have a different one, who I didn't even know and he was never at uni), so I might start CCing him on the emails when I send writing across. hmm.

my sups feedback is non-existant. After writing 40k + words over last summer, I sent it along, feeling quite smug, and then about 3 months later I said, did you have a chance to read it? and she said "oh I had a flick through a few pages and it looks really good, I will read it through properly at some point" and of course she has NEVER read it, I don't think she ever even flicked through it. So ALL SUMMER wasted! and I am left dreading the day when she ACTUALLY reads something I write and she decides that my writing is not 'good' at all and is in fact a load of tosh!

You haven't said what kind of masters, do you mean a research masters? and in what area? A masters dissertation usually takes about 3 months to do in total. To re-write 2 months should be plenty. some people on my course did it in 2 weeks! - but they weren't very good with deadlines so had to rush a bit. I would say its perfectly feasible.

coffee, but not too much! and breathe.

**sneaks is very jealous and is no where near 'penultimate draft' stage :-( **

Hi satchi,

If it were me, I would probably play around with it - putting both highly correlated variables in and seeing what happened! - you just have to be careful about interpreting the results (as I say you might miss a potentially significant effec).

If I were you I would use a hierarchical regresion (the one with the different blocks) but use the 'entry' method - found on a drop down menu in the regression dialogue box if using SPSS. Usually you would put things you want to control for in the higher boxes, so often Block 1: Demographics (age, gender etc.) Block 2: variable(s) that the literature already says should be significant Block 3: My variables that I want to see, when controlling for e.g. age and variable x whether they are significant.

Don't use 'stepwise' methods - they are rubbish, the entry method is usually the best - see Andy Field for an explanation on the different types.

So if you have a multicollinearity issue you could put one of those variables in a separate block, after the other variable and see if it comes out significant, and then swap them around, so it comes in the block before and see if it changes - then you can establish if there is a significant effect, when controlling for the other variable.

if variables are highly correlated, when put into a regression they will often use up similar variance.

So variable x and variable y could be put into a regression and only variable x comes out as significant, BUT it could be that variable y would be significant, but its not because variable x is 'eating up' all the variance, because they are correlated.

So when variables are highly correlated you can sometimes miss a significant effect, because the other variable steals the variance - let me know if that doesn't make sense!

my 60+ year old parents rang me last week to say that they had seen avatar - I haven't seen it yet, they are more trendy than me :-(

hmm, I do consultancy research for about £200 a day, but not much, so I only get about 10 days max per year (I work too fast - rubbish!) So I think if I was slower they would probably put my rate down a bit, because they wouldn't want to pay that much out if you know what I mean. I know that if you are an MSc graduate doing the same thing you get about £80 per day if that helps. Definitely not in history though - much more 'businessy' so not sure if you would get less in history because its not so 'alan sugar' if you get what I mean.

I am constantly questionning my PhD - I will obviously finish it now, but realistically I love animals and would have/should have done vetinary training. But now I am 25, and have no experience of work, debt from my undergrad and not enough cash to go back and do ANOTHER 7 years training. I feel like my life is a complete compromise and I really don't enjoy my subject area. I just wish I could turn back time and do what I wanted, rather than be influenced by people saying "oh, why would you want to do that?". When I do have my PhD it will add little to my employability and I will probably go into a similar job or worse than most graduates. I don't really know how to change this, I could retrain and do a masters to convert my qualifications to look at animal psychology, but that would mean another year of training and moving to the only uni that offers it. Hmph :-(

ok, I have done

prepare for tomorrow lecture
- check something for a student
- phone the plasterer for my house!

da daaa, notice not writing though, so really need to do that!

I'm so jealous yellowtreble :-( I have so much to do. I have been absorbed in practical work recently which my sup just doesn't value because for her it doesn't have any 'real' output, so although its necessary, it comes across like I haven't been doing anything because I haven't produced the all important WRITING. SO she has demanded writing, of which I have none, I only have today to put something together out of some old stuff, and then possibly the weekend. TBH I don't see the point in rushing the writing because it will be 3 days work to produce somethng that is rushed, and not going to be in the final thesis. Anyways, today....

- prepare for tomorrow lecture
- check something for a student
- phone the plasterer for my house!
- plan out what I want to write about and where
- get on with writing.

r squared gives you the proportion of variance explained by the model.

Adjusted r squared gives you the proportion of variance explained by the model - WHEN APPLYING IT TO THE WHOLE POPULATION (rather than just the sample). So if your r squared and adjusted r squared are close, it means the model predicts very closely what would happen in the population rather than just the sample you used.

I wouldn't exclude variables because of multicollinearity, just be careful about your interpretation because of potential suppression effects and stick them in a hierarchical regression if necessary.

I think you can use it with other program - definitely with the other office programs and I think you can make PDFs etc. I use it a lot for screen prints e.g. a scentance from a book in google books, which i paste into my 'discussion' note page.

I use it with both comments I type AND hand written notes I put in later. You do have to use it as your source for everything - well in my case, so its all in one place!

I don't know why you would have to buy it though, it should have already come with your office package? - have a check in your start menu program list.

I have a meeting today and therefore will spend most of the day travelling there and back. My throat has started to go mental - think its a nasty illness, which is typical as I have a full day of lecturing on thursday and 4 hours on Friday - can't wait to croak my way through that! My Aims for today

- walk the dog
- sort out my bag
- prepare for lectures
- go to meeting
- 1 qualitative analysis section