Hi all, I've come across this old thread and really interested to hear people's thoughts on it. I'm not faced with this situation myself (not now anyway), and am not sure what I'd do if I were. On one hand it seems OK, as justified by the above posters. But in the light of lots of recent talk about p-hacking, especially in the field of psychology, I wondered what others thought. Would you do it? Is p-hacking talked about at your uni?

Congratulations!!!

This feels familiar... I am sure I once advised this before and then pm133 came on and advised otherwise! I agree that there is no need to tell. In my situation, I did it because I had known the potential supervisor for a couple of years and I wanted to tell her rather than she hear it on the vine and be surprised or whatever (academia is a very small world). It didn't risk my PhD position but I can see how it might be something you'd want to consider.

Personally I would tell him of my plans. Tell him that your project with him is your first priority and choice (if it is), but that you also will be applying elsewhere to increase your chances of getting funding. He should understand.

Yeh, just ask them.

You can ask at the institution you've applied at how many ESRC applications on that pathway they normally get, and how many they normally award.

Just goes to show how different people read things differently - nothing about this poster's post irks me in the slightest! But then I do know several in our department without a PhD, including the director of undergraduate studies!

I don't think the additional masters would make you more competitive. But if you're applying for multiple funding options and some of them include the Masters year, then the MRes is definitely a good primer for doing the PhD, if you feel you want or could do with that.

Hi, Is he asking you to ask him critical questions? Or raising critical points/questions in your lit review?

If it is the former I can see how this is stressful. If you try to force yourself to think of some questions, you'll probably just get stressed! If you are reviewing the literature and writing, questions/issues will just emerge. It may be that you have come across some "issues" that you could bring up to discuss. It may not be that you need to actually be asking questions in the interrogative form. Does that make sense? For example, (depending on your field and topic) maybe you have reviewed some studies and found some conflicting results - they found X, they didn't, or they found Y. This could be something to discuss... as it makes you want to ask why there seems to be this discrepancy. And out of that, your own project could be developed more.

Personally, I don't find it helpful when I'm told to bring a certain type of questions to a supervision meeting... real questions emerge as you go along. Trying to think of some just to please someone is annoying and stressful. I once said in a supervision meeting, "I don't have any questions at this stage - I'm sure they'll emerge later". And sure enough, they have.

Hope this helps.

I'm in a completely different field, but a rule of thumb I use in all my review writing is to bring in the critique if it is pertinent, e.g., something that affects the interpretation of the results, and perhaps something that you yourself will bear in mind/address/do better.

This seems more a commercial survey than one that is part of academic research.

Good that you can do that. I wish there was pre-reading for mine/I was allowed to set some. I might ask the course leader if she/I can. It sounds like more work for the students at first glance, but in reality it would help them so much.

I like the idea of that. I get given the sheets and there isn't much flexibility (or so it seems). And the students often find it totally overwhelming because they haven't prepared for it, as they themselves didn't know what it would be about. Poor guys!

Does anyone else find it challenging delivering tutorials that someone else has prepared? Especially when there are seemingly objective questions with (presumably) right/wrong answers and you can't be sure about them in the same way as if you'd come up with them yourself. Or maybe it's just me. On the plus side, it is great not to have to spend time preparing them. But I seem to spend more time preparing for them than if I were actually being paid for preparing and doing it from scratch!

This is useful to know. I'm now working with children and nurseries but it still applies.