======= Date Modified 14 07 2009 13:07:44 =======

Hello dear forum people!

Was wondering if you could help me with some brainstorming as to how to get focus into my research project. Although I'm not having problems with motivation, it seems to me that I'm getting lost in reading and my focus is getting blurrier rather than sharpening. I'm getting somewhat panicky as time is passing and I feel that I should have achieved more (immediately useful things) than I think I have.


To my background:
- I'm about 14 months into my social sciences PhD but would say that 6 months of that was spent working on a different project (finishing something from my time as an RA at the same dept)

- I've got a background both in sociology (where I had always a liking for both statistics and theory) and in (continental) philosophy

- I'm based in a European country (not UK), without almost any externally imposed deadlines or requirements, e.g. no upgrade reports or any of these rituals, so an institutional structure to the PhD process is (sadly) almost missing


What I've done so far:

- 8000 words literature review on methodological issues, which at this point however seems more or less obsolete, or not immediately relevant
- 6000 words reviewing literature on a few very general aspects of the research topic, but I feel it's not sufficiently deep nor broad coverage of the literature.
(-submitted journal article for this other project from RA times)
(-prepared paper for conference only tangentially related to PhD topic)

My dilemma: I don't quite know what to do next and feel I badly need to get some focus into my PhD.
- I feel my literature review is too vague to help me establish the conceptual framework and the more precise focus for the research problem -- so at the moment I'm stuck in the hermeneutic circle: in order to write a better literature review I should be more focused, but in order to be more focused, I need to get my ideas in order via the literature review.
- In the same way, I'm torn between trying to continue to read/write or start with finding out what kind of (quantitative) data is available (for secondary analysis) -- but I think that when I'm not sure what exactly I'm looking for and have my conceptual framework in order, this won't help too much.

What I think I might do next:
- stop writing the lit rev and instead go back to the provisional research proposal (with which I started the PhD) and take a month to re-write it, also trying to come up with a chapter outline. Discuss this with supervisor.
- look at some data for a preliminary exploration of how the general idea can be operationalized

Question:
- what do you think would be the wisest thing to do next? My supervisor is helpful but somehow leaving it to my judgment most of the time how to do things, which then again isn't always helpful.

Sorry for this long litany :$

======= Date Modified 14 Jan 2009 12:59:14 =======
Argh, don't know why there's no breaks in between paragraphs, somehow they disappeared after I posted the text!?! Thanks to everyone who's still willing to read the babbling :$

Do you have any idea what kind of data you might use? I found that looking at the realistic possibilities wrt data necessarily focussed my research question - i.e. I had to be able to answer it with data I could actually get. So time spent looking at data options might help, espeically as it's something different to what you've been doing.

My starting point is theoretical framework. Until you know what you believe, how you think etc, how can you frame your research. This give a lens through which to see your research questions.

thanks for your responses!
I think I'm quite clear about the theoretical framework, but my problem is to narrow down the research problem and operationalize better -- and it seems to me that I need to have a bit more focused idea about the research problem before any further reading and literature reviewing will be actually useful.

I think you're right, Smilodon, I will have a closer look at some available data and see if that gives me some clues as to which limits to draw. Just agreed with my supervisor a deadline to re-write my research proposal, hope that will also help give me focus and clarify the next steps..

Thanks all for your input and helpful thoughts!

======= Date Modified 16 Jan 2009 10:20:26 =======
============= Edited by a Moderator =============
FREE WRITE! I FIND IT VERY HELPFUL. WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN POSSIBLE ABOUT WHAT IT IS YOU WANT TO RESEARCH. JUST GET IT ALL OUT. TRY NOT TO FOCUS ON SCHOLARLY LANGUAGE OUR PROSE, JUST WRITE IT JARGON FREE IF POSSIBLE. DO THAT FOR ABOUT A WEEK OR TWO, EVERYDAY TWENTY MINUTES MAX. AFTER YOUR TIME IS UP READ THROUGH YOUR FREE WRITES, WHAT THEMES AND OR QUESTIONS DO YOU SEEM TO GRAVITATE TOWARDS...WHAT ARE YOU WRITING ABOU THE MOST. ASK YOURSELF WHY AND POOF YOU GOT IT! HOPE THAT WORKS...

2 b frankly, I wonder how people survive 6 years doing this research. I am left with a year and half to go, already felt half dead. I am suffocating. Good thing is I managed to squeeze 2 months break, hehehe;)). Should be back to strive like mad… to complete my research on time. Good luck 2 all of us.

2 b frankly, I wonder how people survive 6 years doing this research. I am left with a year and half to go, already felt half dead. I am suffocating. Good thing is I managed to squeeze 2 months break, hehehe;)). Should be back to strive like mad… to complete my research on time. Good luck 2 all of us.