My corrections were accepted a few weeks ago and I graduate this week! It's been a long 5 years since I started the PhD and I want to say thanks to everyone on the forum, I did a lot of lurking taking in the collective wisdom and have had a lot of advice from folk which I'm very grateful for! :)

Thanks CR1980 and allyballybee. My supervisor has only said to do what is in the corrections and list it in the letter. He didn't have any more advice when I asked.

Ally - my internal supervisor was incredibly picky about stats- hence why I had such specific statistical corrections including putting a qq plot, histogram and boxplots for every test I ran into the thesis which seems very extreme and takes up a lot of space but I did it anyway!

The tests they wanted were involving repeated measures for time series analysis but a lot of my data is count data and it was impossible to get it to be normally distributed no matter what transformation I tried. So the tests I ended up with were non-parametric and I couldn't get it to fit the models they wanted, so apart from adding a ridiculous amount of graphs for 'data exploration' I've ended up with the basically the same statistics they weren't happy with in the first place! I'm just going to add explanation of the drawbacks of my approach in the discussion as you suggest!

Hello everyone. My corrections are due within the next couple of weeks and I'm getting worried about how to go about submitting them.

A lot of what they had asked me to do ended up being impossible as they wanted me to change a lot of statistics to complex ones but my data wouldn't fit the assumptions of these tests. So a big chunk of what they wanted me to do can't be done. So my first question is how do I explain this in my list of corrections?

Secondly, I asked for an extension for my corrections as I work about 60 hours a week and have in reality only had about a month all together to do my major corrections, but the internal examiner said no. So...I have done most of the structural changes, spend the majority of the time trying to do statistical tests that ended up being impossible and now have got to the point where I was meant to re-write my discussion and have no time to do so! I only have this weekend left and I need to work through my data chapters to get them smoothed out which will take all the time I have. I'll make an attempt to do what they asked for my discussion but I would have liked another 3 or 4 weekends to do it justice. So second question: am I allowed to explain that I would have done more if I could in correction document? I'm worried it will sound like I'm whinging about not getting the extra time!

I found about 80 typos in my thesis when I looked through it before the Viva, I had to submit in such a hurry it was inevitable! At the viva my examiners just said 'there are a lot of typos but we can see you have found them too (my copy was full of post-its marking out where the typos were), you know to fix them we won't mention it again. I got Major corrections but not for the typos, for stats stuff they wanted me to add. I guess some examiners might be more upset than others about typos but they can't fail you for it. I doubt there is a PhD in existence without a few typos still lurking!

I kept mine with reference lists in each chapter, in the sciences I think it's pretty common. My examiners must have been happy with it as the only comment I had was 'you have adequate and up-to-date references' and that was that. But yes check your Uni regulations in case they have specific instructions!

Hi Ally, I don't use SPSS but thanks for the recommendations. The book I have is helpful (ANOVA how to choose and contruct models for the Life Sciences) I just need to decide exactly which parts are nested within which in my data - I have a 3x3 design with 3 sites of each 'type' in 3 areas. But the areas are close and my examiners say they aren't replicates as they interact. So I can work out how to nest the 3 sites into areas, just not how to account for the similarities in area....if that makes any sense at all aha. And that is all before I start working out the temporal analysis parts (the first chapter I'm working on doesn't have temporal repeats, two of them do though and they are next on my list!).

I'm feeling a bit more positive about understanding my stats, but getting frustrated at myself for how I saved my data, it's really hard to work out where I saved what...I'm sure it made perfect sense when I was working on it every day haha.

My niece is here this week though so will just be squeezing in an hour here and there of work as we have important sigh-seeing to do!

Hello! My visitor last week took all of my time so I'm just getting back into working again now, for my next visitor to arrive tomorrow for a week...I could do without these interruptions but it's my niece this week so I have to take her around and do touristy and fun things with her so won't get much done. I think you are right ally - A lot of my data wasn't perfect for the stats tests, but my supervisors told me to go ahead because in my field it's common to use ANOVA techniques with imperfect data. My examiners did not like this, I think I'm going to go back and change most of it to non-parametric testing for the simple things. I haven't come to the adding temporal analysis part yet - I still have no idea how to do so!
RLD - My corrections state on them that I can't contact my examiners and all questions must go through my supervisors. My supervisors are just giving me general advice and not answering my specific questions. I don't think either of them understand the stats either and my main supervisor is a bit bemused by some of the corrections and suggesting I ignore bits..but I'm worried about doing that.


The book helped a little, but I really don't have a statistical mind so I still don't know how it links to my data..I'll try to keep chipping away at things but I feel out of my depth with it all. I only have about 7 days left to work on it until my holidays are gone and I'm only on point 3 of 9 in my corrections and finding it very difficult to focus.

Yay well done :)

Hi Allyballybee (I love that song!). It's not educational data, it was a science PhD it's field data but in sites which I counted as replicates but my examiners said they were not as they are part of similar systems. I need to get my head around what they are asking, but thank you for the offer, I might take you up on that next week!

Hi RLD! Have you got your corrections list yet? I hope they are all nice and clear and easy to address :)
I did nothing today at all! I went to the gym and then had such a headache the rest of the day, feeling better now it's evening but I have to go out tonight so I will start afresh in the morning! At least my new book came so I have that to look through before starting my stats stuff :)

Hi Into The Spiral, thanks for the recommendations, I use minitab, I've tried to use R many times but just could never get into the coding thing! I've never used SPSS, although I've heard good things about it, it's probably too late for me to get into it now! A lot of my corrections are to add data exploration elements and to change some stats from parametric to non-parametric as my replicates are 'pseudoreplicates', I think I am ok with that side of things. But they also asked me to add time series analysis and account for nesting which is where I'm a bit confused as that's all the details they have given and then pointed me towards a book, the book is ordered so I'm just hoping it is nice and clear when it gets here!

Hi kikothedog and chickpea, I was never actually based at my university as I was in a research institute so I'm not familiar with my uni's policy or stats department, but that is a good idea. I will ask the uni supervisor (although he is a but clueless and not great at replying to emails) but I might try to get stats-savy friends to have a look at the corrections instructions although everyone is so busy nowadays.

Hi Charliebrown, well done on submitting, when you say last April do you mean 4 months ago or a year and 4 months ago? I hadn't thought about corrections taking so long for examiners to look at! I am a bit confused and worried about what happens if your examiners aren't happy. My corrections are quite substantial and vague, all the time I'm worrying whether what I'm doing is what they actually wanted.

Hello everyone, I did my viva just before Christmas and got major corrections. I've been working full time plus training since then and really haven't had time to even think about it since. I now have some holidays from work (I'm a teacher) but a week of holiday was already eaten up with training and I have visitors for two further weeks. So I have about 15 days to get my corrections done...my deadline is mid October but I'm hoping I'll have all or almost all the work done by the time I go back to work as it's stressful enough without this hanging over me. My correction list is quite hefty, a lot of little rewrites throughout and then completely changing the majority of my stats (my internal is a keen statistician and was picky about stats whereas my supervisors had not been and never even mentioned that my stats could be done differently). I'm trying to get the corrections on my intro done and sent to my supervisor by tomorrow so that I can begin to get my head around the statistical changes, it's all fairly complicated statistical testing they want and it's really not my field.

I just wondered if anyone else is in the midst of corrections so we could encourage each other!

I've managed to waste most of today faffing so I thought it would be useful to have a way to keep myself accountable!

In the few hours left today I want to get onto at least halfway through my intro sorting the corrections.

Don't worry I think that's normal! I had my viva just before Christmas and found so many typos I was so panicked. At my viva no one even mentioned my introduction apart from - it seems you have read the relevant literature and they just said they would ignore the typos as they had seen I had found them myself. Although that was because they had some concerns about other chapters they wanted to spend a long time talking about haha!