Hi all,

I was wondering if anybody could help me, I am currently in the middle of a little side project with my supervisor, where we are looking to collect some primary data through questionnaires and interviews, and then later add secondary data based on networks. If I explain a little further it might help -

So we are interviewing a selected sample of academics about their experiences in their work roles, and are looking to later add information from their personal pages on university websites about their publication history eg. how many per year, and whether they work with specific others, to see whether and where networks occur, and if the size of these networks have any correlation with some of their responses at the interview survey stage. Obviously they would be completely anonymous apart from to us as the researchers, for the purpose of adding secondary data.

Does anybody know of a study in any field that has used primary data and later added readily available data to each individual record. Are there legal data protection ramifications involved in such methodology can you think?

Any help or pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Hi!

Sounds like you have a case of PhD blues. To be honest, whilst I feel for you, many of us have gone through the same thing. I'm a second year PhD student and I felt completely helpless when I first started, and ended up changing my topic completely (from chinese-japanese multinational comparison research to expatriate-host country national relationships). Just remember you are at the beginning of a long journey. Someone once described it to me like a marathon - there are times when you are full of energy and you feel like you can crack really quickly, and other times when you get a stitch, nerves kick in, and you have to grit your teeth and power through. Sometimes I sit at my desk for two days solid and cant even bring myself to readon one article, other days I feel like i'm unstoppable.

Unfortunately whilst I don't have any solid advice to offer, all I can say is that we have all been there, and its not meant to be easy. If it was, everyone would have a PhD. There are some good books you can read that I am sure are in your university library. I'm new to the forum but it seems like a pretty friendly place!

Keep your chin up!