Hi All,

I am new to both this site and research so wondered if anyone has any pearls of wisdom.

I have a job as a research assistant in psychology, of which i was offered and received funding to use it towards a PhD. Which is excellent news! But i am new to research, having taken the post to get experience, and i am feeling a bit lost about where to go from here. I have a general theme for the phd, of which my research work fits into, but i need to expand upon this greatly in order to get a phd. I don't really know where to start with everything and have been floundering because of this.

Does anybody have any good tips or words of wisdom?

there is a 'sticky' tips thread for day to day advice about doing a PhD. My advice for getting the studies structured in a way that will meet a PhD requirement would be to go and have a look at past theses - preferrably from people who have passed in your field/your department - ask your sup for past ones she recommends, but you can also look at a lot online, for free at ethos.bl.uk

Which area of psychology are you in?

Hey! I'm doing my PhD in psychology too (clinical), just near the end of second year. What kind of psych are you in? A bit more information about your situation would be helpful! Have you just started the RA post or have you been doing it for a while? Is the idea that you carry on doing the full-time post and do your PhD alongside it or will you drop to part-time? Is the funding you have received just to pay tuition fees or does it include a stipend? Sorry for so many questions- I'm in a really big psych department but I don't know anyone who's doing their PhD alongside an RA position (although I know it can be done and I think it's quite common in some fields) so I'm not quite sure how it works! Either way, you need to get a good grip of the literature around the area you are researching so I would suggest a literature review would be a good place to start. Are you using your RA job results to write your thesis on or is your thesis on a different topic? Basically you will need enough results to form about 3 results chapters/papers (although it varies from uni to uni), and on top of that will need your intro, lit review, methodology chapter, discussion chapter. I would have a chat with your supervisor about it to get an idea of how it should be structured and what you should include, because it does vary across subjects and universities. But don't worry if it takes a little time to work out exactly what you're thesis will consist of- most PhD students spend a large part of first year doing this! Good luck with it, KB