======= Date Modified 12 Sep 2012 13:30:15 =======
Hi all,

I have had a abstract accepted for a conference- I am presenting on Saturday :-(

My PhD is qualitative, taking a constructivist grounded theory approach, data is interviews, and observations..

A few worries:
This is a staunchly 'quantitative' conference, and my area is almost dominated by quanti/postivist research. I'm worried they just wont 'get' my research, and be horrified at the absence of a p-value...any way to counter this.

Also, with an audience that will be so unfamiliar with qualitative research/GT- how much background shall I go into on the approach?

Second. apart from presenting at 'work in progress' meetings at my uni, with other PhD students, this is my first ever time presenting at a 'grown up' conference, with an audience expecting to 'get' something new- some 'proper research'! Rather than the whole work in progress thing which is more about students talking through their progress etc...

I'm due to submit in January, and my sups says its great that I have this conference, and will be a good way to test the transferability of my theory- which I agree, but I'm not sure if the audience will see it that way- they'll not be interested in me 'practicing' or 'testing' my theory on them, they just want research! Not some blabbering PhD student...:$


Finally, I have 15minutes and 5 minutes for questions, and have 20 slides (including 1 reference and 1 acknowledgement)- that sound too much, but I cant seem to trim it down without loosing the thread of it. What about quotations from my participants, shall I add them to the slides (I have at the moment)???:-(

Appreciate any help (gift)

Hey there Phdee!

Well done on getting your abstract accepted! My PhD was mainly quant, but I did have one qualitative chapter that I presented at a conference in the US last year. I was using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to analyse interview data, which is similar to a thematic analysis. I just had one slide summarising the method/analysis, but many of the people at this conference would have been familiar with qualitative research. If your audience is not, it might be a good idea to explain a little and also to emphasize how rigorous and thorough the analysis is, and how qualitative studies can complement quant studies- many people who 'look down' on qual research just don't understand much about how the analysis is done or why it is useful. I wouldn't spend ages doing this though- you can always recommend a reference for people who want to know more about the process. I spent most of the allocated 20 minutes presenting and discussing the results- after all, that's what people usually want to hear about. I developed a model based on the 8 themes that resulted from my analysis, and I showed a diagram of the 8 themes and how they related to each other, and then described each theme individually. I would definitely use direct quotes from your participants- this worked really well with my presentation, and I put the quotes into context by telling the audience a bit about the participant and his/her situation (obviously keeping it all anonymous!).

I don't know whether you are a confident presenter or not, but from my experiences of presenting quant and qual work, I always find the qual stuff more enjoyable. Somehow the quotations make the research feel more real and relevant to individuals, rather than some statistical results which can sometimes seem a little far removed from the raw data. Not to say I think qual research is more important- I think both are extremely valuable- but definitely more fun to present for me!

Good luck with it! Best, KB

That's great, thanks KB. I have about 6 major themes and one core, I.e 7- but there is no way I'll be able to cover them all in sufficient detail. The problem is is that if I miss one of them, means the theory will not flow as it should...

Also, regarding the order of the findings- at the moment I have and overview listing the major themes 1-6, then each theme has its own slide with quotes and I'll talk about it. Then the final slide of the findings is the theoretical model- where all themes are related to another to form a kind of 'map/diagram'....then 2 slides for conclusions/implications...

Does that sound ok? Is that what you did?

Thanks so much for taking the time to help (up)

======= Date Modified 12 Sep 2012 18:54:52 =======
Hey Phdee!

That sounds very similar to what I did- you won't have time to describe everything in loads of detail but that's fine. I showed a table with all of the themes on at the beginning of the results section showing which themes were present in which participants' interviews (there were only 12 pcps for my qualitative study so this was quite easy to do), and then showed the diagram of how they fitted together before I described each theme in more detail. This was because my 8 themes were in 'pairs'- there were 4 pairs of themes where 1 theme reflected continuity and one theme reflected change- so it was easier to explain this at the beginning of the results section. But I did go back to the relationships between them again at the end to explain it in more detail. What you've got sounds fine :)

Enjoy! Best, KB

Edit: I should have said, within each of the 8 themes I had a number of sub themes. I mentioned these when I wrote the study up as a paper but didn't go into them in the presentation due to time constraints!