Signs of life
Long time, no update. Over the last few months I've mostly been posting in morsla as there hasn't been much in the way of PhD-related news. I should be spending more time in PhD-mode this year, so I've started following a few more people through this journal :)
I received Ethics Committee approval for my research just before Christmas, and can now start contacting business managers to organise interview times. I'd like to get most of the businesses interviewed this year - it will give me a decent amount of data to start working with, and means that I can follow up interesting themes by re-contacting people in 2011.
Right at the moment, I'm feeling a little swamped. I've now transferred over to the Graduate School of Business and Law, as my supervisor has become the Head of School over there. I'm not actually sure when my candidature review is due, but I think it's supposed to happen some time in March. The review is a combination of report (~20 pages, including a literature review, methodology, and summary of work to date) and a presentation. Unsurprisingly, it's now become the main thing I'm working on.
Sifting through articles has become a huge task, not helped by the fact that I keep making the pile of articles bigger each time I sit down at a computer. I usually enjoy tackling lots of things at once, but I suspect it might take years to fit all the literature into my head. Time for a different approach.
The new plan is to do micro-reviews: setting aside one hour per article, with a short break between them to let me recover. I'm putting aside time for 4-5 articles each day to begin with. Once I've made some progress I'll cut this back a bit, and put the extra time into following up leads to find new material.
While reading, I'll make notes as I go: describing key points, interesting methods, background of the researchers etc. It won't be an in-depth critical analysis, but it'll be a start. If I can start breaking down the huge pile of articles into one-paragraph summaries, I'll have something to start building the chapter with. I'm a much better editor than I am a writer, and I've let the empty page intimidate me for too long.
I received Ethics Committee approval for my research just before Christmas, and can now start contacting business managers to organise interview times. I'd like to get most of the businesses interviewed this year - it will give me a decent amount of data to start working with, and means that I can follow up interesting themes by re-contacting people in 2011.
Right at the moment, I'm feeling a little swamped. I've now transferred over to the Graduate School of Business and Law, as my supervisor has become the Head of School over there. I'm not actually sure when my candidature review is due, but I think it's supposed to happen some time in March. The review is a combination of report (~20 pages, including a literature review, methodology, and summary of work to date) and a presentation. Unsurprisingly, it's now become the main thing I'm working on.
Sifting through articles has become a huge task, not helped by the fact that I keep making the pile of articles bigger each time I sit down at a computer. I usually enjoy tackling lots of things at once, but I suspect it might take years to fit all the literature into my head. Time for a different approach.
The new plan is to do micro-reviews: setting aside one hour per article, with a short break between them to let me recover. I'm putting aside time for 4-5 articles each day to begin with. Once I've made some progress I'll cut this back a bit, and put the extra time into following up leads to find new material.
While reading, I'll make notes as I go: describing key points, interesting methods, background of the researchers etc. It won't be an in-depth critical analysis, but it'll be a start. If I can start breaking down the huge pile of articles into one-paragraph summaries, I'll have something to start building the chapter with. I'm a much better editor than I am a writer, and I've let the empty page intimidate me for too long.