I am not Chinese, but most of the good friends I made when I was a student were from Taiwan and China. There are a number of factors to getting on well with people you live with, age, gender, ethnicity, abilty to show interest in others as well and off course personality and chemistry.

There is something really special about burning the midnight oil. I wrote my best undergrand and MSc pieces by working through the night. I have to say that now though, the latest I can go to is 1am in the morning! Trying to match with my partners working hours is one reason!

Hi again Saw! I often wonder how much I need to incorporate of my supervisors opinions/ideas. I think that it's important to recognise their ideas and opinions (they have expertise) but also where you can't you need to argue for this. Remember that the proposal can change anyway as your reserach unfolds and surely part of the whole process is to not be accepting of everything as a given. Our ideas and opinions need to be accounted for as well. In two or three years time we need to be able to support what we did and why.

What is it the main concern on the part of your supervisors? As pup mentioned a short piece on the history may help to back up your reasons for using mixed method research If you supervisors have expertise in a number of methods this is one thing but mixed method design is another as I am just reading about at the moment!
If time is one of their concerns you could help to assure them by giving weight to one method. Creswell's mixed method 2007 text book edition is very good for describing the different designs.

I am just going to update my diary now, to set some objectives and see if I can get some serious work done here! I have already had the tea and chocolate breaks, so no more excuses!

There is also the issue of weighting and whether qual quant is the dominant method. As you can see there are two qual stages in my proposal but perhaps the quant will end up having equal weight anyway. Other things to consider is the issue of expertise and where a person feels strongest methodologically.

I am not sure about the language but assume it has to be kept separate for the quan qual sections. Both are trying to find out different things. Good luck to us hey! Your research sounds interesting and great to have such a lot of stages. I think although a challenge it is great to get insight from both methods.

PhD is funded for 3 years and am coming towards the end of my first year. I like you am thinking about if my proposal is truly mixed or just multi-method! I am wondering if a study is only considered to be mixed if the mix is done in analyses (also not sure how this is done) or if you use one stage to inform another could it also be defined as mixed method? In a sense you are mixing by using the data analysed to inform the next stage.

Hi there Pup. Planning to use a small number of focus groups to begin with, not sure where I will be based yet. Following this to collect data using telephone interviews with a number of validated measures. Maybe to follow a sample of at least 100 participants although his number as you can imagine is only a guess and will have to check this out. Hope to finish with a final stage of interviews around about 8-12. How long did your survey take to answer and how many participants did you survey?

As a measure of appreciation it is often the case that in research participants are gifted with some small token for their time in participating in research. As PhD students our funds are limited but could anyone tell me if they have used any tokens to thank their participants or used any incentives to have participants engage in the first place.

thanks also doc2008, I am definitely interested to use this approach and hope my proposal is not too ambitious!

Thank you xConorx and Pup for your replies. I have been at the conference in Cambridge this year and found it very useful as well at the references you mention. I am concerned with write-up and bringing the results together in analyses. My thinking though at this stage is not to focus too much on the end result as see it as being one of different types of data sets each showing different perspectives.

However, even though I mention data collection write-up and analyses in my posting my main concern at the moment is timing and phases of each piece of research. I am at the stage of proposing this as a method and my plan is to be in the field for practically what would be the entire 2nd year. I was just going to post a question if this was an acceptable amount of time to be gathering data as I do understand that this is what the 2nd year entails anyway. While the third year would be data analyses and write-up in the ideal world!

- If you are not lab based or don't have to work from an office then the choice of flexibilty of when and where you want to work - which is fine is you are not a 9-5 person
- Reading and learning about a topic of your choice or even if the choice was not entirely your own, finding the elements which do interest you and building on them
- Good opportunities for training
- Your own personal challenge

Just wondering if anyone in the forum has used both qualitative and quantitative research methods in the social sciences. If yes, how did you find using both approaches in terms of data collection, analyses and write-up.

I lived in halls for my MSc and like Shani I was also lucky to share with good people as well as have good amenities and off course the bonus is no hassel with sorting out any accommodation, heating intenet etc. all sorted. If you are coming for a different country or part of the UK you will probably want to meet new people. If your chosen uni has good halls of residence and an option to live with other pg students then halls might be a good option.

When there is a big task ahead of me I often start the day filled with dread, a similar feeling to being lonely - if I am making sense. Do any of you have any tips about how to best start the day when you are filled with thoughts of "I don't think I can do this". When you go to exercise you usually have to warm up with some light exercises first! What about when going to write a piece of work, any motivational tips for getting off to a productive start? I usually start the day by reading emails, even those that I don't need to, and spend too long thinking about what I need to do.