Hey again Phdee! Just to emphasize the thing I said about learning on the job- my supervisor has just checked the first three of my qualitative interview transcripts and has supplied me with three whole pages of typed feedback on my technique lol! Very helpful I have to admit, but I am completely cringeing at some of the things I said in my interviews now lol! Oh well, I will be a better interviewer for it! Best wishes, KB

Hey Phdee, don't worry about feeling bit clueless! I didn't have a clue about how to do qualitative research until I started my PhD. In fact, my original PhD proposal was entirely quantitative, but I decided that I wanted to learn how to use qualitative methods to expand my research skills, so I added a small qualitative study to my project. I hardly learnt anything about how to do qual research in my BSc or MSc, so I also started out from scratch. I think you need to ask whether they are expecting you to do a particular type of qualitative analysis (such as grounded theory or interpretative phenomenological analysis- IPA) before you get going. I am doing IPA and managed to find an IPA conference with a beginners' workshop which I went to a few months ago- that was quite helpful. Aside from that I am really just teaching myself, using book chapters on IPA etc. I think it's the kind of thing you have to learn as you go along, hopefully with the guidance of a supervisor or someone who is experienced in whatever method you are using. I would be honest and say that although you are happy to use this kind of analysis, you really have no experience of doing it and could do with a few pointers. Better to say this now I think than to struggle on your own- and they probably won't be that surprised anyway. Good luck with it all! KB

Thanks guys! I am already going a bit mental and it's only been 6 days! Been back to have my foot re-plastered today and it will be at least two months before I can drive...I am really frustrated, I had just got going with my testing and now I'm immobile. Grrr. Not to mention all the police and insurance and personal injury claims paperwork which is arriving daily, I am so rubbish at that sort of thing- thank goodness my dad is a paperwork guru! But I had a good meeting with my sup yesterday and we have agreed things for me to work on from home, although I am finding it very hard to concentrate at the moment (which I believe a bump to the head can do to you for a while). I also feel very guilty as I have teaching commitments and was closely supervising MSc students who I should be meeting with regularly- my sup has now had to take this on until I am back, and although she has been fine about it, I know how busy she is and feel really bad. Oh well, I shall just have to save up my energy and be an awesome student on my return! Cheers for the words of encouragement and advice guys :-) KB

Am throwing several your way Cobweb...they will be delivered via Robin (robin)

Hi Nic! I'm not quite sure that my illness is along the same sort of lines as what you are talking about, but I do have chronic mental health difficulties which have caused me to drop out of uni and re-start 3 times now (I have been hositalised many times, for months at a time), all at the same uni. I have finally worked my way up to PhD level now, and am currently much better, although I know I will have periods of ill health again, and I do have ongoing memory problems following some of treatment I had for my disorder. So perhaps the challenges I face are different from yours, but it has been a long and frustrating journey for me to get to where I am, and to keep trying to function at a consistent level. The key for me has been to be completely open with my supervisor. Fortunately I work in a Psychology department, and both my supervisors are clinical psychologists, so they understand my condition well and aren't 'scared off' by it. I guess I might not have felt able to be this open if this wasn't the case. I think the key thing is for your supervisor to know how your condition affects you and your work, and also to keep in touch with them so they are up to date with your progress and are aware very early on of any difficulties you are experiencing. The other thing that helps me is to have different categories of jobs to do...I guess this depends on your disability, but for me this consists of jobs to do when I am completely well (writing papers, testing participants etc), jobs to do when I am struggling a little (entering data, transcribing etc), and jobs to do when things are a bit crappy but I need something to do (filing, photocopying testing packs etc). And the thing to bear in mind is that you need to be kind to yourself...some days maybe the PhD just isn't going to happen, but it doesn't mean you can't do it, or aren't capable of it. You will get there, and you should not believe that you will automatically have 'worse' results than your colleagues. I know of researchers who have made it big time in my field despite chronic health problems- find someone like this you admire and use them as inspiration...that's what I do! Just keep going and be kind to yourself- you will get there! Best wishes, KB

Hey Eska! It sounds as though it is the conversation with your supervisor that has brought this feeling about. Perhaps you are doing what I like to do....I systematically filter out everything positive that my supervisor has to say (and she usually is very positive) and I dwell on lots of 'negative' things, that in reality probably aren't even that negative. I love to sit down and have a good few days of 'interpreting' all of these things and deciding that I am inadequate in some way. I put a lot of emphasis on what my supervisor says, and if she is any less than praiseworthy about what I have done, I worry that she thinks badly of me and that whatever I have done is rubbish. Usually this turns out not to be the case...like us, supervisors have happy days, miserable days, pissed off days, and days where they just have a little less enthusiasm than normal, without realising that we hang onto every word they say. Normally, for me it helps to ask a bit more specifically about what the problem might be, so that I know where I have gone wrong, or gone not quite right(!), so I can set about doing something better and then move on. My supervisor has picked up on my trait of disregarding all positive feedback now and likes to tease me about only picking up on the bad stuff, so we actually have a bit of a laugh about it. Of course, I don't know that this is where your feelings are stemming from, I am just speculating on the possibilities!

Personally I would email your sup and just ask for some more feedback- what do you need to have done by your upgrade, can he see any problems with your work at the moment etc. Then you can act on these if necessary and this will hopefully boost your confidence a bit! I hope you're feeling a bit better now anyway, go and have a cookie! Cookies cheer me up. Except that now my foot is in plaster and I can't exercise I am likely to be very fat in two months time. I should probably eat fewer cookies :-(

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Hi Karl. Well this is a toughie. My PhD work is in mental health and I have also experienced severe mental health problems in the past, which has seen me spend a lot of time in hospital in the past. I have been a lot better for the last few years, and part of my motivation for what I am doing is my own mental health history and treatment etc. I am not working directly in the same area of mental health (I am working with people with a different diagnosis to mine), but some of the underlying principles I am researching are similar. In the future I hope to continue working in the area my PhD is in, but also to expand into research which is closer to my own mental health difficulties. I guess my overarching (very general) aim is to make things better for people with mental health problems, particularly with respect to care, but I am aware that I cannot just go on a crusade to 'prove' or 'shout out' the message I want people to hear from my own experiences. Whilst my experiences motivate me, I have to make sure they don't prejudice my research. So at the moment, I am concentrating just on my project so I can learn the necessary skills to earn me a career in research and think about a change in clinical population when I am more established. To make the sorts of changes I (and you) would like to bring about will take more than a single PhD project...it could take a whole career and more, so I think it is important to set yourself reasonable goals and make sure that you can take the opposing viewpoints of other people on board and concentrate on doing unbiased research. I am absolutely not suggesting that you haven't thought of this, or wouldn't be capable of it, I am just trying to look at the parallels between your situation and my own and share a few experiences and thoughts of my own. But all research starts from a small project and from someone stirring up the interest in that field, so I see no reason why you shouldn't go into that research if you want to...just be aware of the limitations of doing a PhD project- it won't change the way the world works in one swoop. Best of luck, motivation is one of the key things required for a PhD and I'm sure you will have buckets of it. KB

I think I am quite lucky because I really really love my topic (although admittedly, I don't actually shake with excitement!). I put my own project together and applied for funding for it, so I have had a lot of flexibility and control over what I wanted to do and how to do it. It also has some personal relevance to me which is a good motivator. Sometimes I get a bit bogged down in the detail and the nitty-gritty but I just take a step back and think about it and I get excited and fascinated by it all over again. I figure this will probably wear off eventually and I will no doubt be sounding less smug in another year lol! But seriously, I couldn't spend 3 or 4 years of my life doing this if I didn't love it. If I could have a career working in this area I would be absolutely thrilled... KB

Hi! I completely agree Rick, I believe that both types of research have their place, and each can answer questions that the other method would not be suitable for. I just find it astounding that people so high up in their field (one which values both quant and qual research so highly) can be so ignorant about the uses and benefits of qual research...I can understand people not liking it or not wanting to do it, but it's the fact that people find it so easy to dismiss it as a waste of time that irritates me somewhat! It's funny you should say that Emmaki, I actually find it harder to collect quant data than qual, but then my quant data isn't just questionnaire measures, I have lots of neuropsychological tasks to work through as well, which takes a lot of itme and concentration! But then it's the qual stuff that takes all the time when it comes to the analysis! Well I'm just going to do both anyway, and enjoy the best and worst of both worlds! I'm getting there with the foot and neck thanks...still painful but been to see my supervisor yesterday and have plenty of things to keep me busy whilst I am immobile! KB xxx

Ah, it's refreshing to see some positive attitudes to qualitative research on the forum. I think most of the time people with negative attitudes towards qual stuff are those who have little understanding of how rigorous qualitative analyses can be...I have to admit, a couple of years ago I thought all qual researchers did was to root through a load of interview data and find quotes to back up whatever they wanted to say! I think I'm probably in a more quantitative department, if there's such a thing, as there is a lot of cognitive research and biological psychology/psychiatry research going on here, which tends to be analysed with stats. I do like my SPSS or whatever, and am actually coming to think that stats are the easier option now I'm faced with my qual data! Then again...stats will probably never be an easy option! KB

I was chatting to an old lecturer of mine last week, who is teaching stats to undergraduates. She was talking about having to teach them qualitative research techniques, and I said I thought that was great, because when I was an undergraduate all I did was quantitative stuff (i.e. loads and loads of stats), but had little teaching, if any, on qualitative methods such as grounded theory or interpretative phenomenological analysis. When I said this to her she looked at me as though I had three heads and went on to have a rant at me about how useless qualitative research is, pointless, pathetic, a waste of time and resources etc etc. I was gobsmacked! In our field (Clinical Psychology), although quantitative research is dominant and hugely important, I thought the importance of qualitative work was finally becoming more well recognised! My own project was originally all quant, but I have since added a smallish qual study as I have come to realise that there are some aspects of human experience that simply can't be captured using numbers and stats. Have you guys also come across attitudes like this? I expect this sort of attitude from people who don't really understand qualitative research methods and the rigorous nature of these types of analyses, but not from someone in my own field! I was shocked! KB

Thanks guys! I think you are all right, I should take advantage of this time and send it writing my next paper and reading etc. I don't really have enough quantitative data to do any stats or write any results chapters or papers yet, but I am working on a second review paper, so it would be good to get that written and submitted, and start analysing the interview data I have gathered for my qualitative study. Have just spent most of the day transcribing an interview, but my head and neck are so painful it's really hard to concentrate. I truly am grateful it wasn't much worse...I only knew I was going to crash a split second before it happened, but in that split second my only thought was, 'you're a gonna'. So I will try to quit whining about a couple of broken bones and get on with things! Thank you guys, for keeping things in perspective for me :) KB

Arrrgh. I was in a really bad car accident last week and have been extremely lucky to escape with just a broken foot, a bit of shock and a lot of whiplash and head pain. But my broken foot is driving me mad. I am in plaster up to my knee, I can't drive which means I can't go out testing participants, I can't get to my office as I am currently being looked after back at my parents' house, and I'm going mad after just 4 days! My parents are driving me to uni (80 miles away) to see my supervisor tomorrow to discuss how to proceed with things...I guess I will just have to try to do some written work until I am mobile again (likely to be 2-3 months). I know I am really lucky- both cars were written off in the accident- but I am so frustrated!!! What would you get up to if you were immobile for 3 months? Any suggestions welcome! Thanks, KB.

I am sorry to hear about your experiences Jojo. I am in a large department in the UK with over 80 PhD students from all over the world, and we all get on together brilliantly. We all spend a lot of time together outside work too, there are no barriers when it comes to working or socialising together. It is great to have people from different countries and cultures working in the department, and some of my best friends here are from overseas. I know that most of these people (at least those with whom I have spoken) are very happy here, and are hoping to stay in the UK following their PhD. I am not trying to undermine your experiences at all- clearly your experience in the UK is very different from the people I know, but I certainly don't think it can be generalised to many people who are completing their studies here. I hope things become easier for you. KB

Haha, me too, completely. However I am at my parent's house tonight and they have very selfishly invited friends round so I will have to be a polite daughter and stay and chat to them and record x factor for a viewing tomorrow morning! I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I will actually be recording it but never mind...Joe to win! Definitely not Ollie! Enjoy, people! KB