Hi Eng28, I've been through the usual range of emotions during my part time PhD program. Had to do a total rewrite of Thesis two months before final deadline (7 years as I've done part time it whilst working) and on anti anxiety medication last three months. However viva is tomorrow and I am delighted to be able to say I suddenly feel very calm. There is nothing more I can do and the process of the program has been very rewarding, so much so that I would say it would be worthwhile whatever the outcome tomorrow.

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Hi Adamsky2012,

I started using Endnote with Word for my Masters but ended up switching to Pages. I have since evolved to Papers with Pages for the PhD.

I found Endnote became quite slow and buggy as my references library grew, but more importantly the EndNote links were often broken when sharing documents with my collaborators/supervisors. Because Papers codes are plain text they are not affected by being opened in different word processors and you can cut, paste and edit in total confidence.

Using Pages enables me to easily share very easily in a variety of formats.

The only problem I have have ever had was one particular table in a manuscript being sent for peer review which did not import well back into Pages from Word. I bought Office for Mac with a student discount for £30ish which I can use should this problem reoccur.

As mentioned below Papers on my iMac plays very nicely with that on my iPad meaning I have all my stuff everywhere.

Hope this is helpful

Dafydd

Whoknows it feels like there are several issues here. My background is qualitative recearch and i have spent the last few years looking into qualitative approaches and I think most reserchers would say the lack of statistical input is irrelevant in an interview based qual study - we are looking to robustly describe the points that are important in our sample group as a whole rather than 'prove' that this applies to everyone else who would meet the studies entry requirements. A follow on quant study based upon the themes/codes from the qual results would be needed for this 'proof'.
The sample population selected is usually defined so the study findings may be considered representative of those who would be included under our research question.
If your population is genuinely very small with your question defining them tightly as in 'What are the experiences of specialist consultant grade doctors in providing care to stroke patients at St Gregories Hospital' the same principles apply, however it is acceptable to have more limited study subjects for obvious practical reasons. You will want to acknowledge this in your discussion and reflect on its potential impact on your conclusions.
If you have multiple ’subgroups' whose results you want to consider seppertely, then each idealy needs to be large enough to reach saturation. I am interviewing two groups of patients defined by how reassured they feel after a clinical encounter and will start with analysing five transcripts from each group. Further will be added until no significant new themes emerge. I am hoping, like you that as these are patients with tightly defined characteristics that I will not have to do too many however I will not know until I get there.

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Unless for exceptional methodological reasons you should continue to collect and annalise more data until you reach saturation. Quite when this is is subjective, however broadly if you have a tightly described purpositive sample and are looking to answer a narrow question then a smaller sample may be adequate with some studies having as few as five interviews. Others have many many more. There is evidence that many PhD theses studies use inappropriate criteria to set sample sizes. More including disproportionately large samples.

The seniority of your interviewees does not change the validity or otherwise of the data from their interviews. Nor does the time for transcription or coding - Continue until saturation...

I have a bunch of references on this please PM me for more details.

As part of a series of investigations I am looking to explore differences in the lived experiences of two group of patients have had with an initial visit with a physical therapist. This is with a a view to describing differences, if any between their experiences.

By way of background we have shown that many patients who have more adverse thoughts regarding their painful condition at presentation are reassured very early starting care. Those who are not reassured have a significantly poorer prognosis.

I am looking to see if I can shed some light (develop a theory) as to why some patients are not reassured.

My question for the forum is, are there any reasons why I should use focus groups as opposed to individual interviews for this study.

Thanks

I am using apple computers (iMac at work and MacBook/iPad at home). I use Pages for word processing and Papers for my PDF library and adding citations. Papers is great as you can work with lots of sepperate docs and combine them (or cut and paste between them) and share with othes using word etc without affecting the references at all.

The only problem I have encountered has been landscape tales sometimes loosing formatting when exporting to word on occasions.

I certainly am working with sepperate documents for various bits of my Thesis and looking to combine later on.

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Faking the results of a trial to embelish a presentation or in order to have a paper accepted goes against everything the scientific method stands for. Science relies on honesty.

Your fear that you will be found out and that this may have a negative impact on your career may very well be true. I suspect others might also be very concerned with the dishonesty in its-self and the lying to others genuinely interested in the field.

Your situation of being the disempowered junior to a forceful professor pressuring you to do this must be tremendously difficult and I can quite see why you report feeling disturbed. However if you acquiesce to her you may find yourself going down a very dark path, please think very carefully before doing so.

I do not think it is common practice at all, surely if the paper is going to be accepted anyway there is no need for the fictitious data.

DianeH I was in very much the same situation as you in looking to pursue a PhD later in my career (late 40's). I had very little difficulty in finding supervisors or a validating institution once I had decided to self fund.

Not exactly what you asked. however, if your undergraduate degree is recent you may like to talk to your supervisor about possible research questions and to see if they would be interested in supervising your PhD study.

I have ended up with two main supervisors from different institutions and being validated by a third one. This is because the supervisors and I got on very well and they have skills to compliment different parts of my project and the institution is the one most local to me.

Very happy to chat if you want to send me a personal message.

Dafydd

I am about to embark on gathering 20 interviews (at about an hour each) and plan to explore this using template analysis.

From what I have found I would rather use a computer aided approach than do it by hand. My university does not provide or train in any package. Can I ask for recommendations of software that does not have too steep a learning curve and which is reasonably priced as I will be paying from my own pocket.

Thanks

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Trapped

With a sample as large as 30 transcripts of rich data you may like to consider a methodology such as Template Analysis. This appears to have advantages in being a very pragmatic approach. I take if from your first post that you are not coming at this from a particular epistemological stance.

See http://www2.hud.ac.uk/hhs/research/template_analysis/ for a solid overview of TA and some practical tips on looking at data and writing up.

Ady and Phdee many thanks for your helpful posts. This was exactly what I was looking for. I had not seen the PhD Viva website which looks nice and calm and sensible.

I am thrilled for Sneaks and her pass without corrections. However, her comment "Defo thanks Bilbo for the 'Bilbo-5' as I like to call it" is making me even keener to find out what it was that Bilbo was suggesting and hearing others comments. Can someone please pass this on.

Can I ask for help with questions that examiners are likely to ask in a viva. 'What are the weaknesses in your study' and that type of thing.

A year or so ago there was an excellent thread started I think by Bilbo and I kept meaning to take notes but of course now I can't find it.

My viva is some years away however I have my major review at the end of he month and think it will be good to start to think about a sensible defense as i go into this and a I begin to write up.

JillW. I think there are definately advantages in doing a PhD as a more mature student. Us oldies tend to have a better appreciation of time, more stamina over longer projects and a better understanding of our personal strengths and weaknesses. I am having lots of fun in my studies -much more so than when I did my undergraduate degree 30 years ago.

I would not have had the confidence to take it on had I not done well with a MSc first though.

JillW. I think there are definately advantages in doing a PhD as a more mature student. Us oldies tend to have a better appreciation of time, more stamina over longer projects and a better understanding of our personal strengths and weaknesses. I am having lots of fun in my studies -much more so than when I did my undergraduate degree 30 years ago.

I would not have had the confidence to take it on had I not done well with a MSc first though.