======= Date Modified 29 28 2009 12:28:48 =======
year one -  prelim lit rev, upgrade, field work permission etc etc...
Year two - huge fieldwork undertaking 110 interviews over 8 months. Also writing bits and bobs reading on theoretical stuff etc (not much writing though)
Year three - finsihing transcriptions up until now.

Right now I am putting together my chapter structure as a guiding light for keeping me on track but I am finding that I am cutting out many things that I had in my original plan. eg: I was using a a mixed methods design but in hindsite the quant part is so small as to be insignificant so is it worth using a a god 5000 word on justifying Mixed methods....BUT it took such a lot of work finding all the dtuff on mixed methods a decent theory to apply to my mehtod that to just strike it out with aa stroke on the keyboard seems wrong.

So out or in? Has anyone else found themsleves losing stuff that took them ages to do originally or should I keep it in and make more of the quants than there actually is to justify it? This seems to be a arecurring theme for me and I'm scared I'm going to end up practically starting from scratch with just 8 months to write up in!!!!

I went through exactly the same thing - when 3 months work becomes consigned to a footnote!

With the benefit of hindsight (re-reading my thesis in preparation for forthcoming viva) I realised in an epiphany moment that a PhD is JUST a piece of research. You simply cannot do everything in the research. It's a natural part of honing and fine-tuning that much material must be edited.

I ended up losing chapters, cutting out huge sections and completely re-thinking methodologies etc... and I still exceeded my wordcount.

Don't worry, its normal.

I understand your problem Dazednconfused. It's like I become emotionally attached to anything I write. Once I have it down on the screen, it may as well be carved in stone! I am learning to let go .... slowly. ;-)

18 months in and everything, I mean EVERY aspect of my project has changed in some way, or been scrapped. I think its the exception rather than the rule for all work to be included in the final thesis - everyone I know has had to scrap months of work somewhere along the way. If you've already written stuff up, don't delete it, definitely save it somewhere as it may well be useful at some stage. Any way of including it as an appendix or a subsection somewhere?