hello everyone, thank you all for your replies. I am a full-time PhD student. My supervisor doesn't really give advice or input at all. He just leaves everything up to me. That is why I feel like changing it to something that I'd feel I have more of a handle on. I'm only starting to collect data, however I fear it is going in the wrong direction. ... it is quite tricky

Ok thank you for your response, i hope to hear more comments from others!

I'm within the social sciences but I am happy to hear all perspectives.

Best wishes

Hello....

I have been working on my PhD for about 1.5 years now... I think I need to change my topic. I'd like to know how many of you have changed your PhD subject? How long had you been working on your original idea? Did you drastically change the topic?

Great!! thank you so much :)

======= Date Modified 27 Apr 2012 07:49:39 =======

Hello everyone,

We would like two minutes of your precious time to check out this survey and fill it out, especially if you are a facebook/twitter/google+ user. It is very simple and will take two minutes and trust me its fun to do and not like those boring questionnaires :)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFM4Q0NaU0VsTWl4T1MtZ2wzbVF3TVE6MQ

Please also forward to others.

Thanks

======= Date Modified 25 Apr 2012 11:46:01 =======
Hello,

I am trying very hard to create good visuals for my research. I have come across some nice tools outside of the normal Microsoft functions.

Get some inspiration from here: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/
I also like this example http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/the-varieties-of-intimate-relationship/

Google docs: I have thus far used the drawing function and spreadsheet function - both very useful and a good way to safely store your data and access it anywhere with an internet connection.

And if you want to make a good Mind map, here is a good free software available for download:
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Download

Hope these help...

But for those who have other suggestions, please add them in this thread, it'll be very useful. OH! And if you like these suggestions, please just give a quick smiley as a response then I'll know to keep adding suggestions when I come across something.

:-)

Hello everyone,

I just wanted to share something for those of you who are trying to come up with good ways of organizing your thoughts, notes, references, links, ect.

1. www.evernote.com is great in that you can create separate stacks for separate topics and tags as well. You can add references, notes, your writings, as well as add attachments like pdfs that you may want to refer back to over the span of your research endeavors.

2. www.delicious.com - here you can add all of your bookmarks and organize them. This is nice because you can access them from any computer/mobile device that has the internet. You can create stacks and tags as well. But note: please be aware of the fact that your stacks may be public unless you choose to make them private. You can make some public and others private. The other fun thing about this is that you can see the number of other individuals who have bookmarked those links that you have saved too. You can then visit their stacks and see what other useful links they might have related to your interests.