Dissertation Ideas
I've just done another couple of hours on the proposal for my dissertation. Having avoided doing one for my degree, this is all pretty new to me. Even the course over the summer didn't really prepare me too well for doing this. At the moment I've just re-written the literature review after seeing a slide on preparing it and realising I'd fallen into the all the "Don't do this" traps. Still, at least I realised in time and it hasn't taken too much work to get it up to a better standard.
Despite these problems I'm finding I can't wait to actually get started on the research itself. I'm looking at the needs of older users within public libraries, as I think, certainly within our own service they're a group of users who tend to get neglected, despite them being the group who use the service most frequently. There's much we can do for them, if only there was the interest. I've got the joy of questionnaires and interviews to come (I don't think I'll be able to shut most of the older people I'll be interviewing up, but I'll deal with that when we get to it!) but it's going to be quite interesting I think.
Current words completed of dissertation proposal: 1415
Current music: Belle and Sebastian: The Life Pursuit#
Current plans for dinner: Fish and Chips
posted by Si @ 5:33 pm
3 Comments:
Interesting comments Sim - very much my experience too. The gulf between the taught course (which is never THAT taxing in contrast to the lip service that was given to it) and the level at which you have to work to do the diss is considerable.
If you need any pointers on interviews, questionnaire, analysis or whatever give me a bell/email and I'll see what I can do!
Just be careful if you're planning transcription of the interviews - it takes fricking forever unless you know a good audio typist (not me). A good idea is to take notes and just use the audio file as backup. (but you've probably already thought this through and I'm teaching you to suck eggs...
Thanks for the offer of help, Gaz... I'm sure I'll be taking you up on the offer!
The tips on the interview transcription is good. I can imagine the way that that's going to be the bulk of my work trying to transcribe and analyse it all. Taking notes might just take the burden off a bit!
Transcripts are supposed to take 3 times the length of the audio for experienced people (or so my supervisor told me). Botox I say! Closer to 5 times. So suddenly 180 minutes of Focus Group recording means devoting 15 hours of transcription time minimum (plus time staring out the window naturally when you get bored).
The notes+audio back up technique served me well in a project last year - the analysis was just as valid/rich and took a fraction of the time.
Having someone else to take notes helps too - but I guess that's not a luxuary you've got this time.
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