Epiphany
The trick is to find a useful approach I guess...
I sought some advice on revising my journal article on information system security based on the Reviewer's advice on the assumption that the whole process would be fairly straightforward. I was wrong. I thought I was on top of it when I went to my meeting to discuss how I could incorporate the Reviewer's comments, but I was mistaken. I found the whole process disheartening and am having trouble understanding exactly how I can incorporate my advisor's comments. However, I'm working on finding a way through and think I can see a glimmer of light. I'll get back to the article tomorrow.
I also sought some advice from my Supervisors about my project design, to be met by a barrage of new criticism and no feed back about whether I was on the right track or not. After a flurry of email to each of them respectively I was none the wiser and feeling really thick! It seemed to me that there was a lot I didnt understand, both about writing journal articles and research design. It seemed that maybe I was just to damned thick to be a PhD candidate at all :/
I stopped for lunch, grizzled to a colleague while feeling sooooo sorry for myself and then she asked whether I had a flow chart plan? It was just the thing I needed. I went back to my desk and began to chart my project. I also summarised the principles of the legislation upon which I want to base my survey. The chart clarified a whole range of superfluous and/or confusing material in my research proposal. I sent the documents to my Supervisors saying that I wasn't certain whether my communication skills or conceptual skills were the problem with the project design and that I hoped the flow chart would clarify things. I also said I was finding this process useful and looking forward to their feedback. Because I had taken a positive action I felt better almost immediately- I suppose it's all in one's attitude really. Some comments have already arrived and I have a meeting with both of them on Friday to go through the proposal in more detail... yay !
And following on from that positive note, I have been invited to join the Dean and other academic staff for the annual
Australian Society for Medical Research Dinner on the 10 June. Apparently I was nominated by my Head of School. I feel really honoured and excited about this privilege
Our research group was covered in the
Next section of
the Age today. There's a
public demonstration of the project scheduled for Thursday, so its all pretty full on.
A methodology overhaul and a publication :)
Well the review last week was OK- I needed to re-think my research setting a bit and I also need to work on a means to emphasise the fact that I am looking at new, mobile technologies without an exclusive focus on it.
My methodology and theoretical perspective have changed too. The methodology is now a case study over several sites where I will survey specific groups of workers. I began re-drafting my methodology document last week and have summarised the approach, although I am not satisfied with it yet. Stage 1 is very clear though and so I need to decide whether to submit a separate ethics submission for the pilot work right now so I can get started on some forms of data collection.
Stage 3 is fairly straightforward too, but Stage 2 is proving to be a bit vexing. My supervisors have suggested I devise my information system model before surveying health professionals in order to slot their responses into the model, rather than devising a model from their responses. They feel this approach would be more "hands off" and would limit any bias I may have in collecting and analysing the data. I think they are probably correct, but I'm worried it won't be easy and will delay my submission for ethics approval exponentially. As it stands I need to allow a couple of months for ethics before I start collecting data. Actually, as I am typing, I think I have decided that I do need to get started on ethics approval for the pilot survey and so I'll follow this up today via email.
Other matters I need to think over are my approaches to ontology, epistemology and axiom- certainly the qualitative elements of project are to some extent subjective but if I base my survey on the model, then one can argue it is drawn from an objective source to limit my subjectivity.
Also, I got great news last week-
The Journal on Information Technology in Healthcare (JITH) want to publish my article on information system security, though they have suggested a couple of amendments :)
Candidature confirmed :)
When I checked the letterbox on arriving at home I found correspondence from the Uni confirming my candidature, though the end date (February 2007) confuses me a little - its much later than I expected. My confusion stems from the fact that my scholarships went for the term of the PhD I thought, although I am sure it's simply 3 years rather than based on completion dates the more I think about it, so it will finish in 2005. Nevertheless, I will check my paperwork at some stage to make sure it doesn't go until February 2007, although I would adore the flexibility that would afford.
Just came home from such a screw up of a day, and yet I achieved so much. Went to work as usual and thought I had a meeting off campus at 11. When I got there it was clear something was wrong and I discovered it was actually scheduled for 1.00 pm. I had some work with me and so I sat outside in the sun for 2 delicious hours and worked on my questionnaire. It seemed to me that I needed to devise 2 surveys. One for health professionals and another for health IT/IS staff. I jotted down some questions and thoughts about my methodology and read a journal article that was interesting in its approach, though the value of the work was pretty much nil (how does that stuff get published I wonder?). I had a really good creative session and have come away with heaps of solid stuff.
Afterwards I went to the meeting, which turned out not to be a meeting but was in fact a very dull presentation. Had I known this, I wouldn't have attended at all. However as I was leaving I got talking to an academic whose speciality is research design. When I explained to her that I needed to do 2 surveys, 1 to make sense of the other, she put a name to it - I need to do a pilot survey to prepare for my research. I have always known about pilot surveys for testing survey tools but wasn't aware of people using them in this way. This has all fuelled futher refinements to my methodology.
It has been a totally disorganised but productive and creative day... I have to say I enjoyed the cafe style approach to survey design that I employed today... will try it again on some other gorgeous day.
I am feeling really pleased that the work seems to be shaping up. I will discuss it with my supervisors next week at my School PhD review.
Lunch with Mavis tomorrow :)
Update
Well I have heaps of meetings this week and some training sessions organised as well. The program for training on Wednesday is looking at software packages for statistics, which should be pretty interesting. I did some training last week too, looking at creating pdf tags for preparing useable documents to an W3C standard- was quite useful.
Scerh tomorrow for most of the day- 11 till 4.
Friday's training session is about choosing the right methodology for your research, which I am looking forward to as I finished drafting my methodology last week. I'll send a copy of the draft off to the
Centre for the PhD review next week later on today. I also had to send a copy of my submission for confirmation of candidature off to the faculty today as they'd received everything but that from my faculty-panel.
I started work on my questionnaire last week, although there is a long way to go. I've decided I'll work on developing questions before I decide on which of the questions are relevant to particular groups of participants. I think I will also need to decide how best to structure the survey for data to emerge. Also, although my data collection preference is for focus groups initially, I doubt that will work with some of my target participants and so I will be stuck with individual interviews- in the long term that may actually help in terms of quality of data, so it's all a bit of a mixed blessing really.
I will start work on the ethics manuscript today and hopefully by the end of the week will have finalised that and my draft
questionnaire. if I get a draft of the questionnaire done, I'll send it to the my supervisors for the review next week to accompany my methodology document for them to critique. I will feel so much more together when I'm working with a methodology and questionnaire... The entire research will more focus then and I'll feel like I am working with an aim.
This morning has been wasted setting up anti-virus software and now I am about to do the whole Microsoft update thing... but it must be done *shrug*
