Categories: phd
Date: 26 February 2009 20:38:16
Actually it might end up being chapter 5 - am having Deep Thoughts about the thesis, and about what I want in it, and I think I may end up with an extra chapter. This might mean that I end up with Word Count Issues, but I'll worry about that later.
Anyway, chapter 4 (as it currently stands) is due in on Monday, so I've bought a shedload of books home and will be working away from home tomorrow and throughout the weekend. I had a planned structure for it, with 3 sections, and knew that it was OK but that there was something not quite right about it. But as soon as I moved the middle section to the beginning it suddenly made perfect sense and seemed to flow so much more logically. I wish I'd thought to play around with the structure earlier!
Yesterday I had a cuppa with a colleague who started her PhD at the same time as me but due to having extra funding for language learning (she was working somewhere even more out-there and way-out than I was!) she's not due to finish till about 6 months after me. I always found her to be ultra-intelligent and slightly scary (although lovely), but as we talked it emerged that some of the issues I'm grappling with in the writing process are exactly the same as hers, and we both came away feeling "Phew, it's not just me!" We didn't come up with any answers, but just knowing that it isn't just me makes me feel like maybe, just maybe, I'm barking up the right tree!
One of the ethical issues we're both trying to figure out (and not getting very far with) is how to deal with the fact that the theses we're now writing are very different to what we thought they would be when we started our fieldwork. That's both the exciting thing and the problem with a 'grounded theory' approach - we both went on our fieldwork without much of a hypothesis, and just talked with people, listened and observed, and the stuff we're now writing has come out of the themes that emerged from that process. So far so good. But in order to get interviews, I had to tell the interviewees that my thesis was about X topic. Which, to be fair, it was/sort of still is. So they agreed to speak to me on the assumption that my study was about X. As it happens, I am writing more about Y, but using X as a framework through which to explore it. A number of my respondents said they wanted to see a copy of my research when it was done, and I do wonder what they'll think when they read a totally random thesis which is not at all what they thought it was about. So I need to get my ethical thinking-hat on to figure out how I explain and justify that. I'm not having agonies or guilt-ridden angst-filled histrionics or anything about it - it's just interesting that it's an aspect of doing qualitative research that I don't think I've seen particularly discussed in any of the methodology literature.