Paralysis by Analysis

I have had my head underwater for the past 2 weeks and although my ears are blocked now, it has all been worth it. It all started with a casual tweet from  @lindathestar about the reflective and meditative value of lap swimming at the local pool. I was keen to work through the Christmas break and I was disappointed to find myself stuck in data analysis – this really interfered with my plans and expectations!  At first, there was nothing meditative about swimming laps at the pool, with the pool full of families on public holidays, and then a few days of oppressive hot weather. Linda pointed out that one of the big challenges of lap swimming is remembering the brilliant ideas that are sure to emerge whilst your head is underwater and there are no writing implements nearby. 

I have been immersed in data analysis over the past few weeks and at the start it was enjoyable to read through all the interviews and remember all the different issues that were raised. I also pondered over the questions that I asked, the order of the questions and how they have changed slightly with each interview. Over the past year, I completed interviews with 35 social workers and whilst I found transcribing each of the interviews to be irritating and challenging, I have also struggled to make sense of what it all means. I collated the transcripts and found a tidy 217 pages and 220,000 words. But how do I work out what I have found and how do I pull this into a PhD thesis and what if my findings are not original or significant enough?

 I started to use Nvivo for coding the data, but I seemed to just get lost and go around in circles. It was too big, too much and I found myself in ‘paralysis by analysis’.  My supervisors were encouraging and helpful and suggested the old fashioned paper, pen and scissors method, and a few big sheets of paper to draw it all together.  I am mesmerised by shiny electronic objects, and I had been looking for an app or software program to help me, but in the end I found the textas and butchers paper worked best for me. 

Once I worked out the themes and key ideas, I was able to go back to Nvivo and code the transcripts to the themes. This worked, and gradually the picture began to take shape. The writing is flowing again and whilst I am still moving things around, I feel confident that the worst of it is past me. Phew.

What are your thoughts – is the worst really behind me and it will be all downhill from here? What do I need to keep an eye out for? Do you have any tips about what the next hurdle will be?

 

Image: Swim

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/32203577/

 

Critical reflection: reflecting on learning to be reflective

I’ve recently had an article published in the Reflective Practice journal, and it’s very exciting, well it is for me anyway. This will be one of the articles for my PhD by publication. While the article is embargoed and I can’t post the actual article here, I can share the abstract and tell you where to find it.  Of course, if you are interested in more information about critical reflection, or to collaborate  – please contact me.  The article is called, ‘ Critical reflection: reflecting on learning to be reflective’ and is available here.   Anyway, please check it out and let me know what you think.

Abstract

In this paper, I explore reflective practice literature and the elements of critical reflection, and I reflect on my experiences of learning and using a critical reflection approach to better understand a significant incident. This reflective paper is written from my personal perspective as a social worker using Fook and Gardner’s model of critical reflection to provide a framework to reflect, explore and learn from my own experiences. The Fook and Gardner approach to critical reflection encourages deconstruction and analysis of a personal or professional experience to understand the different assumptions, relationships and influences embedded within it and how it affects our practice. As new understandings emerge, the individual is able to reconstruct this incident and develop new techniques to deal with a similar incident in the future.

Wordle of my draft thesis

As previously mentioned, I like using wordle to distill my thoughts and I find that it gives wonderful insight into the words that I am using.   When I am bored  and procrastinating, as all good PhD students are at some stage, I drop the text of my thesis into wordle to see how it looks. Imagine my surprise when this one popped out. What does it mean?  Does anyone else use Wordle? If so, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Using wordle to distill thoughts

I am a big fan of using  wordle as a tool for trying to sift through all of the things that I have been thinking about and to see the key words. I think it is useful during data analysis to identify themes and I drop the text of my thesis into wordle regularly to see the themes that emerge from my writing. It is interesting how this has changed over time.

When I completed my research proposal in August 2009, this is what the wordle cloud looked like:

 

‘Turbocharge your writing’ workshop

Last week I attended a workshop at LTU called  ‘Turbocharge your writing’.  I had to really think about whether to attend or not, because I am in a good writing space at the moment, and I wasn’t sure if it would be a good investment of my time.  But I am glad that I did.

There were some good suggestions in the workshop – like  setting deadlines and priorities for writing because things with deadlines seem to be completed, but things without deadlines can hang around forever.  The most challenging idea for me was to write for only 45 - 120 minutes each day, starting at 9am each day. Writing is defined as ‘new words on the page’ and doesn’t include editing, referencing, formatting, email or facebook. I struggled with this idea because I really can’t understand how I will get anything substantial written in such a short time each day, and I wondered if I should tamper with what is working for me at the moment, with the chance that it will turn out to be better. But what if it turns out worse and I lose my momentum? After pondering this over the weekend, I decided I will give it a try for 2 months and see how it goes.

Has anyone else attended this workshop before?  When do you do your best writing and does this type of structure work for you?

Shall we dance? Learning to tame Mendeley

I have heard from a few people about how amazing Mendeley  is, and this week I decided to give it a go. I wanted to give it a proper chance, not just download it and get frustrated if I couldn’t quickly work out how to use it.

I have been surprised at how easy it was to get started. I rely on Endnote for referencing and producing my reference list in perfect APA 6 style and I haven’t been disappointed. But there has been a gap.  I am writing at the moment (my thesis and a couple of journal articles) and although I can remember that I have seen something about this topic, I can’t remember when and by whom.  I have resorted to Google Scholar to try to search for the quote or the topic, but it is very time consuming and that is when a friend suggested Mendeley.

I have only just started using Mendeley, and I am sure that we will soon be friends. So far, there are a few features that I love, and a few that are irritating. I uploaded all of my references into Mendeley and that was easy, but I found that many of them needed manual corrections to the author, title or date. Annoying, but should be fine now that it has been corrected.

The feature that I have found the most useful is the search function. While it doesn’t seem to work within the pdf file (not sure why – it could be me), it is fantastic to do a keyword search across all of the pdf files and identify the journal articles that relate to this topic. Amazing.

I will keep going with Mendeley and like most of the tools that are designed to make my life easier, I am sure that it will get easier over time. Any hints, suggestions or reviews are welcomed. Do you Mendeley?

PhD by publication

Rather than follow the traditional path, I have decided to approach my PhD as a PhD by Publication.  This means that my thesis includes several published journal articles as chapters that are already in the public domain, and a smaller thesis.    Although there have been times when I think that there must be an easier way, I am happy with this decision. For one thing, it means that I can break my writing into chunks and when I get bored working on one section, I can work on a different bit.  But sometimes it feels like it is all happening at once.

There are no definite requirements for how many words should be in a PhD by Publication at my University. Which is good and bad.  It’s bad because I can’t see what it is supposed to look like, but it is good because I have a lot of freedom about to approach it.   I am working on 4 or 5 journal articles at around 5,000 words, and an Introduction Chapter, Literature Review, Methodology Chapter and the final bit will be an integrating theory and practice chapter or journal article – I’m not sure which.

If you have experience with a PhD by publication, I’d love to hear from you.  Here is my progress so far:

Exploring reflective practice with social workers

After I completed my social work degree in 2001, I busied myself finding a job that was interesting, satisfying and enjoyable. I was surprised to realise that I missed academic study and I enrolled in several post-graduate certificates and diplomas to explore specialist areas of social work practice. I noticed a professional development workshop that was delivered locally and I was interested in finding out more about reflective practice.

In 2004, I enrolled in a two-day Critical Reflection workshop at the Centre
for Professional Development, La Trobe University, Bendigo. I enjoyed the workshop immensely and fortunately there were other students
interested in a Masters program and in 2007; I completed a Master of
Professional Practice (Development) at La Trobe University, Bendigo.  I find myself fascinated with critical reflection, and this ignited a passion in me to understand and explore critical reflection and  to pursue an academic pathway to  keep the messages about critical reflection alive.

I enrolled in a PhD in 2008 and plodded along part-time for a couple of years, before accepting a full-time scholarship in early 2011.  My research is titled ‘Exploring reflective practice with social workers’ and I have outlined my research plan and I will update my progress and reflections along the way.

Does having a PhD help you at a Trivia night?

I went to a Trivia night recently with some colleagues at the University. I used to love Trivia nights but I haven’t been to one for a long time. They are different these days, with powerpoint slide shows and projectors, and last night I realised that I am different too. There were six rounds of questions and we did well for the first two rounds – the general knowledge questions. We knew the chemical symbol for gold (it’s au in case you were wondering), the two highest grossing movies of all time (Titanic and Avatar) and we knew the names of all of the characters marooned on Gilligan’s Island. We did particularly well in the third round when we had to identify international architecture, and as a table we chatted about the conferences that we had attended all over the world. But then things got harder and I realised that while I have focussed all of my attention on my PhD research topic the rest of the world has gone on without me. We were stumped in the sports section. We couldn’t remember who won the 2010 Women’s Singles Title at the Australian Open (has it really been eight months since Kim Clijsters took home the trophy), or the name of the person who won the Australian Ironman Championship six times (I will save you the trouble of Googling it – it’s Trevor Hendy). We stumbled in the section where we had to identify cartoon characters – who has time to watch TV when you are busy writing a PhD? There are cartoons on TV that I haven’t heard of and some of them have been on TV for several years. But the section where we failed in the most spectacular fashion was the flags section – we couldn’t remember if the stripes on the French flag were horizontal or vertical, and which country had the red stripe over white and which one has the white stripe over red. Actually, I still don’t think I can explain the answers to that one. As I drove home and contemplated our performance at the trivia night it occurred to me that as much as I have loved reading in the past, I don’t have time for it anymore. Pre-Phd, I had one or two novels on the go at all times. I loved to read all kinds of books or to curl up on the couch with the newspaper on a rainy Saturday afternoon. But today, I can’t even remember a time when I did more than glance at the front page and the employment section of the newspaper. I think I am craving a trashy novel. It’s hard as a PhD student to contemplate using precious and valuable time to read something other than a journal article or text book, but I think that is exactly what I need to do. Maybe, I will even watch TV! While I am absorbed in PhD research I am immersed in a place that is privileged and sheltered from the realities of what is happening in the rest of the world. And maybe, from time to time, we should come up for air and check out what is happening in the rest of the world. Read a trashy novel, see a tacky movie at the cinema or watch a re-run of a long-forgotten comedy on TV. Because while I have spent months reading, thinking and writing about qualitative research methodological approaches that have epistemological credibility, it is unlikely that there will be any questions about that at your nearest trivia night.

Hello world

I have finally managed to move my blog from Helen’s reflections   to this new site and I am excited to launch Curious Reflexions.  Over time, this blog will chart my transition from PhD student to whatever comes next.

I want to really thank Daniel Giles for his help with the design and construction of this blog. Daniel is very talented and specialises in blog and web design and photography – please check out his website for more information: http://insightfuldesignblog.wordpress.com/