Analysis

I'm using Miles & Huberman to find ideas that will help analysis such as a matrix analysing role against the three dimensions of social capital to see which dimensions appear in the interview data against each role.

Another couple of ideas I'm using from Miles and Huberman are the

• data accounting sheet
  
• codes, listed all on one page.
  

It will probably help when I can use Nvivo to code, instead of the various colours that I'm using on the transcripts, like pink for relationships, purple for cognitive, and green for structure.

It's a bit slow but sometimes a simple thought stimulates a lot of analysis, it's just finding the right thought.

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Miles MB, Huberman AM. 1994. Qualitative data analysis : An expanded sourcebook. Sage Publications: Thousand Oaks.

Synopsis

A rolling synopsis of your thesis is something you should write in your first year, advised Dunleavy. My brother swapping Christmas presents gave me the book as a 'mitbringsel' [1] last week, and it is indeed a good read. However, it is also scary. For instance in chapter three, Dunleavy says you should write a rolling thesis synopsis of three or four pages, and that you do this in your first year onwards. That's what's scary because I hadn't even thought of that and my supervisors hadn't mentioned it and I haven't done it - hadn't. I have now. I had to think about it for some days, but supervisor #2's advice to write up my case studies with my research questions in mind gives me a structure:

• Chapter 1 about consultancy and the public sector
• Chapter 2 the conceptualisation of engagement in the literature
• Chapters 3-7 address each of my research question in turn
• Chapter 8 conclusions

Now I just need to put together the 80,000 words to answer my research questions, and collect the data and analyse it.

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[1] A mitbringsel is a small present for no particular reason but that you bring with you when you visit someone.

Christmas eve at the office

It's quiet with only a few students in, and (almost) fewer academics, but the support staff are here. We had a Christmas quiz in the canteen with questions set by our ex-research director, wearing his Moroccan fez, which was a clue to one of the questions:

Where was the first university?

1. Egypt
2. Iran
3. Morocco

Most people were leaving by three o'clock. One of my fellow students is coming back to spend Christmas with us. We left around lunch time.

Project management & social capital

Found an interesting workshop last week - too late. It was a workshop on IT project management, and some of the papers looked useful, especially the one on social capital in IT project management by Randolph and Petter.

Awards

It's interesting to see that the Home Office is recognising the efforts of staff and suppliers who drive value by offering awards. See here. One category is of collaborative working with the Home Office. I'd like to see the entrants for that, but another category is for contribution to a project or programme and that might be closer to my research interests.

Transcription nearly done

I think I've got nearly the transcription done. I've finished all of one project and most of the other. I want to finish it before Christmas while I've got a comfortable and warm office desk to type at. Then I'll use my big old Edwardian bank desk at home to scribble analysis notes at while the office is closed.

Authoring

A student has submitted his final thesis and waiting for his viva, next March, which is horridly far off. So he's got to keep his research in mind for six months, waiting for the examination. He spoke to us about his experiences getting this far, and gave us some advice:

• warn your supervisors when you're going to submit
• get your examiners sorted out early
• read Dunleavy's book "Authoring a PhD"

This book, he says, is worth £100 because it radically helped him to sort out his ideas when he had a mass of data and wondered what to do with it. So I tried to put it on my wish list, but Amazon tells me it's already there. I think someone might have got it for me for Christmas. :)

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Dunleavy P. 2003. Authoring a phd : How to plan, draft, write and finish a doctoral thesis or dissertation. Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke ; New York.