Stage 4 Preparation

The last two weeks have been slower due mainly to the mini heatwave that we experienced for the first 10 days of May. Last weekend was too hot (30 degrees) to do a lot on the computer so time was spent in the garden with a cooling hose or in the shade!!

Not that the EdD was overlooked entirely. As mentioned in my last posting, this research not only aims to understand what happens with student time during the period of study for a module but also aims to track a sample of students through a sequence of modules. Therefore the last couple of weeks have been spent looking through the initial output data to identify which students will be asked to participate in the follow up surveys.

The decision has been helped by the question asked at the end of the post-module questionnaire. Only those students who positively agreed to participate further were considered - a total of 184 students out of 310 (64%) that completed the questionnaire.

Of these, deciding which students to include has not been too difficult, and has either been based on a process of elimination or on a need to include basis. Having the detailed analysis of the IMC forums, and the Blackboard access statistics, has proved useful in determining those students who appear to have provided accurate data in their diaries about their study. In the believe that an 'honest' student will continue to offer truthful answers these students were included in the pot.

On the 'need to include' side, this stage aims to track students longitudinally over the course of their Part 1 studies. Consequently only those students who are taking the full course without retake or exemption were included. Additionally, due to the nature of the EdD those students located overseas were automatically included - not least as they are a relatively small number in comparison with UK ones. As family circumstances are a (critical) focus for the research all students indicating that they have a family aged below 16 were also included.

This provided a pool of 122 students who either invited themselves into the follow up stage or did not exclude themselves. This was considered to be too large a sample and the final step was to look through the data again to decide who to leave out. This was not done entirely scientifically but did aim to generate a representative sample by gender, age, location and study route (ie property or construction). The aim was to end up with a sample of 50 students. In the end 62 students have been identified which represents about 20% of the main group of 295 students. The larger number allows for casualties along the way.

The tracking sample will be emailed later this week and invited to complete a follow up 'tracking' questionnaire. This aims to collect changes in time use and life circumstances from the students and will be repeated after the next two modules as well. It contains several questions identical to those in the post IMC questionnaire allowing comparison to be made. It also includes questions that drill deeper than the previous one in areas related to time and the course, study, personal circumstances and employment issues. Lastly it feeds back the summary weekly time commitment from the student's own diary and asks them to update on how their use of time has changed.

I'm not sure that I want, or even need, more data, however, my objectives will not be met unless I can see how students use of time changes as they come up against different life events.

Onward and upward!!

SPSS and all that!

Since my last post I have looked again at the diary data and find that there are a further 74 sets of data which are complete except for the post-module questionnaire. Therefore I have added them to the collection making 295 sets of partial or complete data. Each set has been printed out on 6 sides of A4 consuming reams of paper and several printer cartidges. The whole collection now fills six 2 inch (5 cm) ring binders!

Apart from printing and filing, my last couple of weekends have been taken up with re-acquainting myself with SPSS. I haven't really used it since the taught module on methods of enquiry (about 2004) so am somewhat rusty- also of course it is now in a new version. Thank goodness for up-to-date textbooks! SPSS 15 Made Simple by Paul Kinnear and Colin Gray is particularly helpful.

Having spent many hours checking through the Excel data relating to students and the Pre-Course questionnaire to ensure that the variables are complete and the data in the right form to import I have hit a problem today with licencing. Basically the student version that I bought tells me that the licence has expired which, as it is not yet the end of the academic year, it should not.

So rather than go further I have passed the query back to the help desk and will spend the afternoon in the garden. I'm not unhappy about this as the sun has finally come out, but it is a bit of an irritant as I had planned on getting the data into SPSS by the end of this holiday weekend.

On another front, in the next week or so I have to decide on the group of students that I will track over the coming months. Not only do I need to identify the significant profiles but I also need to prepare the questionaire for their feedback.

Hey Ho - never a dull moment in research!!