Confidence Returns

What a difference a week makes! The optimism I felt on returning from holiday has now converted into great confidence that this thesis can be completed.

After a few days work I now have the spreadsheets set up to analyse the diary data. This will tell me how students spend their time depending on their answer to individual questions on the various questionnaires. Additionally it will also display how many 'episodes' of different durations students were involved in. I can look at this either day by day or by week or by weekdays or weekends. With over 10,000 permutations this is too many so my aim is to examine weeks first and to drill down as necessary.

The spreadsheet will tell me the average hours of students within the answer category and also the average of those not in the category. This will highlight where there are differences. To help with this I have included coloured flags that change depending on whether the difference in averages is less than 15%, 15-40%, 40-65 or more than 65%. The forthcoming week will be running through the permutations to identify where the biggest differences occur. From this I will be able to go back to the individual student profiles and investigate possible contributory factors. If necessary I can also examine the daily or weekday / weekend results.

The overall plot is to have the analyse completed by the end of December and to then get on with the writing up. I have now mapped out the time between January and June to keep the writing on schedule. The target is for the first draft to be finished by the end of April and then to submit at the end of June. All being well this will allow the viva to be held in September. I discussed this with Andrew, my supervisor, on Tuesday and he agrees that it should be doable. He is off to Singapore and Hong Kong for a 6 month sabbatical from January so good communications will be vital. Hopefully this blog will assist with this.