Arranging interviews

I am beginning to realise that trying to recruit participants is really very difficult. I have managed to get quite a lot of interest at Y University and have also began now to arrange first appointments. At X University, however, things are much more difficult. I have now e-mailed twice the students who originally expressed some interest in my research project at that university, and only had one reply. Unfortunately, I only collected e-mail addresses and realise that I should have collected telephone numbers as well.

I was a bit more savvy of the time I got to Y. University and have collected a contact phone number as well as e-mails. Having e-mailed the students at Y University suggesting appointment times, I have now been able to telephone those who have not replied and fix the time for the initial interview. This does take quite a lot of organising. I can see that my main work over this next few months will be to organise the participant groups and get the first set of interviews done. It's going to be very difficult to get any reading done as well as keeping the appointment diary going. I should point out, in case anyone ever does read this, but I also work part-time as a lecturer and part-time as a counsellor, both of which also take up quite a lot of my time.

More frustration

This part of the PHD journey seems to be marred by a lot of frustration. I had some success on Tuesday when I went over to X University to recruit participants for my study. I was able to talk to English students at the end of a joint lecture. Following my appeal, I got 15 students signing up to say they were interested in participating. I came home feeling very satisfied that at last some progress was being made. I have since then e-mailed all 15 students, sending them more details, but so far had nothing back. If I don't hear by the end of the weekend I will e-mail them again.

Tomorrow I am going to talk to two groups students at Y University. I think I will take some forms with me to allow students to give me their contact details, rather than just asking them to put their e-mail address on a list. I have already made appeals, via my gatekeepers, to both these groups of students and have had a small amount of interest. I have made appointments to see two students from these groups but both, unfortunately, have failed to keep the appointment. One sent me a text after I had waited 10 minutes for him and another just failed to turn up. It is a bit dispiriting, but I am hoping that once I get people on board the project, then it will go a little more smoothly.

I have been reflecting on the issue of why students on this project might be advantaged, as Charlotte asked why this might be. I suppose one reason is that it will help students to have more insights into the way in which they read and such metacognition is seen as one of the processes which helps to make more effective readers. Another reason might be that talking about what you have read is a useful piece of reflection, prior to writing about it. I suppose there is also a sense that simply having someone else interested in how you go about your reading is likely to make you approach it in a different way.

I had my Thesis Outline Approval meeting today which seemed to go really well. The committee work incredibly enthusiastic about my ideas and very encouraging about what I had written so far. They did, of course, find some areas where their thoughts and improvements could be made. They suggested that it might be more useful to get my student participants together in focus groups rather than relying solely on 1:1 interviews. This will allow me to open a discussion on the process of reading and allow for people to make comparisons between the ways they do things. It might also be a much more efficient way of collecting insights into how my participants go about their reading.

My main issue at the moment is how to get enough (but not too many) participants. Recruitment into the project has been very slow. It was not helped by the fact that my Brighton University e-mail address got cut off the day after I had sent out my first recruitment literature, and using this e-mail address as a contact point. Unfortunately, I had not had my Annual Progression Review. A fairly severe period of depression in the late spring/early summer meant that I asked for it to be postponed, and then we all seems to forget that it needed doing. My fault, really. I should have picked up on it earlier. Anyway, but has now been resolved and I am reregistered as a part-time PhD student at Brighton.

Recruitment at both the institutions I am studying has been very slow. I am hoping to go into some lectures this week to meet students and make a personal appeal. One of the areas which the TOA committee picked up on was whether or not the students who are engaged in this study will be unfairly advantaged. As the fact that talking to me might help them with their studies is one of the few advantages which I can present to potential participants, I was not really able to get a satisfactory reply.

The other issue for me at this stage is lack of time. It's been a really busy teaching term for me at Chichester. I'm hoping that there will now be some space which will allow me to get back to doing my own reading. I think I'd like to look at some methodological material.