After some years

[Lionelgee]

G'day All,

The introduction to this section of AULRO says General Chat - Almost anything goes...

Well after some years of part-time study working on my PhD, I have reached a sort of milestone this afternoon. At around 5:25 pm, I finished writing up the last section of data analysis where I had responses to a question where all 25 people I interviewed answered the question. By the way this is last of many where all 25 people chose to answer a single question. I had 18 open-ended situational based questions which 25 people with a diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome answered. I then interviewed 25 "witnesses" who were either parents, siblings or partners who had observed firsthand how the person with a diagnosis of Asperger's actually responded to the situation.

So this last question with 25 responses had 19 social behaviours or responses to stress and anxiety. The question was "when I feel stress build up inside me I...?" From these 19 different social behaviours I identified 125 separate responses. Each one had to written up and discussed.

What does this mean? When I tapped on the last full stop on the final response for Question 5 I have effectively reached the summit of my PhD write-up. I am currently at home with only my two dogs for company and they are not that impressed with my result. Now I just have to survive the descent which I think is the requirement of actually climbing up Mount Everest. Well I have planted the flag. I think I am in a state of disbelief as it has taken me a lot of time and misadventures to get to this point.

Thank you for your time reading this note.

Kind Regards
Lionel

[Slunnie]

Congrats Lionel! Now for the fun part!

[dullbird]

Well Lionel let me be the first to congratulate you!!!!

I'm sure the feeling of belief and satisfaction will soon hit you

[TD50WA]

Well done. I still remember doing my Bsc. That was bad enough. All the research done since just keeps me asking.....why....:D

Regards
Kev

[Sandgroper]

Congratulations mate! I've never done anything like that but it sounds like a lot of work and you sound very relieved, well done!

[UncleHo]

Congratulations Lionelgee :) now you can relax and spend some time with the Landrover ;)

[slug_burner]

Congratulations Lionelgee,

If it is any relief most who make it through to submit get through.

[123rover50]

Goodonya mate, hang in there. There will be job ops come up for sure.
Keith

[V8Ian]

Good on you Lionel, I think I heard The sigh of relief from here. ;)

[Lionelgee]

Congratulations Lionelgee :) now you can relax and spend some time with the Landrover ;)


G'day UncleHo,

I have reached the summit, I still need to get down and back to base camp. Of course the descent will be down a different side to the route that the ascent was made on. This means it will still be a while before I can get either Baldrick or Rebus on the road.

There is that funny equation getting into the mix at the moment ...
work = money.

Which will be one day followed by
Money = Land Rover Parts and Registration ...

Then :banana::banana::banana:

Kind Regards
Lionel

[Disco Muppet]

Nicely done mate! :clap2:

[Lionelgee]

I just checked the next question which only 17 people made replies to which matched the category I identified of Stress & Anxiety. The question I wrote about previously had 25/25 responses that matched the category of stress & anxiety. Question 5 featured 34 single line spaced pages of transcript extracts to analyse and discuss.

Question 13 "when I am upset about something, I try and get over it by …?" has only 9 pages of data to analyse. 34 pages of stuff down to 9 pages weeeeeee it is better than I thought.



Well that is it for me today. Now I just have to sharpen up the ice picks and check the ropes ready for to start the trip down tomorrow. Just hope there is no hidden crevasses waiting for me!


Thank you for your kind comments it is much appreciated.



Kind Regards
Lionel

[Ralph1Malph]

And some say I should continue on with PhD!
Sheesh, Masters was brain addling enough lol

Good work Mate.

Aas discussed previously, I am extremely interested in your work.

Cheers

[Lionelgee]

Hello All,

Just about to form the spreadsheet that I use to guide me through the written discussion of participant responses that forms the data analysis chapter of my PhD. The results are for Question 13 when I'm upset about something I try and get over it by...? This is called an open-ended situational based type of question. The participant was given the list of 18 questions at least 24 hours before we had a face-to-face interview.

So using a method called Grounded Theory (Charmaz's Constructivist Grounded Theory - not Glaser's very strict form) I read through each participant's transcript and asked myself the question "what is the person talking about - what are they trying to make me understand?" From that common points in response were identified. There is a software program that you can do this on however it limits you to less than a page of transcript on the screen at any one time and I found this too cumbersome as I could not see the "big picture". From my training in landscaping and doing landscape construction plans with schematic diagrams for irrigation wiring I made an analysis board. This was a sheet of builders ply mounted on a pine frame and hung up on a wall. I then rolled out a length of news print 2.4 metres by 1.5 metres and glued up a person's full transcript - of up to 17 pages of single spaced writing. Where I identified a theme I put on a Sticky-note and labelled it. I then read through the whole transcript and anywhere this "category" for example "Stress" I joined to the other examples by using a specific colour in the case of stress it was a red line. So that was step one.

I then went back to all the transcripts and grouped all the categories and made a spreadsheet which identified what categories each participant featured.

Then I broke the questions down to which ones had the most responses for example Question 5 when I feel stress build up inside me I...? this had 25 people with a diagnosis who matched the category of Stress and Anxiety. This represents 100% of my sample with a diagnosis.

From this point I worked out from all the extracts which were identified people whose responses matched the category of stress and anxiety and I broke them down further to different displays of behaviour which are called social behaviours. For the 17 participants who had responses to the category of stress and anxiety there are 7 social behaviours. Let’s see....
Analyse
Behaviour
Discuss
Loop
Redirect
Retreat
Strategies

Each one of these is written up by identifying which participant matches what social behaviour, including an exact transcript of what they said.

I am really happy to note that Stress and Anxiety is in alphabetical order in my list of overall categories and also the second highest score of responses within my research. I only have the very minor categories to of Trust & Naivety; Work; Works of Art and Worry to go

So there you go wasn't that just riveting - why should I suffer in solitude? Well back into it.

Kind Regards
Lionel