Grad Students Overwhelmed by Research Tools & Methods

“Hi, I really need some advice from PhD students who have experience in building their corpora by interviewing people and collecting their data through surveys, interviews and so on (especially in linguistics). I am a master's student and I will be starting my dissertation soon and I'd like to collect my own data thanks to interviews and surveys. My targets are singapore and hong kong students (I am in linguistics) and I was told to try reddit or X (Twitter) but I am so afraid of not bein”

“I’m a returned Peace Corps Volunteer who recently developed an independent research idea based on my experience in my host country. I’m now affiliated with a nonprofit there, and a linguist with the organization has agreed to help take on the research question. My question is: What the hell do I do now? Part of the research involves human subjects, and I’m currently working on getting the appropriate approval. When I spoke with my nonprofit contact, he essentially gave me free rein to determine”

“I am working on a research proposal for a UK-based PhD program in the humanities (I'm in the US). The potential supervisor I've identified asks that prospective candidates reach out with an "outline of a research proposal" when asking for a meeting. Realistically, what does that outline look like? I've got a 10 page research proposal (that is mostly lit review right now) and I'm guessing I need to cut it down before reaching out. submitted by /u/osrapla [lin”

“Hey I'm going into my second year. I'm in an engineering field . I make an effort to keep up w current literature , but I was wondering if there any resources for learning different research methods (mostly books ) that you thought were informative and why . I've been road mapping , planning , and executing my research fine , but I'd like to refine and get better just for the sake of it where I can. Thank you everyone in advance. submitted by /u/Zealousideal-Low2204 [”

“Hello, I am new to academia and am currently starting to prepare for finding a research topic, learning academic writing, and eventually writing my research proposal. I honestly have no idea how to track my progress effectively. If I complete everything within next 3months, I will apply in the upcoming application cycle. (I know it is late) I have seen several Excel sheets and tracking templates, but I find them quite confusing. I also tried creating my own Excel sheet, but I got confused about”

“Hi guys, do you think that sending an email to a prominent researcher in the field I want to work on for my MSc dissertation research is justified? Especially if it's not someone I personally know and I have not yet started working on the proposal and rather have an overview on what I want to work on. I was thinking that their perspective would help me to fine tune my scope and research questions. Especially that I'm not very experienced in systematic reviews but I also don't want to”

“Does anyone have any good resources (articles, videos, podcasts) that they found helpful when writing their qualitative thesis discussion chapter? I have spoken to my advisor about this but would definitely appreciate more resources with examples, guidelines, etc. submitted by /u/ttttkkkkay [link] [comments]”

“I kind of messed up with my research methods. I thought I was using and explanatory sequential mixed methods approach, but I reaalllyy didn’t and I have no idea what to write in my dissertation now. Essentially I used surveys to start with, and then used the individual survey results to inform my interviews. It’s not explanatory though because I didn’t fully analyse the survey results before I started interviewing and the survey was still open whilst I was interviewing. I did however use individ”

“I kind of messed up with my research methods. I thought I was using and explanatory sequential mixed methods approach, but I reaalllyy didn’t and I have no idea what to write in my dissertation now. Essentially I used surveys to start with, and then used the individual survey results to inform my interviews. It’s not explanatory though because I didn’t fully analyse the survey results before I started interviewing and the survey was still open whilst I was interviewing. I did however use individ”

“I kind of messed up with my research methods. I thought I was using and explanatory sequential mixed methods approach, but I reaalllyy didn’t and I have no idea what to write in my dissertation now. Essentially I used surveys to start with, and then used the individual survey results to inform my interviews. It’s not explanatory though because I didn’t fully analyse the survey results before I started interviewing and the survey was still open whilst I was interviewing. I did however use individ”

“I'm applying for a PhD in Europe (I am from Asia), and my project idea grew directly out of observations I made during my MSc research. The manuscript is still in preparation, so the findings are unpublished. I wouldn't be presenting these observations as established evidence, but rather as part of the background and motivation for the project. For example, would it be acceptable to write something like: " Questions arising during the applicant's MSc research motivated this proj”

“Hi everyone, I’m conducting the qualitative component of my mixed-methods PhD, and this is my first time leading a qualitative study. I’m really enjoying it, but I have a methodological question for experienced qualitative researchers. I know it’s good practice and a must to listen back and reflect on each interview before conducting the next one, especially early in data collection when you’re refining your topic guide. I’ve done that throughout most of my study. However, now that I’m towards t”

“Hi everyone, I’m conducting the qualitative component of my mixed-methods PhD, and this is my first time leading a qualitative study. I’m really enjoying it, but I have a methodological question for experienced qualitative researchers. I know it’s good practice and a must to listen back and reflect on each interview before conducting the next one, especially early in data collection when you’re refining your topic guide. I’ve done that throughout most of my study. However, now that I’m towards t”

“Quick question for those who did an IPA at Master’s level. My course just cut our word count to 16,500 (15k plus 10% allowance) and I’m struggling on how best to break that down on my sections: Introduction Literature review Methodology Findings Discussion Conclusions None of the example word count breakdowns provided by my course were for IPAs, as most people choose a different methodology and very obviously weren’t calculated with them in mind (2000 words suggested for findings 🫠) And my supe”

“hi all! i hope all is well! i wanted to ask if anyone has advice on writing their master’s thesis in another language and how they went about that? i’m a native english speaker and will be writing my thesis in mandarin for context! thank you so much! :) 😊 submitted by /u/Appropriate_Key_3064 [link] [comments]”

“Hi everyone, I’m about halfway through an MA and am in the process of proposing my thesis/beginning data collection. I am the only one in my lab, and while my advisor is a nice person, I’m pretty much completely on my own when it comes to everything research related. I’m mainly struggling with motivation. I apologize if this violates any guidelines in here, but I am in the process of leaving a toxic/ab*sive long term relationship. Needless to say, I’ve been having a lot of trouble focusing/getti”

“Hi everyone, I’m completely new to qualitative research and could really use some advice. My background is in environmental engineering, and I’ve recently started a PhD in sustainability transition management. Right now, I’m conducting a qualitative PESTEL analysis of the macro-environmental factors influencing sustainability transitions using peer-reviewed literature, policy documents, and industry reports. Later in my PhD, I’ll also be conducting semi-structured interviews with stakeholders. I”

“Hello! Any sociocultural or environmental anthropology PhD students out there that would be willing to chat with me about their experience finding their program and advisor? I am spending the summer researching programs and professors and will start reaching out to profs early August. I have a solid list going but would love to hear how folks like their programs to see if I am missing any potential good ones! So far I have (this is mostly going off professors that I found at each university that”

“Hi, i am very confused where to start. For the research, what are some tips to sound like idk more scientific or more formal? other than that like, how do i research about methodology ? How do i phrase my stuff? How do i organise? But other than that for the passion project, what are some things that i could do(i wanna study biology(especially in cells ))? like should i take an intership? or should i start an NGO? there is just to many advice to process and like no place to start clear. Any advi”

“Hey everyone! I’m starting a PhD in September after completing a clinical masters. My research experience is low and my supervisor has been amazing at preparing me. I was wondering if others could share some of the techniques/strategies/tools being used for keeping lot review organized. I struggle with finding programs to help me organize my papers. I currently keep them all in a folder papers sitting there in folders titled “read” and “unread”. lol. Any advice on how to organize them so I can a”

“Hey everyone, I'm currently preparing a novel research proposal for a Master's application targeting a top-tier lab. I'm relatively new to advanced NLP/LLMs, specifically long-context handling and test-time scaling, and want to make sure my direction is genuinely novel. I’m looking to pay a current PhD student or active researcher for a few hours of their time over the next 20 days to help me vet ideas, look for gaps in recent literature, and help structure a strong abstract. 🔬 Area”

“Hello, I'm looking for input for how to best handle the sheer volume of primary sources when writing my masters thesis. The primary sources itself will be news articles from a newspaper and the size of the corpus will end up being 200-300 articles propably. I have thought about how to best stay organised with this amount and most effectively take notes without succumbing to too many details. I tried Nvivo but it was too cumbersome to use, the learning would have taken more time than actual w”

“I finished my PhD a couple of years ago (as an older student) and the program was extremely small and not research-heavy (not clinical) - more qualitative and phenomenological. At the time I enrolled, I didn't care as much about research methods, my priorities were different. But things change, and looking back, I wish I'd done it differently and actually enrolled in a different type of program. As one often finds, you learn what you want as you go. Since graduating, my interests have sh”

“Hi! As the title says. This is in the humanities field, particularly the Science and Technology and Society (STS) field. I have no working thesis but I have drafted a thesis proposal related to China and its national policy on AI that I plan to work on as my final thesis (currently I'm still in my first year of my master's so I haven't yet reached the thesis stage). There is a research lab that is very fitting for my research interests and the PI is one of the authors that I love! It”

“Hi! As the title says. This is in the humanities field, particularly the Science and Technology and Society (STS) field. I have no working thesis but I have drafted a thesis proposal related to China and its national policy on AI that I plan to work on as my final thesis (currently I'm still in my first year of my master's so I haven't yet reached the thesis stage). There is a research lab that is very fitting for my research interests and the PI is one of the authors that I love! It”

“Preface: I’m not sure if this is the right sub to post to, so I’m open to suggestions to post elsewhere! My thesis pitch just got approved by my advisor (!!!) and so the next item I’ve been tasked with is starting to put together an independent reading course proposal to study in depth my chosen methodology: analytical autoethnography. For the course proposal I need to provide a list of sources to read, as well as some assignment ideas. Of course, I can (and plan to) google “what sources needs t”

“I recently read a manuscript that I found incredibly interesting, especially since it's one of the of the only scholarly works I've been able to find on its particular topic (think specific topic in a very niche and pretty understudied area of medical history). I'm planning on writing to the author to ask some questions and to express my appreciation for their work, but I'm not entirely sure how to address them. They're a PhD candidate (and the manuscript was written for a fe”