All you can tweet

I have just spent a week at a highly regarded international research conference. A conference which like many these days actively encourages delegates to use twitter  by providing a conference specific hashtag (#)to share their thoughts and opinions with other conference delegates and the wider  community. An overseas colleague of mine opened the conference with an excellent keynote presentation on nursing resilience which was research based, international in perspective and initiated a lot of discussion...or it would have had her time not been cut short to allow someone else to have the floor to present on a topic which the speaker themselves acknowledged would only be relevant to UK delegates (although I would debate that had the speaker made more of an effort to internationalise their remarks)

So, in the Twitter spirit of open debate I tweeted a mild criticism along the lines of

 'Excellent keynote from @***. Shame it was curtailed to accommodate another speaker'

Fairly innocuous I think you will agree, so imagine my surprise when this tweet was removed from the twitter wall that was providing an overview of the all tweets that were using the conference hashtag - I had been censored!

I have to say that this is not the first time this has happened to me at this conference a similar thing occurred last year, when I pointed out that it was quite rude to refer to three out of four nominees for a prestigious PhD award as 'Dr' and the fourth merely by her first name. I remain puzzled by the fact  that a conference which exists to promote discussion and debate is so insecure that it feels the need to remove the mildest dissent from the twitter stream available to delegates. I am against twitter trolling as much as the next girl but is hard to see the offence in this gentle criticism and I would have welcomed any debate it may have inspired.

I guess the message is dissent and risk being censored or be undefatigably sweet and positive, toe the conference party line and be retweeted to your hearts content.

Adventures in academia: My first few months as a research student

I have been searching for the right words to describe my first few months of being a research student, dear Research Zebra reader. It certainly has been an ADVENTURE IN ACADEMIA, full of puzzles, twists and turns, and unexpected insightful joyous ‘eureka’ moments, usually following extended periods being buried in literature.

Recently I went to ‘Go Ape’, which is an outdoor pursuit where you get to monkey around (even the grown-ups!) doing a rope-orientated obstacle course. It is set high off the ground from the forest floor. Needless to say fear or heights or not, it is at first a little scary.

Doing this grown up obstacle course, or dallying around in any such adrenaline activity for that matter, is a great analogy for what’s it is like in those first few months of a research degree. At the beginning there is the pure joy and excitement of, firstly, being accepted onto the research degree (hurray!) and, secondly, those first few weeks of being a research student. Discovering your way around the literature continues to be an exciting aspect of doing research for me, though it is qualitatively different to the experience of those first few intense weeks where you sit in somewhat unknown territory contemplating life, death and linguistic jargon!

It is not only the unknown nature of the rope course that draws comparison to those early days, it is also the leap of faith that surrounded the task of doing a PhD. I feel being a researcher hinges a little on fearlessness, in that you have to the confidence that you CAN find ways to overcome the various challenges that present themselves to you. The bit of the ‘Go Ape’ experience that was more than a little similar to this was the zip-wire moments, which required I step off the high-up treetop platforms and depend upon the harness taking me safely to the distant wood-chipped landing area below.

I would argue the safety harness represents my supervisors, who support and guide me through the research degree, ensuring I do not go off track. (Naturally, a research student is far more autonomous than merely depending on their supervisors, though their role is most certainly invaluable through the process).

I can certainly say, dear Research Zebra reader, that my research degree has so far been an academic adventure filled with the thrills of embracing the unknown, both metaphorically and literally (for example, when discovering inspiring literature or wandering lost through mountains of past research!) I wish you the very best in your own adventures, and will ensure to send a postcard in the future when I get to my next landing point!  

Devina is exploring the everyday experiences of illness and intimate relationships in heterosexual women with irritable bowel syndrome. 

Never too soon...

Most PhD students would argues that filling in university forms, obtaining ethical approval, negotiating access to their research area and collecting data leaves then little time to be thinking about their viva - an event that may be up to 5 years in the future.

However I would argue that the best time to start thinking about your viva is the first time you lay finger to keyboard to write something (anything) about your thesis, and my reasoning goes like this -

You can be challenged on anything that you put into your thesis - A lot of students, especially in the early drafts of their methodology chapter spend an awful lot of time exploring various philosophical approaches to their work, discarding them one by one until they begin the defence and justification of the approach they finally used. This is fine, it's part of the learning process and a discussion about Heidegger versus Husserl may help you clarify your thinking about which philosophical mast you want to nail your colours to. The problems occur if you leave that in the thesis because then your interpretations are cast in stone and ripe for challenge. The one thing you do not want to do is to send your examiners off down a blind alley, focussing on how they disagree with your interpretation of Gadamer rather than concentrating on what you actually DID.

The thesis is a report about what you did, not what you didn't do. If something happens that means your research has gone horribly wrong, think very carefully about whether you want to include your angst into your final work. Will it add anything to the thesis? Will it clarify why you did something? Or will it mean that you spend a long time at your viva talking about something that did not actually contribute in any way to your final findings? For example, it may be frustrating if it takes 6 months to get governance approval from your participating trust but will a six page rant about that enhance the quality of your final work or merely make the person reading the thesis lose interest?

Issues like these are better kept in a 'jottings' folder or even a reflective diary. They are important parts of the PhD process, especially the first one BUT if it is in your final thesis the examiners have a right to ask you about it in great depth if they wish - so it is never too soon to start to take control of your viva by being intelligent about what you write.

Can you be friends with your supervisor?

Whether it goes well or goes badly, it will be one of the most intense relationships of your life - the one you have with your doctoral supervisor. Love them or loathe them they can't help but be a big part of your doctoral experiences, whether that's from being too hands on and demanding or too distant and disinterested. So, the question has to be asked - can you be friends with your supervisor?

I would say that I have been friends with about 50% of the doctoral students I have supervised or am supervising. Some were my friends before they became students, some were students who sort of morphed into friends over the process and just kind of stayed on in my life once the PhD journey was complete. This doesn't mean I hate the other 50% who were/are perfectly charming people, it just means my relationship with them is not as deep as with my friends. The really important thing though is to have a conversation emphasising the difference between between Caz-who-is-my-friend and Prof-Haigh-who-is-my-supervisor because it needs to be clear that there is a difference; without that demarkation it can be difficult to maintain a supervisory objectivity when assessing the quality of a students work or assimilating a supervisor's comments.

And therein lies the problem, the PhD experience can be so complex and so intimate that what is professional academic interest and esteem towards each other can easily be misconstrued into something that it isn't. Recently Lee Yarwood-Ross and I did some research on students opinions of their supervisors. One student in an online forum asked "Is it normal for a supervisor to insist upon candlelit supervision sessions?" Er...NO!! That's NOT friendship, it's not even marginally appropriate academic behaviour and to any student in that situation my advice would be 'RUN. RUN AWAY AS FAST AS YOU CAN!' I would offer much the same advice to the supervisor whose student was perplexed because she had told him she was in love with him and was upset to find that now he was reluctant to see her alone any more.

That, of course, is why having more than one supervisor, friendly or otherwise,  is a condition to be devoutly wished !

Don't give up

One of the  [possibly] unforeseen outcomes of the rigorous ethical approval processes and some may say the even more draconian research governance processes that we have in the UK is the fact that, increasingly, health and social care researchers are resorting to increasingly innovative ways to recruit participants for their research. This is partly, I fear because NHS governance systems are cumbersome , and in some cases expensive,and slow down research studies to pre-global warming glacial speed. A number of tech-savvy people are beginning to look to recruiting via cyber-communities through project specific websites often hosted by an appropriate support group or charity. This can be seen as a good thing since often participants are prevented from even hearing about their potential research involvement opportunities by over protective health care staff and this approach, at least gives them the chance to decide for themselves whether or not they want to be included

 However, a couple of my PhD colleagues had similar experiences the other day which made me ponder how much people outside of universities understand about what is meant by Doctoral level research. The assumption made when they approached  the website owners was that either they were undergraduates or that they were undergraduates doing some kind of media course. They were told in no uncertain terms that they were unlikely to get any form of support from the website owners, even though all they had asked for was that a link to their study be added to the site.

Both were understandably disappointed but I suggested that they go back to the people concerned and explain exactly what level of study they were at and how their research could conceivably affect the client groups the charities had been set up to serve; that this was not a small six week research project designed with no other reason but to to complete a research methods module, but something requiring commitment and deep thought and eye watering amounts of hard work. Pleasingly, on  having made clear to them that the doctoral candidates were engaged in high quality, long term studies that were rigorously conducted and reviewed they were happy to collaborate.

The point that I am making here is that it pays to go back and seek an explanation if someone turns down your request for help when doing doctoral data collection using online media. Sometimes, and I guess this is part of the it-isn't-good-enough paranoia that affects most people doing a PhD at some time, students can be a bit too deprecating about their work. If someone says 'no' have the courage of your conviction and don't give up!

Using Twitter in my PhD research

I felt I needed to come on here and write about my experiences of using the online social media platform "Twitter" where some definite learning has occurred, but for most of it, it has been a joyous experience. I set up a Twitter account to connect with injured veteran/ex-service personnel and from the outset I was not positive at all as I feared that keeping the account up to date would be time consuming and laborious. However some benefits I have seen in persevering with it are:

1) The ability to freely follow relevant people, groups, associations and charities which could be of interest to your research. Given time they may follow you back and this can lead to recruitment
2) If suitable users follow you back you can "direct message" them which cuts out the concern over confidentiality issues and ethically inappropriate recruitment.
3) On your Twitter page you have the opportunity to put a small description about yourself so that other users can immediately find out what you are about i.e. in my case I have put my PhD research title in this area and put a link to my website.
4) Another benefit I have recently seen is the ability to receive recommendations of people to follow through my registered email address. Initially this annoyed me as it felt like a form of junk mail, but as I scrolled through the emails there have been some really good recommendations. You will also find some good recommendations on your direct Twitter page which can also be helpful
5) Getting to know some useful hashtags can make you part of some good conversations i.e in my case #veterans and #beyondinjury

Please bear in mind though that the dreaded 140 character allowance per Tweet/message can be infuriating but research is all about being succinct so it's good for research development #addedbonus  sorry could not help it! As you can see, using hashtags becomes a natural part of your life when you begin to use Twitter! 

So having described all these benefits, how have they impacted on my research?

1) I have been fortunate to recruit participants for interviews
2) I am beginning to increase my followers
3) I have been able to keep in contact with people I have met from conferences and seminars. The benefit of this is that I stand a good chance of being visual to other relevant users which could result in more followers

Therefore, having a Twitter account has the potential to make you more visual to others. However, it will require self-motivation on the researcher's part to make Twitter part of their normal routine, keep send regular tweets and building followers.

Remember to plan your recruitment strategy with sensitivity and thought!

Don't cry for me...

I had a strange and inspirational experience a while back when attending as an applicant at a Local  Research Ethics Committee (LREC) meeting - and that's a sentence you don't hear that often! 

My colleague and I were asked by the Chair of the committee, to specify, in view of the fact our research was centered upon a vulnerable group (the committee's definition, not ours, or indeed the research participants themselves), which "distress policy" we were planning to use. Now,I am not a novice when it comes to LRECs but I have to say that I have NEVER been asked that question before. Swift as you like, I came back with "which distress protocol do you recommend?' and it became painfully clear that the committee did not really know of any. The Chair dismissed my question with a wave of the hand and an airy "Oh, there are lots out there", however on return to the office a Google search quickly indicated that by 'lots' the committee obviously meant 'none'.

So, in the interests of harmony, and getting our ethics approval, my colleague and I were inspired to set about writing our own, evidence based distress protocol. The result has a tripartite focus and covers;

• Participant distress
• Researcher distress
• Transcriber distress

We felt the last one was particularly important since, as researchers, we do not often think about the people who are transcribing our interviews and how they may be affected by the things they hear. So, if you are involved in health & social care research or indeed any kind of research where the management of distress might be an issue please feel free to use our distress protocol. You can find it here

Guest Blog : Reflections on an application for NHS ethical approval

Guest Blog post by Jennifer Watson

PhD Student Manchester Metropolitan University

The IRAS system:  The Integrated Research Application System (IRAS) is an ingenious device whereby a potential researcher can complete several application forms, all required in order to carry out research within the NHS, at one time.  “That’s wonderful, why did no one tell me this before” you may cry.  The reason nobody speaks about it is that the pathway through it is strewn with the hopes and aspirations of hapless researchers rather like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs.

 

Of course, the concept is a good one and, having never been unfortunate enough to apply for ethical approval in the pre-IRAS days, I can only assume that this is an improvement.  The problem is, that the more you delve into the process, the more complicated it becomes. The first challenge is to register with IRAS and to complete the on-line training.  Looking back, this could be where I went wrong in that I didn’t (complete the online training course, that is) but I took the “I’ll look back at it when I encounter a problem” attitude before throwing myself headlong into my application.

Completion of the forms: Firstly, there is the screening process, whereby you fill in 

some answers and IRAS tells you which forms you need to complete.  In my case I needed to satisfy the NHS Research Ethics Committee (REC) and the Research and Development  (R&D)group covering the area in which I wanted to carry out the research.  So far so good.  IRAS then supplies you with the questions you need to cover both forms to avoid duplication and henceforth all should be plain sailing: answer the questions, click the submit button and everyone will receive the necessary information.  This is where I realised I should have completed the online tutorial.  “Submission” in IRAS-speak does not pass your well-considered replies to anyone, it merely saves them in a form which can then be sent to…… who?  We will return to this conundrum later.

Just in case you were planning to complete the IRAS forms on a quiet afternoon as a break from the literature review, I feel I should prepare you – there are a lot of questions.  Not only are there a lot, there are a lot of “But surely I have just answered that” type of questions.  This need not be viewed entirely negatively though as it does give plenty of opportunity to practice your cutting and pasting technique.  Another word of warning here, it may well be that your DOS/supervisor(s) wish to “look over” your answers before submission to the relevant bodies.  Prepare for several weeks of reminder emails followed by resulting amendments and more weeks of “looking over” the amendments.  Obviously, the more over-lookers you have, the greater the delay, but this must be regarded as part of the process and, if it can’t be enjoyed, at least you may learn something from it.  Which, can’t be all bad.

Submission:  I feel at this stage that I must confess to receiving insider information from a former colleague who worked on an ethics committee. I was therefore aware at least of the existence of Local RECs, i.e. the bodies who will review our applications and grant ethical approval to carry out research within the NHS.  That’s fine, the REC form is submitted to the local REC and I can sit back and wait for their approval.  However, pondering over the submission instructions on the IRAS form, I discover that I need to book an appointment to attend the REC in person for the review.  In addition the earliest appointment is six weeks ahead and 30 miles away. There is also the matter of the REC checklist of accompanying documents to be forwarded, which must be submitted within four days of the booking.  This begins with a straightforward request for relevant documents such as consent form, protocol, patient information sheet and so forth but gradually becomes more challenging:  CV (got that saved somewhere), CV of supervisor (ah, fire off an email), letter from sponsor (who?), evidence of sponsor’s insurance (whose what?).  None of these documents are unobtainable however and eventually can be tracked down with a little investigation.  Even the process of obtaining electronic authorisation instead of signatures can be strangely satisfying.

In the early stages of this process, I naively believed that REC approval would give me the green light to happily stroll into GP practices and recruit patients for my study.  That was before I discovered local R&D approval.  In other words, I need separate approval to work in a specific NHS area – hence the R&D form completed through IRAS.  We now return to the “submit to whom/where” dilemma.  Easy, a bit of Googling provides me of the name of the lead for R&D in the area in which I want to work.  This is fine, except the helpful reply to my email tells me that I need to get in touch with the Greater Manchester Comprehensive Local Research Network (GMCLRN) who will be able to approve my application for the area in which I plan to do my study.  Oh, and, by the way, I will need an NHS Research Passport form to enable me to work on NHS premises (in that case, what is everything else about?), copies of which, when completed and approved, need to be sent to the R&D person in every NHS area I may wish to use.  That brings me to another point, the very helpful person at the GMCLRN reminds me that I will need a Site –specific form (SSI) for any area I may wish to enter and that I will probably need to cover three areas just in case I cannot recruit sufficient participants from my first choice.  At least the SSIs can be completed as an add-on to the IRAS and can be submitted to the GMCLRN, with more additional documents, all in a nicely zipped folder attached to an email.

Nearly there now (six months on!).  There is, of course, the matter of the MMU ethics application form but, having weaved through the IRAS maze, the MMU ethics form is almost disappointingly challenge free.

Just the Research Passport application to deal with now and we’re off! Once I have my Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check and Occupational Health Clearance my passport will be granted and recruitment can commence!

Just the small matter of an ethics review and amendments to consider, but I will leave those for another day………….

Quantitative purgatory

According to the Catholic Church, Purgatory is a place or condition of punishment for those who although possessed of grace are not entirely free from sin. As an atheist I never really thought that purgatory was something I would need to concern myself about until I became a quantitative researcher. As a someone whose PhD was once described as 385 pages of statistical tables and some text, I flatter myself that although not a statistician I can make SPSS do what I want it to do and I can understand the results it gives me. I can look at a mess of data,  know what questions to ask it and comprehend the answer I come up with. I know when to use non-parametric tests and I can identify scenarios when only a parametric test will do. In other words like Michael Faraday, Gregor Mendel and Thomas Edison I am an amateur. However, being a keen amateur does not mean my quantitative activities are less accurate or appropriate than those of Charles Spearrman (a well known statistician although really a psychologist) or Jacob Cohen (another well known statistician who started life a psychologist). I'm not asking you to believe that the Haigh Test for statistical complexity is imminent, what I am asking is - why, when the stats tests I'm using are really, really simple am I constantly told I need to have a statistician on my research team!?!

It's annoying for me as someone who can do simple stats such as cross tabs and ANOVAs (even, dare I say it, some multivariate regression) and it must be bloody annoying for statisticians who have studied for 3 years or more to be constantly asked to advise on what, for them, is the statistical equivalent of learning to use a spoon.

So, here I sit, in statistical purgatory - in a state of grace because I understand what 'p' values are for but full of sin because I don't have a stats degree. The only good thing is...there are loads of us here.

What your supervisor will expect from you

Whilst, in previous blogs, I have outlined the things a doctoral student can expect from their supervisor it is important to remember that your supervisor has the right to expect certain things in return. For example;

• If you want your supervisor to review and comment on written work they will probably expect you to send it to them at least three weeks before your supervision session. It is pointless sending your supervisor the first 20,000 of your methods chapter the day before you are due to met and expecting them to have read it...or be happy about it.

• If you have an appointment with your supervisor - turn up! (pretty obvious I know but you would be surprised how often it happens)

• They will expect you to be prepared to present to peers, within and external to the university.

• If you are going to publish something with their name on it, make sure they see it before you submit. Academics are only as good as their last paper so it's important they have the opportunity to provide input.

• Some supervisors will expect you to be the one to keep in touch, so if you drift or drop off of the radar they won't chase you up. It is a good idea to find out at the beginning of the relationship if they are expecting you to instigate contact.
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Of course the easiest thing to find out what your supervisor expects from you is to simply ask them. Your relationship will, ideally be mutually supportive and most supervisors will be pleased and touched if you show them this level of consideration - it will probably be the first time any one has!

Pick a side!

When did it become desirable, fashionable  or acceptable to shoehorn chunks of quantitative data collection into what is obviously designed to be a qualitative study? I'm not talking about genuine mixed-methods studies but doctoral theses, and it usually IS doctoral theses I'm afraid, that undermine perfectly acceptable and robust qualitative studies with a few badly presented descriptive statistics. If a student is focussed upon qualitative work then, generally,the inclusion of poorly analysed and weak quantitative data does not enhance their work - it weakens it. Examiners who know about statistical analysis will be irritated by things like appallingly bad response rates, inappropriate statistical tests (usually treating non-parametric data as parametric) and meaningless extrapolation of non-significant findings to the general population. Examiners who are knowledgeable about qualitative methods will struggle to find meaning in the inclusion of such data and be annoyed because it detracts form the richness of the qualitative elements. I think it may be time for researchers, students and supervisors to pick a side and stop sitting on the methodological fence. Neither approach is better than the other - they are too different. They explore different things, ask different questions and give different answers - not better, just different. So, be whole hearted qualitative or be proudly quantitative. PICK A SIDE!!!! 

Looking above the heads of the crowd

I was having a research-y conversation with a colleague when he said something very profound. "The problem with me" (he said) "is that I'm interested in too many things". My first thought was 'yeah, me too'. If you ask my mentor 'what is the problem with Carol Haigh?' somewhere in the 15 volumes of documentation he would hand you in return would be the phrase "She has no focus". But my second thought was "why is that a bad thing? 


Without doubt we need people who are happy to spend their entire career concerned about the healing rate of diabetic ulcers in women whose birth sign is Libra or are exercised about the life cycle of the Tibetan water snail but we also need individuals who can't settle on one topic or idea, people who consistently poke their heads above the crowd to see what's coming next. These are the people who can adapt their research interest to changes in policy or technology. They are the people for whom cross-disciplinary collaboration holds no fear because they aren't afraid to knock on the door of other previously unrelated disciplines and say, ' I can help with this'.


My fear for the next generation of researchers is that they won't be encouraged to celebrate their generalist tendencies and will be expected to slot themselves into the narrow confines of a specialist subject. Research has changed dramatically over the past decade - the age of the solitary researcher is coming to an end and multi-site, multi-institutional  collaboration is now the norm, interdisciplinary collaboration is already being seen as advantageous when bidding for large research grants and cross disciplinary research, such as  between health, technology and industry for example, is the next logical step.


For this to work we need to encourage the generalists, we need people who are willing to change focus and direction and use a macro gaze in order to move the whole of their discipline forward into the second decade of the 21st century as much as we need the  micro gaze of the specialists 

How to manage your supervisor 3 - Great Expectations

So far in this short blog series we have looked at how to select a supervisor and how to manage the first supervisory meeting but there are things that you should expect from your supervisor.  Most universities and research supervisors take student demands very seriously and will try to support them in any reasonable requests. Unfortunately though they rarely tell students what is on offer and so students don't know what is available and what they can ask for. The following are just a few of the things you can expect your supervisor to help you with.


Provide guidance in planning the research project - A PhD is a research training program, no-one expects a new doctoral student to have their research project completely planned from day one. You can expect your supervisor to be able to discuss different approaches to answering your  research question. You should also be able to look to them to provide suggestions and guidance with regards to suitable places to start literature searching as well. In addition, if you have identified and area in which you feel you need further training or education, your supervisor should be able to help you find internal or external resources that will help or be able to provide access to supplementary instruction.


Help with ethics -  In the UK, if you are doing research in health and social care, you are likely to have the lovely experience of attending a Local Research Ethics Committee (LREC). Although ethics committees tend to be forgiving to applicants who are doing Masters degrees, understanding that they are relative novices in research, they will treat doctoral students projects with the same level of rigour that they apply to the studies of experienced researchers. If you are invited,your supervisor should attend the ethics meeting with you. This is partly so that they can provide support for you, partly because they should be able to field any questions that stump you and mainly because ethics committees love it when supervisors attend with their students as it reassures them that a novice researcher has the full support of an experienced one. Even if you are not facing LREC you will probably have to submit your study to the approval of the university ethics panel and you can expect your supervisors help in this too.


Integrating with the wider academic community - Part of the doctoral process is engaging  with the wider intellectual community in your discipline. For most people this usually  means attending a suitable conference. SOME universities (but no means all) have small pots of money that doctoral students can apply for to fund conference attendance. It is worth asking your supervisor if such funds exist and getting them to help you apply or seek other forms of funding if none are available at your university. Another way of engaging with the external community is via publications and you should be able to expect your supervisor to be able to provide guidance on suitable target journals and the writing styles and standards expected.

Be the map reader on your doctoral journey - Your supervisor should be familiar with all the bureaucratic university milestones you are likely to encounter. Obviously it is your responsibility to keep such milestones in mind as well but you should be able to rely on your supervisor to be able to guide you on the preparation of progress or transition reports and, at the end of the process make informed suggestions with regard to the selection of examiners.


I know some doctoral candidates will read this and roll their eyes muttering 'my supervisor didn't do this'. None of the things I have outlined in the blog should be onerous or outside of the remit of the supervisor. But remember, you have to be the proactive one in this scenario, so think carefully about what you want from your supervisor and make your expectations clear to them. You can rest assured they will be making their expectations crystal clear to you!

How to manage your supervisor 2- Entering the lion's den

Once you have found a supervisor that you feel is right for you, you face the challenge of the first supervision meeting. The important thing to remember here is to
start as you mean to go on.  One of the biggest mistakes that many new doctoral students make to is under estimate how much power they have in the doctoral candiate/supervisor relationship. They assume that the association will continue along the pedagogical lines of their previous studies in which the supervisor is all knowing and the student is the passive recipient of their knowledge. This should not be the case. The relationship between supervisor & PhD student is very different from other supervisory relationships, it should be a partnership of equals so negotiation is key. The expectations of both parties should be made clear at the start. If you have found yourself an excitable supervisor who is easily distracted by attractive avenues of discussion (yes, I know all my students are looking at me) take an agenda with you so that you can keep them on topic.


One of the first things to discuss is how often you plan to meet, for how long (two hours is a good start), whether those meeting will be face-to-face or via Skype or e-mail and where they will be (supervision doesn't necessarily have to be on-campus). The frequency of supervision changes across the course of the PhD so you may wish to see your supervisor every month in the early stages but less regularly during data collection or writing up phases. Regardless of frequency it is always a good idea to make your next supervision appointment before you leave. It is easier to cancel an appointment you suddenly find you don't need than to make one urgently.

It is a good idea if you have a broad idea of the focus you plan to take with your thesis but it's not a good idea if you are not open to debating or amending that plan. Many new doctoral students will start their PhD absolutely confident that they know exactly what they are going to be doing over the next 3-6 years. Equally as many complete a thesis which bears no resemblance to those original plans. So, be ready at your first meeting to have a long discussion about your chosen topic and all of the different ways you could explore it. Remember at this early stage nothing is carved in stone.

Most universities have set milestones that you will need to achieve and so it's a good idea, if you can to find out what they are ( they are usually outlined in the Post Graduate Research Regulations and the majority of universities have these available online) and discuss them with your supervisor. 

Even at your first meeting it doesn't hurt to be thinking about papers you will be publishing from your work and to discuss issues around what support your supervisor will be able to provide to help you, especially if you are a publishing virgin. Most supervisors will expect to have their names on papers you publish from you PhD, particularly if they have contributed in a more substantial way than just editing or proof reading but it is not inappropriate for you to expect to be first author.


So, for the first meeting;

1. Negotiate how your relationship is going to work. 
2. Negotiate what you expect from each other. 
3. Be ready to discuss what you want to do and to explore different ways of doing it.
4.  Be clear what the University set milestones are and how they fit into your project plan 
5. Be ready to discuss a publication plan and authorship.

The first supervision session is a bit like a first date - you will probably both be on your best behaviour and trying to impress but you will also get a sense early on as to whether this is a relationship that has potential. Unlike a first date it isn't necessary to buy your supervisor flowers but don't be afraid to take biscuits.

How to manage your supervisor 1 - Finding the needle

As the new academic year looms ever closer and new doctoral students start to search Amazon for books with titles like 'How to get a PhD', it seemed to be the right time for a series of short blogs on How to manage your supervisor. This first blog explores the qualities you should look for in a good supervisor


At the risk of paraphrasing Mrs. Beeton - first find your supervisor. Many new doctoral students do not realise that they can actually have a say in who supervises them. So it's a good idea to consider the following when you are looking for the perfect supervisor;

Find a supervisor who is knowledgeable and who understands the nature of PhD work - Every supervisory team should have at least one person on it who has supervised doctoral students to completion before. This is important because it shows you that they understand the quality and standard expected from a PhD and suggests (but doesn't guarantee) that you can have some trust in their judgement. It's helpful if you can have a supervisor that has some expertise in your field or your chosen methodology but ensure that they are open enough to respect your ideas and planned approach to your thesis otherwise you will just end up replicating their PhD (which, incidentally, it might be a good idea to skim read if you can get hold of it to get a feel for their standards of writing and ideological position and also allows you to giggle at the things they got wrong).

Make sure that they have enough time for you - Talk to the doctoral students they already supervise, if they tell you that it's difficult to pin them down for appointments or, worse, if they make appointments then cancel them regularly then approach with the utmost caution! You want someone who will read your work, comment on it intelligently and help you through the process, not someone who 'collects' students to supervise because it makes them look important.

Consider some professional supervision (as well as academic) - If the focus of your doctoral study is around your professional environment you might benefit from asking some one from you work place to contribute to the supervision process. If your supervisor is methodologically sound but doesn't have a lot of insight into your clinical or work based reality then a supervisory 'buddy' at work can really help. This person doesn't necessarily need to have a PhD, they just need to be expert in their/your field and someone you respect.

Find someone with whom you can get on - Most importantly you must be able to get on with whoever ends up as your supervisor.  This should not be a surprise, this is the person that you are likely to spend the next 3-6 years with so you need to have someone with whom you can sustain a relationship. Most PhD students will spend longer choosing a sandwich than they will choosing their supervisor, which is why lunch is often more enjoyable that doctoral study.

Finding a good supervisor can feel a bit like finding a needle in a haystack, you have to know what you are looking for, rummage around a lot and... erm, if you are not careful there may be bleeding? (I possibly should have thought this simile through a bit more). Most novice doctoral students are too worried about whether they will be able to do a PhD to think about how important it is that the person who will be taking the journey with is the right one for them but this is a very important first step.