As I’ve mentioned before, ths blog has been in something of an hiatus while I’ve been doing fieldwork, as the project has mushroomed in size.
Fieldwork began with a focus group in June 2010, since when I’ve been conducting interviews and observing meetings with people from around the East Midlands (and beyond). The last piece of fieldwork will take place at the end of August, leaving 13 months to analyse and write before thesis submission.
During that time, I’m planning to reboot this blog and explore (in short form) some potential themes from the research.
What are the potential risks of doing this? Some have warned me about the possibility of academic material being…err…nicked before it’s put into a paper or thesis.
If any readers have any experience, advice or articles they can provide me with, it would be much appreciated. Particuarly as I can expect my supervisors to be rather sceptical…
UPDATE – some Twitter feedback on the question to go with the comments here on the blog.
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Hi Warren.I would suggest that you are the best person to ascertain what content might be ‘nickable’ as you are best positioned to judge the nature of your emerging findings as original knowledge within the context of your specific field. Generally, I think this issue varies considerably between disciplines, particularly between the hard and soft sciences, and positivist and interpretivist approaches. Just ensure any confidentiality issues with participants, informers etc. are not compromised.Blogging also provides you with a platform to relate your research to contexts beyond the confines of your thesis, and to engage with a wider (non-specialist) audience.I look forward to some interesting posts.
Thx Andy – good advice re the "non-specialist" approach, that should definitely be a focus. My attitude to content always been that if I do publish something on a blog, at least there is a timestamped record of me putting it in public domain. But very aware that I need a good argument to stand up against sceptical supervisors etcThanks for encouragement, will be rolling in September…
Ahh, even my computer is not entirely convinced by posterous, so it’s not my phone’s fault ;o)Just thought I’d write up my tweets from last night in a bit of a longer form. I would strongly recommend you do blog as you go. Writing is analysis when you’re doing interpretive policy analysis and I certainly found it useful to be writing up scraps of ideas as I went along. Also, I don’t know if you’ve also got months of transcribing ahead of you, but a blog might be a good way to vent steam while doing that!RE. Nicking of ideas. I’ve come across this when someone nicked a PhD student’s regression model idea and tried to get a grant to do the research before the student would have completed their thesis. Pretty dirty. In my blog I said I was concerned about people nicking a research idea I have, which I am.However, I think with findings, and especially interpretive findings, it is a bit different. If you get enough traffic through here then hopefully you’ll be able to have a conversation about your findings. And it is much more difficult to nick a whole load of qualitative data and the analysis. If people nick the general idea, then I don’t necessarily see that as a problem, it’s just you having academic impact.And in these days of impact, it will be good CV brownie points!
Thanks for the comment, Peter. Good point re the difference between quant and quali findings, although guess ideas for future research in either could be equally rife for pillaging. No expert on impact, but guess that a blog – no matter how well maintained – won’t score anything officially. However, am a firm believer in ‘getting the message’ out in whatever way possible.