Today in Phd land

Good morning,


Today in PhD land (that is what I call my life sometimes) I am planning to work on a few articles. Take Mugsy for a long hike and then take the night to relax.


After a fantastic night sleep I am settling down to my computer to work on 2 projects. The first, a theory and methods paper for a qualitative research methods course I am taking. The second, an analysis that I am submitting for publication through a marketing journal. 


So, theory - how do I view theory.....In social research (working with human behavior) A theory is an unproven idea or speculation. So anything can be a theory really- you know how people sometimes say "well in theory....." But i think In medical or scientific fields, a theory is actually tested and provable. If you have any thoughts on theory I would love to hear them. As much as I enjoy theory I really like methods. Right now I am exploring different interviewing techniques (interviewing technique = method). I have decided to use an emotionalism technique for my dissertation (like a senior capstone project or major research project). Side note- I feel like I have literally had to learn an entire new language.......


Here is table that gives a general overview of the three most common methods for conducting interviews. 

Due to the nature of my dissertation (Overweight women's experiences with athletic apparel), I want to use an emotionalism method for interviewing. This means that I want to have a semi-structured list of questions to go over with my participants (the people I interview) but I want to make the interview more of a discussion to really understand the emotional aspects of the clothing. I also have a specific type of woman that I want to work with so using a positivism approach would not work for me. Aside from my method I need to justify it......... If only it were as easy as saying, "I want to use emotionalism!" Because I know my committee will say "why?". The question I have heard a billion times since I started graduate school, "Why are you doing that?"...... 


So, one of my projects this morning is learning why I want to use that as opposed to other methods. 


Hmmmmmm, what else... I will also work on the analysis of customer reviews. I analyzed 70 consumer reviews from the Nike website (content analysis= a methodology in the social sciences for studying the content of communication. Earl Babbie defines it as "the study of recorded human communications, such as books, websites, paintings and laws.") I used that technique with plus size athletic apparel from the Nike website. It was a lot of fun and I am hoping to have it published this spring through a marketing and consumer behavior journal. 


Time to get to it.