hannes52

Hey guys, I have a question about conducting interviews through video or voice calls in social science (qualitative) research. My friend from another department did one interview through Skype video chat because the interviewee resided in a different country. However the supervisor told her to do do another one and explained that in social science interviews should always be conducted face to face. It is less effort from the student to conduct interviews online compared to when they are done through face to face interactions and for that reason only the final grade of the thesis will be lower. My project is with tourists travelling to my current place of residence so 5 out of 6 of them that I contacted in advance did not have time to meet me in person before they left. I think doing the interviews online would help me a lot but with the experience of my friend I am reluctant. I haven't spoken with my supervisors as I would like to get more information from students of different universities and regions to back myself up when I do. Do you have any similar experiences? I'd love to hear about them. Thanks!

Just some updates about this. I decided to change my topic and came up with a new proposal before asking for a meeting with my supervisor. She agreed to meet with me and brought on board a second supervisor who I felt that would have more time for graduate students. From autumn 2018 until now I have been working on my literature review and contacting potential interviewees and so far I have conducted four interviews, which have been sent to my supervisors for advice. After that I met them in Oct. 2018 before going abroad for an internship in Nov. I came back in Dec.and kept on working on lit review and interviews and sent updates to them in early January. There has been no reply from either of them and I sent another email on Feb. 1st and haven´t heard anything so far. I spoke with other graduate students who are a year before me and unfortunately she had to go through the same thing. They never read anything she wrote and they never reply until it was too late. Every single one student had to delay graduation for at least one semester, although am not sure if this is the reason. So, by now i have accepted the fact that I need to do everything independently and have been giving myself deadlines to send things to supervisors. I am not gonna quit something I started, especially when I am so close to finishing.

probably not as disappointed, to be honest.

Thank you both for your advice. I will keep you updated on the situation

thanks for your reply. Yes I agree with you and am overreacting now. I should have thought about professors being busy doing other work. I guess I just got very disappointed as I have been waiting for feedback on this proposal since march and have not gotten any from anyone.

And I got a reply saying that she will read my proposal next week. Next week?? Really? I don't understand why they recruit people in the program as they clearly have to time for students!

@fuzzylogician Thank you for your advice. I spoke to one student who is a year ahead of me and turns out that both her and another student felt exactly the same isolation and lack of support during their studies. Unfortunately it seems to be the pattern in this department and a lot of graduate students had to extent their studying period and delay graduation. She has suggested me to speak to my second supervisor and I have sent her my proposal to read. I don´t know what suggestion I will get from her(if any suggestion at all) but am just hoping for the best.

Dear all, Thank you for spending time reading this. I have been struggling with getting support from my current supervisor as she is the head of my department who is always very busy. I am a first year graduate student who started in this MS program last August and now it is only three weeks before I have to do a presentation to introduce my final project to all the professors in the department. I have decided on this topic agreed by my supervisor in late February and have been working on a research proposal for the past a few weeks. I sent her the proposal before but never got any feedback as she has been really busy. I have been meeting with her but not very regularly as the meetings have been delayed or canceled as things always come up and she could not meet me. This morning I was waiting for her for 10 min outside of her office only to receive her email saying "I am sorry I have to cancel our meeting". Turns out that she had a family emergency as well as a work emergency. OK fine if you have an emergency, but when I asked her about when we could meet again, she replied with one comment saying that I should sharpen my research question and work on the literature review before schedule another meeting with her and this second supervisor that I only met once. Even if it is a crappy proposal, I deserve more comment on two sentences. I have been feeling so lack of support from her and am just crashing down in the classroom now. I feel that I need to change the research topic because it is going nowhere while thinking that it is possible that the disappointment from communicating with this supervisor is stopping me from doing a better job. I feel that I need to change a supervisor but am too anxious to confront her as she has a lot of authority in the department. I just don't know what to do. Any suggestions from anyone is appreciated. Thank you!