Did I spend too long a time to prepare for my thesis?/how long does it take you to carry out a experimental study?

[longforit]

Hi guys!

 

I'm currently working on my M.A. thesis. It's a study of mid-level complication (I'll recruit two heterogeneous groups through a screening test and ask them to do two perceptual experiments (I'll synthesize the stimuli for one experiment), together with some other background measurements). It's my first time to do lab phonology and it took me 4 months to go through the preparation work (read literature, pin down the experiments that will answer my research questions, write the proposal and the IRB application). I was wondering if it's just me or it's normal to take such a long time to just preparing for a thesis/study.. (My advisor seems not very happy with my slow progress..) I hope I could finish the thesis by next May so that I could graduate in time.. Hope somebody could share his/her research experience. Thank you!

 

 

[fuzzylogician]

I wouldn't say 4 months is particularly fast but I also don't think it's all that slow since it's your first time doing this type of work. It means you probably took longer than you otherwise would on all stages of the design of the experiments, including reading the literature and preparing the stimuli, which can be very time consuming. Those things improve with time, when you learn to be more efficient with your time, with using the software, and you learn what makes good vs. not so good stimuli. It's always been my experience though that things take longer than you think and in general they almost never work out the first time around - you do a pilot and then all kinds of unexpected things happen and then you spend more time figuring out what happened and redesigning or redoing some (or all) of your stimuli. It's an important part of the process. Personally, these kinds of "problems" have led me to some important discoveries in my research.

 

It's a shame if your advisor isn't happy with your progress but doing things yourself is an important part of learning to be an independent researcher and it's just a fact of life that things will be slower when you're just starting out. Do you have reasons to think you are behind other students in your cohort or others in years ahead of you who do similar work? If so, you could talk to some of them to figure out how they were able to be faster. Maybe there are tricks you could pick up that would help you speed the process along. However, I think it's important to point out that in my experience experimental work does take longer than paper-and-pencil work. It's why collaborations are so important. It's also a fact of life that there's always going to be someone who is better/faster/whatever and I wouldn't worry about comparing myself to that person.

[longforit]

I wouldn't say 4 months is particularly fast but I also don't think it's all that slow since it's your first time doing this type of work. It means you probably took longer than you otherwise would on all stages of the design of the experiments, including reading the literature and preparing the stimuli, which can be very time consuming. Those things improve with time, when you learn to be more efficient with your time, with using the software, and you learn what makes good vs. not so good stimuli. It's always been my experience though that things take longer than you think and in general they almost never work out the first time around - you do a pilot and then all kinds of unexpected things happen and then you spend more time figuring out what happened and redesigning or redoing some (or all) of your stimuli. It's an important part of the process. Personally, these kinds of "problems" have led me to some important discoveries in my research.

 

It's a shame if your advisor isn't happy with your progress but doing things yourself is an important part of learning to be an independent researcher and it's just a fact of life that things will be slower when you're just starting out. Do you have reasons to think you are behind other students in your cohort or others in years ahead of you who do similar work? If so, you could talk to some of them to figure out how they were able to be faster. Maybe there are tricks you could pick up that would help you speed the process along. However, I think it's important to point out that in my experience experimental work does take longer than paper-and-pencil work. It's why collaborations are so important. It's also a fact of life that there's always going to be someone who is better/faster/whatever and I wouldn't worry about comparing myself to that person.

 

Thank you Fuzzylogician! You'are always being so nice and helpful! I've heard that it takes many trail and error to carry out an experimental study. Even to write a script to synthesize serveral syllables would take months! I'm a little envious of PhD students for having years to carry out a study and perfect it over time. I actually quite enjoy the process of encountering problems and readjusting the designs and exploring one particular problem further and further through time. But that's probably not realistic for my M.A. thesis.  Am I being too ambitious to expect a "perfect" study (in the sense of confirming my predictions and producing statistically significant results) in my first hands-on research? I really don't know what expectation I should have on myself and what expectation my advisor (and my Ph.D. application admission committe) has on me.. and it makes me sooooo anxious.

Edited December 3, 2013 by longforit

[fuzzylogician]

You're welcome

 

Am I being too ambitious to expect a "perfect" study (in the sense of confirming my predictions and producing statistically significant results) in my first hands-on research? I really don't know what expectation I should have on myself and what expectation my advisor (and my Ph.D. application admission committe) has on me.. and it makes me sooooo anxious.

 

First off, hoping for *perfection* is never a good thing. In my opinion it's how people get held back because they keep doing the same thing over and over instead of moving on, despite diminishing returns at some point. Learn to do work that's "good enough," I think that's critical if you are to be successful. (Also learn what it means for different parts of your work - e.g. your coursework vs. teaching vs. thesis work). It's of course possible to have significant results in your first real study -- not necessarily in the pilot but later on -- but given your time constraints and how well your pilot works, it may be hard. Sometimes you have a great idea but for whatever reason it just doesn't work out. Sh!t happens. You need to talk to your advisor about their expectations of you and your work. That's the best way to know and therefore not spend time worrying about what-ifs. You'll have an easier time planning for actual requirements as opposed to imagined ones!

 

If it were up to me, I think it's not reasonable to demand significant results at all costs but instead a thesis might describe an idea, experiments (design, methods, results, implications) and have some discussion of why things didn't pan out - anything from the theory was wrong to something was off with the design or implementation. If it's the latter, you may then propose a revision or follow-up experiment. To me that sounds like a perfectly respectable thesis. it wouldn't be as exciting as significant results and you obviously would go around excitedly presenting that at conferences but you should be able to defend it and move on with your life. Remember -- the thesis and defense are an internal requirement of your program, an exam that is part of your degree. It is not a normal step in research - there you would just debug your experiment, think about ways to improve whatever was problematic, and just try again! And you can still do that later on when you're in a PhD program, if you're still interested in that project. Or, it'd be totally legit to leave it behind and start something different for your PhD, and noone will think any less of you.

[longforit]

You're welcome

 

 

First off, hoping for *perfection* is never a good thing. In my opinion it's how people get held back because they keep doing the same thing over and over instead of moving on, despite diminishing returns at some point. Learn to do work that's "good enough," I think that's critical if you are to be successful. (Also learn what it means for different parts of your work - e.g. your coursework vs. teaching vs. thesis work). It's of course possible to have significant results in your first real study -- not necessarily in the pilot but later on -- but given your time constraints and how well your pilot works, it may be hard. Sometimes you have a great idea but for whatever reason it just doesn't work out. Sh!t happens. You need to talk to your advisor about their expectations of you and your work. That's the best way to know and therefore not spend time worrying about what-ifs. You'll have an easier time planning for actual requirements as opposed to imagined ones!

 

If it were up to me, I think it's not reasonable to demand significant results at all costs but instead a thesis might describe an idea, experiments (design, methods, results, implications) and have some discussion of why things didn't pan out - anything from the theory was wrong to something was off with the design or implementation. If it's the latter, you may then propose a revision or follow-up experiment. To me that sounds like a perfectly respectable thesis. it wouldn't be as exciting as significant results and you obviously would go around excitedly presenting that at conferences but you should be able to defend it and move on with your life. Remember -- the thesis and defense are an internal requirement of your program, an exam that is part of your degree. It is not a normal step in research - there you would just debug your experiment, think about ways to improve whatever was problematic, and just try again! And you can still do that later on when you're in a PhD program, if you're still interested in that project. Or, it'd be totally legit to leave it behind and start something different for your PhD, and no one will think any less of you.

 

 

Thank you so much for bringing so many new insights to me. I'll definitely enjoy my project more if I have what you said in mind. Thank you!