Conference presentation - insufficient data

[dolcevita]

I had a paper accepted at a conference, to which - against my better judgement - I accepted. I was reluctant to accept, because at the time of applying, I was still collecting data, and figured I would manage to collect enough (I know, #1 mistake)...and as it turns out, I wasn't able to collect as much as I had hoped. Because it's a grad student conference, a number of people told me it wasn't a big deal, and I could just present my paper as a pilot study (which it was)/work-in-progress. When I mentioned this all to my adviser the other day, he seemed extremely concerned that I would essentially be ripped apart for the lack of participants in my study, and presenting a weak study would be bad for my rep.

At the moment, he wants me to put together my presentation and show it to him so he can give additional feedback, but now I'm so tense and anxious about (a) getting his incredulous disapproval for the first time and (b) being publicly cut down and embarrassed at this upcoming conference, that I wish I could cancel. It's in a couple of weeks though, so that seems out of the question. 

Any suggestions on how I should fix this? My adviser said to focus on qualitative since I don't have much to go off of re: quantitative, and for my part, all I can think of doing is acknowledging the shortcomings of my study but focus on the results that I do have. Or do you think I'm overreacting, and an incomplete study/a study that didn't go as planned isn't grounds for tarring and feathering a conference participant? :-/ 

[fuzzylogician]

It's really hard to give specific advice for such a vague question. The best advice I can give is to do what your advisor says, he has your best interests at heart. I don't think it's that uncommon for students to present half-baked ideas at graduate student conferences. I don't think it hurts their rep because these conferences aren't that important to begin with. It's just an opportunity to get some experience presenting work at a low-stress event and to get some feedback. Regardless of how much data you gather, one thing you can make sure of is that you give a good presentation. I think you'll learn soon enough that that often matters just as much as (if not more than) the content; people will remember a well-delivered presentation. So concentrate on doing a good job where you can. Maybe that also means, like your advisor says, to concentrate on qualitative data at this point. I would also make sure that your conclusions are in line with the data and not over-blown. But I do think it's entirely fair to say that you are reporting the preliminary results of an ongoing study, and that the findings suggest ABC, and you are now working on expanding XYZ to explore [whatever].

[TakeruK]

I think your advisor is giving you great advice and they are going to help you fix it. I understand the feeling of not wanting to feel like you let your advisor down but it sounds like he really wants to help you. I think it's important to become accustomed to showing your advisor work for feedback. You don't have to be perfect in front of your advisor at every moment.

I want to second everything fuzzy said, especially the "really good presentation" part. People can forgive an incomplete or preliminary study if it was well presented and you motivate the problem in an interesting way. People may be less forgiving if your presentation doesn't show any concrete results and it was also poorly delivered, because it makes people feel like you wasted their time. However, that said, most people come to conferences to hear about your work, not to poke holes in your results and "tar and feather" you!

Finally, one additional piece of advice would be to consider showing what results could look like once your data is complete. Perhaps you can show some projected data and describe possible scenarios/hypotheses and what the data would look like if these scenarios/hypotheses were true.

[dolcevita]

Thank you, both! (and I suppose I should have been a little more specific - my study has to do with multilingualism and language attitudes) I feel a little more confident that I might be able to pull this off yet -- I am fortunate to have strong presentation skills, so hopefully they'll save me. I like the idea of shifting some focus onto the future, with projected data/expanding the breadth of the study.

[rising_star]

It wouldn't be a graduate student conference if it didn't feature papers where the data collection didn't go as planned, people wrote their papers/presentations the night before or day of, and/or people say that they are only going to talk about maybe two sentences of what was in their abstract. S%^t happens, particularly at grad student conferences. It'll be fine. Follow your advisor's advice but don't back out of the conference. It's a good experience that you shouldn't miss out on.

[dolcevita]

Hi again,

I just wanted to follow up post-conference. Thanks again everyone for your thoughts - I took your suggestions and the conference went really well! I had a receptive audience, and no one seemed turned off/critical of my data, if anything, people seemed genuinely interested in my topic, and I ended up having quite a few chats about it even after my presentation.  I feel a bit silly for being so worried, but at the same time have learned from this experience as well in terms of what I want my research/data to look like so I actually feel comfortable presenting at a conference!

Edited February 25, 2017 by dolcevita

[TakeruK]

Yay!  Always nice to hear updates on what happened

[szabo]

Similar experience, similar worries, similar result. What a roller coaster grad school is!