Nearing the end

I cleared a big hurdle on the dissertation today after defending my proposal. This clears me to begin collecting data and gives me some light at the end of the tunnel.

I have to finish by the time we move to Pennsylvania this summer. Lehigh doesn’t require it, but there are a lot of incentives to finish by the time I get there (not the least of which is my own sanity).

It might seem that I’m cutting it close, but I feel pretty good about where I’m at and am confident I’ll have no trouble finishing before we move. The reason for this is I did a lot of work on the front end of my dissertation proposal, to the point that it’s nearly 70 pages. I spent a lot of time consulting with my committee members as well to make sure I addressed concerns and issues with my methodology before I sent them the final draft.

Best part is I thoroughly pretested my scales, including the “virtual social capital” scale I’ve constructed for this research. The results came back good, and I mean really good, in terms of reliability. This will help quite a bit when I get my data for analysis.

Of course it wasn’t perfect (nothing ever is) and I have some revisions to make. Also, I have to restore some literature for the final dissertation that I cut out to make the proposal shorter (at 66 pages, heh). My method will be to randomly sample users of online communities, so I’ll be on the computer a bit trying to get that sample size to the desired N.

So I have a busy summer in front of me. Data collection should take most of May, but I’m confident I’ll have it wrapped up by the end of the month. I’m squeezing in ICA in a couple weeks here to present some research, plus Amy and I will be traveling to Bethlehem during the first week of June to find a place to live. But we’ve set a defense date of July 15, a few days after one of my committee members returns from New Zealand, which means this thing will be written up by the end of June.

I work better with the pressure of deadlines (hey, I’m a journalist) and so that will be my eyes-on-the-prize date that will give me some focus. Like I said, I have a good timeline and not too many more hurdles to clear so I’m more than confident this will be done and turned in before we leave.

One of the things I will miss about this experience is the interaction I get with my committee folks. They’re so brilliant, and the ideas I exchange in one-on-one meetings and full committee sessions are interesting and inspiring. This part of the process, where I get to work with such wonderful scholars and people, is one of the best parts of being a Ph.D. student.

Fortunately, I’m not sick of this research yet. Everyone says it will happen eventually, but I’m not even close to it yet. I feel as if I’m on the verge of discovery