A Good Plan: Regular, Frequent Meetings with My Chair

Yesterday, I had my first bi-weekly phone call with my chair for the semester. Prior to the call, I prepared by emailing her my thoughts and questions, which she said was helpful. We discussed her feedback to my ideas, which involved some simplification/streamlining of my research ideas. We also addressed my questions having to do with possible sample criteria and methodology.

By the end of the 30-minute call, while I hadn't been exactly sure what steps to take next, I had more clarity than before we talked. I had a list of four tasks on which to focus before the next phone meeting:

•       Consider narrowing focus a bit more as mentioned.
•       Look for mixed methods methodology, as I plan to use mixed methods, in studies related to my research interest.
•       Review mixed methods and the parallel/integrated approaches to mixed methods, both of which my chair referenced during our call
•       Learn how to mine data from Twitter, the social media network which will be the arena of my study.

Now that the ice is broken, I'm more looking forward to our next calls because I now have a clearer understanding about how to begin forging this research trail. 

Tonight, I began looking for ways to gather the data I want to use from Twitter through search engines and APIs. I found a number of useful papers and blogs which I downloaded into a folder to read over the weekend.

Things are looking up!

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