students – Post-Graduate Proof-Reader Blog

Making the most of your IPA data: How to beat some common errors

If you’re a student or academic conducting an IPA study, you’ll know that the data is where the magic happens. Interpretative phenomenological analysis is all about inductive work – that is, immersing ourselves fully in the data so that we can explore what’s going on for the participants and then communicate our interpretations of those experiences to readers.

This means that the quotes you choose to present in your findings section – along with the interpretations of those quotes – are perhaps the most important element of your dissertation, thesis or paper. Selecting the quotes that best illustrate the participants’ experiences and that allow you to demonstrate how you reached your findings will stand you in really good stead when you reach your viva or are facing peer review.

There are some mistakes I see frequently in findings sections, so I’ve written this blog to help IPA researchers identify the best quotes to share and present their interpretations in the optimum way.

Select the data that fully evidences the points you want to make

A common issue I see is quotes and interpretations that don’t match up. When you’re immersed in your data, it’s easy to forget what your readers don’t know. This means you might state interpretations as confident findings – but without the data to back it up, examiners and peer reviewers won’t know what led you to those ideas.

When your data and your interpretations don’t match, that can be a problem!
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While it’s fine to communicate some contextual information without data – for example, you might explain that you’d asked a certain question just before this data was given to you, or you might set the scene for what the participant is talking about – any interpretive findings must be backed up by evidence. Therefore, once you’ve got a draft of your findings section, check all the claims you’re making about the participants’ experiences and ensure that the data that led you there is on the page.

Ensuring that the quotes you present are long enough to paint a picture

Another frequent problem in the theses I look at is that the quotes are uniformly too short. Of course, not every quote you include can or should be a full paragraph, but in IPA, if all your quotes are one-liners, this is a red flag to examiners.

IPA researchers tend to explore complex, emotive topics about which little is currently known. Subjects like these cannot be adequately illustrated through short quotes alone.

Additionally, IPA analysis is about digging deep into the data – exploring the messiness, the contradictions, the hidden meanings. Analysis like this is often more fruitful if it’s been applied to longer sections of data.

If your quotes are too short, you may not be able to reach where you want to go…
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Being truly interpretive rather than descriptive

Building on the above, another common error is that even if great quotes have been presented, the analysis that accompanies them is too descriptive. IPA is a deeply linguistic form of qualitative analysis, so we should be taking the time to really dig into the language that participants are sharing with us and considering how it adds to our understanding of their lived experiences.

Let’s take this piece of made-up data, from a made-up study about junior doctors’ mental health, as an example:

Sarah: I was working 14 hour days, was battling sleep on my drive home every night. I was fighting to do well at work, but when I got home after every shift, I was destroyed. I felt completely laid to waste. Yet I had to plaster a smile on and do it again the next day.

A researcher might state that Sarah’s long working hours are harming her mental health. And that’s correct, of course. But for an IPA study, this interpretation doesn’t go far enough.

Let’s take a closer look at this data, which contains a few striking words and phrases – note that the participant was ‘battling’ and ‘fighting’, and yet despite this, she was ‘destroyed’ and ‘laid to waste’. These words conjure up the image of a bloody battle – a battle which Sarah is losing and which has left her ruined, a shell of her former self.

Attending to the imagery that participants use in their language can help deepen analysis
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Her only defence against the war zone of work is to ‘plaster on a smile’, a phrase which shows that her cheerful work persona feels like a performance. Additionally, a sticking plaster feels completely inadequate for facing the battle of work she has described.

Ok, so I made this data up and deliberately loaded it with language that could be quickly unpicked in this way, but it’s amazing how often participants pepper their words with vivid imagery that, when analysed, can provide a resonant insight into their life worlds.

Your data will almost certainly be full of interesting language, so don’t miss the opportunity to analyse it deeply. Insights like this will advance your work greatly.

Show divergence as well as convergence

Any student of IPA can recite the idiom that we’re looking for divergence as well as convergence. However, it’s rare for me to see divergence mentioned in findings sections. Seeking and discussing convergence is easier and – perhaps – feels safer. But divergence is important too. Why? Because human experience is messy and varied, and cannot be reduced to yes or no experiences, much as we might wish it could be!

Divergence can take several forms. It could be that most participants report a certain emotional reaction to (say) a cancer treatment, and another reports the opposite emotional experience.

If you were conducting a study about bereavement, all participants may share the experience of anger, but for some, this takes the form of shouting at friends and family, while others take up boxing or direct their anger at themselves.

Or perhaps you’re doing a study about waiting for a liver transplant. Participants may attach a similar meaning to an experience while expressing it in very different ways. For example, most participants might describe putting their lives on hold because of uncertainty about the future. However, another might respond to the same uncertainty by embracing new experiences and living more intensely in the present. Although their behaviours differ, both accounts may reflect a shared awareness that the future can no longer be assumed.

All such examples of divergence should be included in your write-up, as they all demonstrate different aspects of the experiential elements you’re presenting through your analysis.

Life contains divergence. Seek it out in your analysis!
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Structure your quotes and interpretations to tell a narrative

A final common error I see is a failure to structure subthemes and GETs so that they tell a coherent story. Instead, students sometimes just start with one participant, quoting all their relevant data, along with interpretations, before moving onto the next one.

No matter how insightful your analysis, this is not a good way to write up IPA. It leads to repetition and means you will miss out on showing how one element of a subtheme leads to another, which builds on the first and paves the way for the next.

As you create your PET and GET tables, think about how your findings can be structured to tell a story that best reflects the various experiences of the participants and has the potential to offer a resonant example of the meanings behind those experiences.

You will almost certainly have to keep tinkering with this structure as you write up, but that’s fine as this is part of IPA.

If you’re currently analysing IPA data and would value specialist input on theme development, interpretation, or analytic depth, my colleague Rachel Starr and I offer dedicated IPA mentoring via IPA Insights. We support researchers at all stages of the IPA process, from early coding through to thesis write-up and viva preparation.

You can contact IPA Insights here.

Alternatively, if you’re looking for proofreading or written feedback on your academic work, you can contact PGPR via this form.

Five common problems for postgrad, qualitative students – and how PGPR can help

Here at PGPR, we’ve been helping postgrad qualitative students polish and refine their work since 2018. We love our work and our clients – you guys are dedicated, friendly and warm, and you all do such amazing research. We always enjoy helping you, so in that spirit, here’s a list of some of the problems we see cropping up time and time again – and some ideas for how to avoid them.

1. Dictionary swallowing

Postgrad work is a few steps up from undergrad – steps that can initially feel huge and intimidating. One of the hardest things can be getting to grips with all the new terminology you’re suddenly dealing with.

Phenomenology, hermeneutics, heuristics, epistemology, ontology – it’s enough to make your head spin.

Getting to grips with all these concepts and presenting your understanding of them can be tricky. Making it even more complex is the fact that academic writing follows a particular style and has certain (often unspoken) rules.

Read the dictionary by all means – but don’t swallow it!

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A common response to these factors is to write in sentences and paragraphs that are so chock-full of multi-syllabic words and awkward passive phrasing that they must be read six times to be understood. So where you could have said:

Ontology and epistemology are two key ideas in philosophy that help us understand reality and knowledge.

Instead, you will say:

Ontology and epistemology constitute the foundational pillars of philosophical inquiry, delineating the fundamental nature of reality and the mechanisms through which knowledge about that reality is ascertained.

As you can see, this longer and more complex sentence is in no way better. The first and best rule of any writing is ‘omit needless words’ (Strunk and White, 1918), and that definitely applies here.

When we at PGPR see language like this, it can make us wonder whether the client really understands what they are describing. Therefore, first, check that you fully understand the concepts you’re writing about. Try explaining them to a friend and then writing that explanation down. What you get from this exercise will almost certainly be better than striving to write in ‘academise’.

Try checking out this quick video where Steven Pinker explains why many academics write so badly – it’s not just the students who do this!

2. Analytical teething troubles

A common problem with qualitative work is that the analysis needs to be refined further. Perhaps you need to dig deeper into the participants’ language. Maybe your themes read like a list of different experiences rather than a discussion of what brings those experiences together. It could be that those themes or codes are disorganised.

Is your analysis working as hard as it could?

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If this is the case for you, fear not! Qualitative analysis is hard, and it’s rare for students (or academics) to get it ‘right’ the first time. Collaboration and inspiration from supervisors, colleagues, research groups or from PGPR can be beneficial for pushing your ideas forward and doing justice to your lovely data.

If you could do more with your data, contact us via the box below and you can book in for some feedback.

3. Not knowing when to quit…

When writing a postgrad thesis, you’re a bit like Aerosmith – because you don’t want to miss a thing. You’ve put your blood, sweat and tears into this thesis, so it’s entirely understandable that you will want to ensure nothing gets missed out.

Since the thesis is your baby, it might be hard to determine what needs to be included and what is less essential.

Additionally, many of our clients have trouble trusting that readers are paying attention to their work, which means they can repeat the same ideas and concepts, in the same level of detail, many times throughout their thesis.

If you’re struggling with your word count, put your thesis down for a bit. Returning to it with fresh eyes will help you spot areas you can cut out or points you’ve repeated.

Plus, did you know that PGPR offers a word reduction service? We can cut up to 20% from your work for a small additional fee when you book in for proofreading. Another pair of eyes can be useful in murdering those darlings and getting your work as sharp and shiny as a diamond.

PGPR can help you snip back those extra words.

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4. DIY ToC

The table of contents (or the ToC) can be a puzzling beast to get right. Page numbers will keep shifting as you keep adding to your masterpiece. Headings and subheadings shift around and get amended – and many of our clients think they need to deal with this manually.

Here’s the fantastic news – you can leave your ToC to us entirely. With just a few simple clicks and highlights, our formatting whizz Astrid can create an interactive table of contents that you can update when you amend your thesis.

If you’re coming unstuck with your ToC, book in for our formatting service and we will do all the heavy lifting for you.

PGPR can do the heavy lifting for you

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5. Deadline emergencies

Look – we get it. Time goes quickly, life is hectic. All of a sudden, your postgrad deadline is only two weeks away, and you still haven’t booked that brilliant proofreading and feedback service you heard about. (That’s us, BTW!) If this is you, don’t worry – we will do our best to still fit you in.

However, if you can send your work earlier, we hugely recommend this. Why? Well, for a start, a longer period between us looking at the work and you submitting your thesis gives you longer to respond to our amendments. This is especially useful if you’ve booked feedback. Sometimes an analysis chapter might benefit from two rounds of feedback, which means that waiting until you’ve dotted all the ‘i’s, crossed all the ‘t’s and are eager to submit can lead to problems.

Of course, sometimes we are fully booked, so if you wait until the last minute, we might be unable to help you, which would be a shame.

We’re happy to look at individual sections of your thesis over weeks, months or even years. You don’t have to wait until everything is finished to book our services. If you’ve got a lit review you’ve finished but you’re waiting for ethics to come through so you can recruit the participants, send us that lit review and you can be doing your amends while you wait. And then when the deadline comes around, you’re ahead of the game and can smile the smile of the smug!

We love making our clients smile!

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Whatever your issue, if you’re a postgrad qualitative student needing extra help, we are here for you. Just contact us via the box below and tell us what’s going on for you.

How a PGPR video consultation can help you

Are you a postgrad student using qualitative methods to explore a social science topic?

Are you wrestling with your analysis, your themes, your write up? Or maybe you’re feeling nervous about your viva?

Qualitative research is an intense process that requires a lot of careful thinking. You need to hold many ideas in your mind as you consider connections between your themes and how your research fits into the wider picture. It’s no wonder analysis can cause a headache.

That’s why PGPR offers video consultations: hour-long sessions in which one of our team of qualitative experts talks you through the challenges you’re facing in your research project.

If you’re wondering whether a PGPR VC can help you, read the following examples to see how we’ve helped clients in the past…

We’re always happy to help our lovely clients

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Aimee was working on resubmitting a reflective assignment as part of her psychotherapy doctorate. She was finding it challenging to revise her previous submission to ensure she met the assessment criteria while expressing her lived experiences clearly in a formal academic style. Aimee sent us her original submission, along with the feedback from her assessors and the assessment criteria. Through a series of video consultations, we explored how Aimee could relate psychotherapeutic theory to both her personal and professional experiences. We identified specific areas where she could demonstrate her relevant understanding in relation to the required learning outcomes. By explaining her ideas verbally, Aimee felt more confident communicating her knowledge, and successfully reworked her assignment with a clearer narrative arc.

We helped Aimee with her reflective assignment through a VC

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Bob had completed the write up of his interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) findings for his doctoral thesis. He had received feedback that his work was descriptive rather than interpretative and was unsure how to address this. Bob sent us his results chapter and we had a chat about how we could best support him. We agreed that a general discussion about how to be interpretative would be too abstract, so decided he would select some quotes from his findings which we could explore together. During the hour, we talked through a small selection of extracts in depth. This allowed Bob to get a sense of how to approach his data interpretatively, what to look for and the types of questions he could ask himself. He then felt more able to apply this to the rest of his findings chapter, which he continued to revise on his own.

Thanks to a PGPR VC, Bob was able to rewrite his results chapter

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Cathy had completed her PhD viva and was unsure how to approach her revisions. She sent us her viva report and thesis. In a series of video consultations, we focused on the different amendments required. In one session, we made a detailed plan for a chapter she had been asked to re-structure so that she could go away and organise her writing with clarity. In another, we discussed the examiners’ request that Cathy acknowledge the influence of her position on the research. We decided that writing a single reflexive statement would be appropriate and talked through what she might include in it. Cathy later sent some sections of her amended thesis for proofreading and written feedback to iron out the last details. Her revised thesis was accepted.

Congratulations to Cathy!

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If you decide to book a VC with PGPR, we will spend an hour looking at your work before the session, and then an hour discussing the work once it’s done.

Previous PGPR VC client Andrea K said:

“I found my consultation meetings with Rachel incredibly helpful. When I felt stuck in my analysis, Rachel helped me to understand better what I am doing well (which motivated me to continue) as well as areas for further learning by discussing specific examples in my data. She definitely helped me to understand better how to put theory (IPA principles) into practice (analysis). Each consultation was used very efficiently thanks to Rachel’s clear focus, and she also made sure we had some time to discuss any questions/dilemmas that I had. I would recommend these consultations to anyone who feels stuck or wants to learn what they do well and what they can improve. Do not hesitate to contact the team if you have any other issues in your research study as they seem to consider individual needs and requests very well.”

Get in touch via the form below to book a session with one of our qualitative experts.

New PGPR team members

Exciting times here at PGPR… our team has doubled in size over the past few months. We now have more staff members who can help you with all your proof-reading and feedback needs. Additionally, our new staff are bringing new expertise to the fold, so it could be that we can now help you or your colleagues with areas you hadn’t previously considered contacting us about.

While PGPR has traditionally helped qualitative psychology students, most of whom are using IPA or thematic analysis, we can now also help criminology, humanities, history and musicology students as well as students who are using quantitative analysis, mixed methods, ethnography and discourse or framework analysis.

Hurrah – we can help more students than ever!

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Here’s a rundown of our new stellar staff members.

Claire M has a BSc in psychology and criminology, an MSc in psychology of health and wellbeing and a PhD from Keele University. She is another discourse analysis expert who can offer feedback and video consultations in this area, as well as transcription. She has also edited the PsyPAG Quarterly Journal for two years and worked as an editor on the QMiP Bulletin since 2016. She believes it’s important to give encouraging feedback that doesn’t make students physically cringe and hide away for a week.

Claire R is a mixed-methods health psychology and health services researcher with a keen interest in digital health, long-term conditions and implementation science. She can offer proof-reading and feedback for students working with thematic analysis, framework analysis, ethnography and mixed methods. She has worked and studied at a variety of universities in the UK and completed her PhD in improvement science at the University of Southampton. She is currently based at the University of Oxford but lives in Southampton.

Talking your research over with one of our experts can lead to a breakthrough.

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Josie has been working as a lecturer in psychology, teaching BSc and MSc Psychology, for the last 12 years. She’s currently working as a teaching fellow at King’s College London. She can help you with proof-reading and feedback for thematic analysis, IPA and quantitative work as well as video consultations. She has taught research methods in psychology (both qualitative and quantitative), biological psychology, cognitive psychology, mental health, and the psychology of sleep and dreaming. She has also supervised many research projects for final year BSc psychology students, using a range of qualitative and quantitative methods and has written a popular book on the psychology of dreaming.

Nick can help you with any proof-reading needs. He has an undergraduate degree and a master’s in history and became an English language teacher after taking a CELTA course. He has also taught academic English and critical thinking skills to university-level students. Now based in Malaysia, Nick combines proof-reading and editing with tutoring. He has worked with a wide variety of texts, including journal articles for publication, dissertations, academic theses, corporate documents and university papers, while his proof-reading experience covers engineering, hospitality, political science and management.

The PGPR team are addicted to reading

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Shannon is another proof-reading whizz with expertise in quantitative methods. She also offers transcription. She completed a Bachelor of Business Science and a Master of Commerce in economics at the University of KwaZulu Natal. During her time there, she also worked as an economics tutor and an academic coordinator. She has assisted in various quantitative research projects, primarily working with econometric and statistical models. Working in research led Shannon to the role of proof-reader and editor for research papers, prior to their submission for publication. She also proof-read postgraduate dissertations in a variety of business-related subjects.

And last but certainly not least is Steph, a musicologist and early modern music book historian who can offer proof-reading and feedback. With a master’s degree in early music editing from Hull and a PhD in seventeenth-century music publishing from Manchester, she is now an Associate Researcher at Newcastle. She works on music in early modern England, particularly within the broader cultural contexts of print, book history and economic trade. She’s also the editor for the Northamptonshire Victoria County History Trust, meaning she is used to working with historians from a broad range of backgrounds.

The PGPR team have more degrees than you could throw your cap at

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If you or any of your colleagues would like to book one of our new team members to look at your work, please just get in touch via the box below – we’ll be happy to help.

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How to make your writing sing

If you’re an academic, you are also, by proxy, a writer. Academics lives are full of words. Emails, feedback to students, grant applications, papers, theses – all of these require the careful placement of the one word next to another. As Prince once (almost) said, if you put the right letters together, you make a better day. And if it’s good enough for Prince, it’s good enough for the rest of us mere mortals.

However, while we university types are educated up to the eyeballs in our particular topics, we’re not often taught much about writing itself. Sure, we might have had an undergrad lecture about writing essays which follow the funnel structure, but other than that, we’re left to sink or swim. Which, given how much of our lives we spend trying to communicate complex ideas through the written word, is perhaps a bit of an oversight.

Humans have been communicating their ideas through writing since ancient times.

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With that in mind, here are some of PGPR’s top tips for creating words which stand out.

1. Read

Every writer also needs to be a reader. Fiction writers are experts in their genre, reading everything they can get their hands on by the writers they admire. The same counts for academic writing. Read as many papers and books in your field as possible. Spot what works and what doesn’t. Try to use the best techniques in your own writing.

Additionally, two great how-to books that can help every writer are Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style and Stephen King’s On Writing. I’m sure there are other great books on writing which haven’t been written by someone called Steven, but those are a great starting point.

2. Plan

That funnel structure lecture you sat through in undergrad was actually pretty useful. Good academic writing should always follow a structure. This might feel boring, but it makes it easier for others to read, which should always be your aim. Think carefully about the points you want to make. How you order those points will influence how the reader digests your ideas, so plan carefully before you start.

A good plan is worth its weight in sticky labels!

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3. Write tight

As we’ve said in a previous PGPR blog, a key tenet of writing is to ‘omit needless words’ (Strunk, 2007). Effective writing is concise. We all write in longer sentences when we’re drafting something, so look back over your work and get rid of those filler words (‘that’ ‘very’ ‘really’) which aren’t needed.

Another tip for writing tighter prose is to avoid repetition. We all have favourite phrases which we use over and over again without even noticing. Try to spot yours and find new ways of phrasing. This will keep the reader’s attention.

4. The Curse of Knowledge (Pinker, 2014)

This concept, which Steven Pinker discusses in detail in The Sense of Style, is especially relevant to academics. When we’re an expert in any topic – be it phenomenology, attribution theory or fuzzy logic, it can be easy to forget that our readers don’t share our knowledge. This can mean we don’t provide essential explanations, leaving the reader lost. This is a tough nut to crack, but if you ask for feedback from a non-expert friend or colleague, they will be able to help you spot the holes that need filling.

A good friend will always help you out of a tight spot!

Image by Anja🤗#helpinghands #solidarity#stays healthy🙏 from Pixabay

5. Read your work aloud

You might feel like a bit of wally doing this, but it is super helpful. There’s something about reading aloud which helps you spot the awkward clauses or overly long sentences you might otherwise have missed. You could read to a friend or family member, or just to yourself in your locked office – whatever you choose, release your words into the ether and you’ll spot lots of areas to improve.

6. Impactful words should be at the start and end of sentences

This is a neat trick. If you are using words which pack a punch – and let’s hope you are – try to place those words at the start or end of the sentence, and your writing will immediately improve.

Let’s look at an example. Perhaps you’re writing up some qualitative findings from your fascinating study about eating tasty cakes. You’ve drafted the following sentence:

It was reported that the chocolate cake was the most delicious out of all of the options.

The three best words there, I think we can all agree, are ‘cake’, ‘chocolate’ and ‘delicious’. At the moment, while there’s nothing technically wrong here, those words are a little lost. Our hacky human brains might therefore jump over them, in our rush to skip to the end.

What might work better?

Most delicious, reported participants, was the chocolate cake.

The chocolate cake was reported to be the most delicious.

Chocolate was found to be the best flavour.

There is no one right answer. When you’re faced with a sentence like this, play around. Is ‘best flavour’ a more impactful way of saying ‘the most delicious’? Several needless words were omitted in the edited versions. Which sounds best to your ear?

Keep an ear (or two) out for those unnecessary filler words.

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7. Employ PGPR

If all this sounds like far too much hard work, just get in touch with PGPR via the form below. We’ll be happy to help your writing be the best it can be.

How transcription works with PGPR

If you’re a qualitative researcher, the chances are you will be conducting interviews. This means that at some point, all that lovely data will have to be transformed from audio files into documents that you can annotate and analyse.

Of course, in an ideal world, we would all transcribe our own interviews as it does get us that step closer to the data. In the real world, however, researchers often don’t have time for this laborious job. If you’re trying to recruit participants and work on your analysis whilst also looking after a family and working in a part-time job, the thought of sitting hunched over Word and VLC for days at a time trying to work out whether a participant said ‘pathology’ or ‘potatoes’ might be enough to make you weep.

Is transcription making you want to tear your hair out?

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Well, fear not, because PGPR now offers transcription alongside proof-reading and feedback. In this blog, we’ll explain exactly what happens if you decide to use PGPR to transcribe your precious data.

Step one… send us your audio file

We use the secure service Tresorit to transfer files. Tresorit is based in Switzerland and is one of the most secure services of its kind. All files are encrypted at source and the company has no way of accessing documents you upload or send through their service. They take security and GDPR compliance seriously, meaning your precious data is safe. You can send files of up to 5GB in this way.

You upload your file to Tresorit and send it to us. We will ensure that the link gets to the team member who is transcribing your audio. They will then download the file.

We guard your data carefully

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Step two… we transcribe the data

Since our team members are either qualitative researchers themselves or are editors who specialise in working on qualitative pieces, we understand how important it is to get every word and line of your interview exactly right. If you want, we can include hesitations, repetitions, ums and ahs, laughter and sighs. We can also anonymise all identifying data, such as names or locations, as we work.

Transcription is serious business

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Step three… we check that our work is accurate

We always listen to your interview twice over to ensure that our transcription is both accurate and thorough.

Step four… we send the interview back to you

Once the transcript is ready, we will password protect it and email the document back to you. You will then receive a text message from Layla or Johanna telling you what the password for your interview is. In this way, we are ensuring security. We can send your work back within 24 hours, 48 hours or five working days from the time you sent it to us.

That feeling you get when you don’t have to worry about transcribing your interviews…

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Step five… we delete your audio file

Again, this ensures that your confidential data doesn’t make it into the wrong hands.

If you’d like to use our transcription service, just get in touch via the form below, we’ll be happy to help.

How to sail through your postgrad viva

It seems like only five minutes ago that you were a trembling new student, going along to your first supervisory meeting with your knees knocking. But somehow, through a flurry of ethics reviews, recruitment and analysis, plus some blood, sweat and sobs… here you are. Your thesis is submitted, you’ve selected your examiners and the final hurdle is in sight.

The postgrad viva voce is truly a rite of passage. For those who don’t know, this is the final exam for a postgrad project. It takes different forms in different countries. For example, in the US doctoral defense, the supervisory committee also grill the student. In the European system, students have to defend their work in front of a public audience. Here in the UK, the viva involves sitting in a room with two examiners (one from the candidate’s university and one from another institution) for two, three, four or more hours, answering questions about your thesis.

It’s normal to feel nervous before your viva
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Most students feel nervous about their vivas. However, if handled correctly, they can be a fulfilling, rather than frightening, experience.

1. Take a break from the thesis

This is an important first step. Once you’ve had that thesis bound and put the obligatory smiling selfies on Instagram, put it down and don’t look at it for a few weeks. For a start, you deserve a break. But just as importantly, giving yourself space from your masterpiece will allow you to look at it with fresh eyes, so that you can spot areas to be discussed more easily. I’d also suggest using this downtime to buy yourself a lovely notebook that you can use for your prep. After all, stationery that makes your heart sing is never a bad thing.

2. Start by thinking about your strengths

…And why not? After all, you’ve written an entire thesis. This is amazing! If you start this process by remembering what you love about your research, that will set you up for a happier viva. What are the strongest findings of your thesis? Which aspects make you feel proud? Can you summarise the thesis in 300 words or so? Write all these points down in your notebook and get ready to shout them to the rooftops.

You wrote a thesis? That’s worth celebrating
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3. And then think about the challenges

The next step is to use those newly objective eyes to look for any weaknesses in the thesis. There almost certainly will be some, and that’s just fine. The point of a viva is not to prove that you’ve conducted a perfect series of studies; if such a thing were possible, we wouldn’t need peer-review. You’ll be better off demonstrating that you’re aware of things you might do differently next time, or which you might be able to address in your amendments. Write your ideas down in your notebook, along with some thoughts about challenges you overcame during the research. Additionally, if there are any theoretical areas you’re shaky on, re-read the literature and try explaining those concepts to other people.

4. Think about your examiners

You should already know your examiners and their work by this point. It’s important to remember that, while those examiners will (hopefully!) be as fair as they can be, vivas are run by humans and are therefore a subjective experience. Try to get inside the heads of your examiners by reading their publications. How does their work interact with yours? Can you think of what these particular people might want to ask you about your research?

Your examiners will have their own take on your thesis. Can you try to predict what that might be?
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5. Think about questions you might be asked

In addition to the list of questions the examiners might ask, re-read your thesis and think about the questions anyone would ask. Make lists of those questions. Write down your answers. If there’s anything you’re unsure about, make another list (who doesn’t love a good list?) and book in a time to talk those areas through with your supervisor, who is there to support you. If you’ve had any papers published from your thesis, think about the points your reviewers made. Might those points come up again?

6. Keep reading

Yep, there’s a lot of reading involved in viva prep. Once you’ve finished re-reading the thesis, you might also want to re-read the papers you cite most often. Plus, when did you write your lit review? It might have been a couple of years ago now. Have a look on Google Scholar and see if there are any papers which have come out since then that you need to know about for the big day.

As a postgrad, the reading never stops
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7. Practice, practice, practice

One of the things many postgrad students feel most nervous about – especially here in the socially awkward UK – is having to say their ideas out loud, rather than being able to hide behind the safety of a keyboard. The best way to beat those nerves is to practice. You might feel a bit silly, but ask your supervisor, friends, mum, partner, even your pet parrot to quiz you. Try explaining your ideas to people who don’t know anything about your subject. If they understand you, anyone will. The more you do this, the more confident you will feel, and the higher the chance that you might actually enjoy the viva. Trust me, unbelievable as that might feel from this side of the event, many people report genuinely enjoying this experience. After all, you’re getting to talk about your passion, the thing you know more about than anyone else in the world, to two experts you’ve hand-picked. This could be the stuff dreams are made of!

What do Dr Beaky and her colleagues think about your epistemology?
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8. Book a Skype session with PGPR

We offer hour-long video chat sessions which are perfect for students who are about to take their viva. While we obviously can’t read your entire thesis and quiz you on it, we will spend an hour looking at your notes and ideas beforehand. We can then talk through any concerns and worries you have, ask you some practice questions, and give you some friendly support. Get in touch via the form below to book your session.

Three challenges dyslexic post-grad students may face – and how PGPR can help

Written by PGPR admin assistant Layla

Did you know that around five per cent of university students in the UK are dyslexic?

Dyslexic students can struggle with things other students may take for granted, such as understanding textbook materials, spelling and grammar, note-taking, and organising and expressing their ideas on paper.

Undertaking a PhD is a big commitment and a lot of work. If you’re a PhD student with dyslexia, this can make things all the more difficult.

However, with the right support in place, it can also be a rewarding experience that not only looks great on your CV but can enhance your future career prospects.

Here are three challenges that PhD students with dyslexia might face and ways that PGPR can help:

Spelling and grammar

The standard of writing expected from a PhD is high. If you are a dyslexic student, you might find negative comments or feedback in this area demotivating, especially when you have spent hours diligently checking your finished paper. Text-to-speech software and grammar checkers can be useful for common spelling and grammatical errors, but quite often they miss details that can only be spotted by an eagle-eyed professional proof-reader.

Our basic proof-reading service is designed to spot those typos and punctuation errors, checking each line, suggesting alternative word choices and highlighting areas of text that are difficult to understand. You get two copies of your work back – one clean edit and one tracked, so you can easily and quickly spot what changes have been made.

PGPR can help you put the right letters together

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Organising your ideas

Being able to manage your time effectively whilst working on a PhD is essential. Many dyslexic students can find it difficult to organise their thoughts on paper or find they need to spend longer re-reading academic texts to ensure they fully understand what is being discussed.

It is easy to become overwhelmed with the workload involved in a PhD even with additional support from your university. PGPR’s feedback service can help you to successfully organise your ideas so they are the best they can be.

One of the team will go through your work and provide expert advice and feedback to help improve your structure, methodology, findings and discussion sections. We also offer a service that combines basic proof-reading with feedback for students who feel their English or academic writing skills could use an extra boost.

Feeling overwhelmed? We can help

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Lack of visible support

Students with dyslexia often comment on how their experiences of studying at a post-grad level are vastly different from an undergraduate degree.

Universities often have a good support system in place for undergraduates, such as extra time for exams or a project deadline, trained on-site support staff and specialist equipment to help dyslexic students. Embarking on a PhD, however, means a lot of working on your own, and getting extra time to plan or write your thesis can be difficult.

If you feel that you need more support, consider discussing this with your supervisor. Many supervisors will be able to work with you on a plan to guide you through your PhD. Others may be dyslexic themselves or have previously worked with dyslexic students.

You may also benefit from PGPR’s popular one-to-one Skype sessions, which are designed to allow you to discuss your work with one of our experts. These one-off or regular sessions provide support, guidance and deeper insight into your work and can help assuage any worries or fears you may be experiencing.

Everyone needs a helping hand from time to time

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Get in touch with The Post-Graduate Proof-Reader

The team at PGPR offer a wide range of services designed to help you achieve your personal best. Whether you need your lecture notes transcribed into a clear and readable format in a dyslexia-friendly font, or a dry-run of your ground-breaking presentation via Skype to help you practise speaking in public, we are here to help.

There are also unlimited resources for students with dyslexia online. Some of our favourites include The British Dyslexia Association and The International Dyslexia Association.

Still not sure if we can help you? Get in touch and let us know the details, and we will do our best to support you in your studies.

Six steps to the perfect discussion section

You’ve passed ethics, recruited participants, collected your data, analysed and written up your findings – phew! What a marathon. The hard work is basically over, right?

Well, sadly not, because there is one more hurdle to jump; the dreaded discussion section.

This is where you compare your work to the existing literature. Sounds simple, but this can be the hardest chapter to write. I have a theory (entirely untested, I should point out) that these chapters are especially hard for women, who have generally been socialised not to brag about their achievements, something you definitely need to do here.

Read on for six tips on how to leap over this final hurdle and write a devastating discussion.

1. Read around your findings

You will already have done plenty of reading for your lit review, but before you start writing, do some more, especially if you are doing qualitative work. In quantitative research, you shouldn’t discuss any papers you haven’t already bought up in your intro, but this is not the case for qualitative explorations, where the researcher will have been expecting the unexpected. Now that you have your unexpected findings, search for similar papers and make notes on the relevant points.

I find it helpful to start a new document listing each of my key findings, and to make notes of any existing findings which confirm, contradict or add to my own, along with a note of which paper the new findings have come from. Include the key findings from the key papers from your intro or lit review on this list as well. You might want to highlight findings which back yours up in one colour and those which don’t in another. This list document comes in really handy once you start to write.

Immerse yourself in the relevant reading

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Look for work from the same or similar methodologies to you, as well as work from other areas. Find and read papers that are cited in useful studies.

Top tip: if your university doesn’t have access to a paper you need, email the author, or look for them on ResearchGate or Twitter. They will probably be happy to share their work with you. (I am always happy to share my papers, just get in touch via the form below to ask.)

2. Think about format

The format of your discussion section should mirror that of your findings. This helps your reader to logically follow your train of thought; especially vital if your reader is a PhD examiner, for whom you want to make life as easy as possible.

Start with your first finding. Briefly recap it. A common problem I see with PGPR clients is that they spend too much time reminding the reader of findings. The findings chapter is the one before the discussion; try to trust that your work is interesting enough that the reader won’t have forgotten it already.

Think carefully about your format before you start writing
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Here is an example of a recap from a discussion section in my PhD, which was about the experience of living with and being treated for renal failure:

Seven of the participants talked about the impact that ill health made on their lives. Some found that ill health was a wearing intrusion, dragging them down and restricting them. Others had found ways to come to terms with living with their chronic conditions.

Following this, you might want write a brief summary of the existing literature, after which you can start comparing your work to what’s out there already.

3. Look for areas where your research confirms other findings

The next step is to demonstrate how your findings concur with existing work (if they do). This is where the list document you made earlier will come in useful. Look for findings that are similar to yours and tell the reader about those similarities. If you don’t have anything on your document which backs up your findings, have another look, just to be sure. However, don’t force similarities if they’re not there.

How similar does your work look to existing work?

Photo by Chan on Unsplash

4. Look for areas where your research builds on existing work

This step is similar to the previous one but can be trickier. Your work might appear to contradict existing work. Novice researchers may panic that this means their findings are ‘wrong’. However, is there a reason your findings are different from Professor Big-Brain’s? Did you speak to different participants? Has the political climate shifted? Perhaps participants reacted differently to you – an Asian female – than to Professor Big-Brain – a white male. If further research would be beneficial, point that out.

Perhaps your findings add a new dimension to a model or set of guidelines. If so, clearly demonstrate this and give yourself a gold star.

You might have an entirely novel finding – something no-one has found before. Again, check the literature carefully so that you can be confident you’ve not missed anything, but if so, use clear language to tell your reader that you have found something new and important. Don’t be shy about this! These are the kinds of findings you might include in bullet points about ‘what this adds to existing research’ when you’re submitting papers for publication.

Don’t let your brilliant new ideas sink without trace

Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash

5. Think carefully about what your reader needs to know

PGPR clients’ discussion sections are often overly long. We don’t need every detail of the papers you’re comparing your work to. Consider your examiners or the reviewers of your paper as you write. These people tend to be overworked as it is – and reviewing/thesis examination is extra work which they have to fit into their busy day. Do they really need to know exactly how many people Dr Finickity interviewed, or do they just need to know what those participants experienced?

Here is another example from my PhD, demonstrating a succinct comparison:

Several participants talked about a loss of freedom via the restrictions placed on them by their illness, either in terms of being too fatigued to live life to the full, or in terms of more practical concerns such as diet restrictions. Authors of previous qualitative work on ill-health have found similar themes. The restricting impact of ill health in terms of both social life and diet spoken about by Charlotte is reflected in findings by King et al. (2002), in which dietary restrictions and ill health were both found to have a major impact on the diabetic renal patients.

6. Ask PGPR for feedback

Discussion sections are difficult – but the PGPR team has plenty of experience writing, marking and examining these chapters. We are happy to offer feedback on how to get your discussion chapter just right, so fill in the form below if you would like some extra support.

Five tips for looking after your mental health as a postgrad

Postgraduate work is rewarding and can advance your career. But it can also be hard, lonely and scary. When your brain is full of ethics forms, analysis and recruitment, it can be hard to take care of yourself. Looking after your mental health is always essential but is especially important when you’re so busy you feel you don’t have the time. As the Zen proverb says:

‘You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day – unless you’re too busy; then you should sit for an hour’.

Here are five tips for maintaining your sanity while completing your master’s or PhD.

1. Fight isolation

Postgrad work is often groundbreaking. This is exciting, of course. But the problem with breaking new ground is that there might not be anyone else breaking that ground with you. This means you can end up feeling isolated.

Is there anyone else at your university doing similar research to you? If so, drop them an email, see if they fancy lunch. If not, have a look online for groups of people doing similar work to you. Lots of PGPR clients are conducting qualitative research using interpretative phenomenological analysis; if you’re one of those people, check out the IPA groups.io gang, which is a supportive place to ask questions and make contacts. Despite its reputation for being toxic, Twitter can also be a friendly space for academics. You might want to start out by following @AcademicChatter, @PhDVoice and PGPR’s account @DrJohannaSpiers for some interesting online conversations.

Postgrad work can be lonely
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2. Take breaks

When you’re drowning in deadlines, it can feel tempting to keep working on into the night, only stopping to cram crisps into your mouth every now and then. But we all know this is a bad idea, right?

Make sure you work regular breaks into your days. Does your uni have a gym? Go for a yoga class or a game of squash. Are you working from home? Go outside, sit in the sun, read a chapter of a novel. Is it Sunday and you’ve been working for 15 days straight? Stop it! Watch some Ozark and put your feet up. You’ll feel much better, and you’ll be more productive when you do get back to your desk.

3. Ask for support if you need it

There’s no escaping it; doing a master’s or a PhD is tough. You’re leading your own research, which is unpredictable and has many elements outside of your control. You’re probably skint. You’re watching your friends and family fill their evenings with fun while you’re conducting analysis and writing discussion sections. And you might be juggling family responsibilities while doing all this. If you need help, ask for it. Many universities have free counselling services which are quick to access. Your personal tutor is there for you to talk to. Asking for help is a sign of strength, so don’t be scared to reach out.

We all need a helping hand from time to time
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4. Celebrate the wins

If you’ve read this far, you might be forgiven for thinking postgrad work is nothing but doom and gloom. However, there are many triumphs along the way: getting accepted onto the course, passing your status upgrade, getting ethics approval, recruiting your first participants, writing your first paper, presenting at your first conference. These are all amazing achievements – remember to enjoy them!

Celebrate your postgrad wins whenever you can
Photo by Ambreen Hasan on Unsplash

5. Contact PGPR for extra help

If you’re feeling stuck with spelling, tense about tenses or grouchy over grammar as you’re writing up your findings, get in touch for proof-reading help. We can also offer written and video-based feedback for qualitative social science work or help with your interview schedules and conference presentations. Just fill in the form below to find out more.