Third Year Series | Mid Dissertation

Thought it was about time I had another dissertation catch up with you all. Find it hard to believe that I'm already half way through to tell you the truth but here we go. 

So I received my proposal feedback which was very positive and was graded a 2:1, not to shabby if you ask me. However this is only 10% of my final dissertation grade so still reaching for the stars. Worked out that I have to get 70.8% in my dissertation, the only time I get mathematical. My feedback firstly asked me to re-consider my title so it could be more directed, specific and actually ask a question for my to answer throughout my work. Currently still working on that as I'm not really sure how to re-name it right now but I'm sure it will come to me soon. 

Then I had to switch up some words, I have a tendency to flower things out and be very descriptive. It can be so easy to get carried away but there is normally a word limit you don't want to go over so just a few word changes from me and I was where I should. Finally it was just clearing up who my audience was in more detail. A clear audience is important to know who you are directing the work at specifically, how it will benefit them/their company and why the should consider changing what is already working well for them.

Right now I'm undergoing the primary research which is taking much longer than anticipated. Like seriously how hard is it to get a focus group together of different ethnicities all together for an hour - very hard, if you hadn't already gathered. Well that was my first dilemma and then creating a survey where you could put images in to it. So I used google docs only later to discover you can only fill it out when you have a google/gmail, I'm sure some of you do so if you want to help a sister out you can fill it out here. I need the minimum of 100 respondents so tell your friends to do it as well, I'd really appreciate the help.

I'm collecting my data through interviews both face-to-face and via email, focus groups with consumer groups, an online questionnaire but depending on the number of respondents I may need to hand some out on location and also secondary resources. The balance is important and sources that aren't your own need to be reliable or backed up with evidence your have found yourself.

I have started a brief drafting of my introduction and methodology which will be edited and refined once I have completed the main discussion. As for the main body I created a plan for my five chapters with headings and subheadings and what I needed to include. From that I started feeding in relevant secondary information under each heading, following similarly with primary research as I collect it. Then this week I am working on analysing and joining all the dots together and also still collecting in the process. Once you've got pen to paper you seriously feel so much better about everything as there is nothing more daunting that a blank page - just dive in. You know more than you think.

That's it really I think that is everything do look at my other posts if you want to know more about my process before hand or if you have any questions do comment away, always nice to have feedback and support to keep me going!