Managing the five project elements

7.2 Dealing with problems 155

7.2.5 Data availability

Data availability is often a problem with student projects. Either a journal or a book you require is unavailable, you can’t get hold of some data, you lose your contact in a local company where you hoped to perform a case study or you receive a poor response from some questionnaires you issued. Whatever the problem, your project looks as though it will suffer from a lack of available data. In a similar vein to weakening discussed earlier, problems with data availability can often be traced back to your project’s early stages. If you had thought about your project more thoroughly during its inauguration, you might have identified that a bookjournal was difficult to obtain, questionnaires were likely to prove unreliable and so on. Bearing these things in mind you might well set up contingency plans at an early stage – for example, changing your project’s direction so that it doesn’t rely entirely on a particular set of data. If, however, data availability problems only become apparent well into your project they must be dealt with there and then. Simply put, either the data are available or they are not. Begin first, with the help of your supervisor, considering whether you can obtain the information you require from another source – is there another company you could use as a case study, for example? Have you time to chase up the question- naires you sent out or send out new ones? Does your supervisor or your colleagues have alternative data you could use? However, if no other options are forthcoming, the sooner you accept this, adjust your project and proceed the better.

7.2.6 Discovering your workresearch has been done before

On a taught degree you will not be expected to make a contribution to world knowledge, but this is not the case for research degrees, particularly for PhDs see Chapter 5. At research degree level, students often worry if their work is truly unique and is not merely repeating the work of others. They worry if the project they are pursuing has not been undertaken by someone else before and, as a consequence, are not making that contribution that is vital at PhD level they are perhaps in the Demoralised quadrant of Figure 2.2. The first means of avoiding this problem is to ensure that you have conducted a thor- ough literature survey in the first place. Not only should you read all the relevant journals and books associated with your topic area but you should find out about andor attend conferences in your field, too. It is at conferences that cutting-edge work may be presented first and ideas are discussed that are not yet published elsewhere. Try to get hold of conference proceedings early and use the Internet to access conference schedules and programmes. Through these sources you will keep track of who is doing what in particular areas and where the latest thinking is heading. It is also useful to build up contacts with other departments, research groups and institutions that are working in your field. Through the literature, conference announcements and your supervisor, you should be able to identify the ‘key players’ in your field. Try to make contact with them and keep track of what they are currently working on. The Internet and mail discussion groups are usually a good source of information in this area. If you are satisfied that the work you are doing is unique, there is still a worry that someone else may publish your ideasresults first. One way to overcome this is to submit