Crunch Semester

Last week, the spring 2012 semester began, and I have a full load.  Firstly, I am enrolled in my final 3 required courses in my department.  Secondly, I am comping during the first half of the semester.  Thirdly, I hope to have my research proposal completed with IRB approval by the end of the semester.  Yes, my plate is very full.

By this time, I had hoped that the most of my literature was collected for my dissertation's literature review.  However, one of my courses this semester has directed me to more literature, some of which is very useful to build an even stronger case for my research.  This has come as a surprise to me because I expected this course to be the least relevant to my dissertation and the other two, and, just in the first week, it has shown to be the most helpful in terms of collecting literature.

With my new armament of literature, I have found a few researchers that I would like to contact sometime this semester for their guidance.  I have already contacted one but was a little disappointed that he has recently moved his attention away from my research interest.  One of the researchers seems to be headed in the same direction as me, but he has the advantage of being a well-established researcher in the field.  At this moment, I do not know how to tactfully approach him as his publications and his website indicate that he's an incredibly busy man.  I will seek one of my professor's advice on that.

On another topic, I am waiting to hear from my previous employer in Japan if I am invited back to teach for a second summer.  If I am, it would provide an ideal opportunity for me to collect data.  I am waiting for this green light, so I may continue the IRB process and make contacts to set up interviews upon my arrival.  If I do not get the green light, I have several alternative plans but they are not as convenient in terms of time, finances, and support as the present one.

By the end of the semester, I hope to have the following tasks accomplished:

• Comprehensive exams completed to the satisfaction of my committee
• The last 3 required courses of my department completed
• Chapters 1-3 of my dissertation completed
• IRB application sent and approved
• At least 3 contacts made to help with finding participants

These seem to be some of the characteristics of the initial stages of a PhD candidate who is ABD (all but dissertation).

Comps

The written portion of my comprehensive examination is due on February 9th, just 9 weeks away.  The oral defense of the written portion should happen about a month afterwards.  All of this will occur on a full semester of courses.  Fortunately for me, I will have most of winter break to work on it.  I'm not worrying about it right now because I have one week left of this semester to wrap up.  As soon as this semester's courses finish this coming Thursday, I will begin my preparation for my comps.

Comprehensive exams come at the end of completing one's PhD course work.  Next semester will be my last full semester of courses, and I most likely need to take one more course afterwards for my cognate area.  This course, however, will help in my data analysis stage of my research.  Most of my classmates have taken or will take their comps in a semester with little or no coursework.  However, it is not rare for one to take comps during a full semester of courses.

My department has recently changed the requirements for comps that I will not divulge too much here.  The pilot study for this new style of comps will be completed this semester, so I and a couple of my cohorts will undergo the tested new edition.  The disadvantage is that we don't have many people to ask about going through this new process.  The advantage is that we will establish the initial standard for the tested new edition of comps.

I am being tested on my depth and breadth of knowledge in the field of Foreign Language and ESL Education, my research interest, and the method of research I plan to use for my dissertation.  All of this should be assessed by mid-semester in the spring by my department.  If I pass, then I am able to submit my prospectus for my dissertation, so I may begin collecting my data for my dissertation.  If all goes well and as tentatively planned, I hope to begin collecting data this summer in Japan.  The first half of 2012 looks to be incredibly more busy than any other 6-month period I have ever faced before academically.  I will see how it compares to the first 6 months of my daughter's life in terms of responsibility, diligence, and stress.

Permanent Head Damage

I am in my last academic year of taking being a full-time PhD student.  This means I have 3 graduate courses this semester and I will have another 3 next semester.  Next semester, I will be taking my comprehensive exams as well.  After that, I will be relatively free to collect data for my dissertation.  So, in a sense, this semester is the last "normal" semester.  But the past year hasn't felt normal at all.  If there is a supposed to be a psychological transformation that goes along with the PhD process, I am certainly feeling it.  I've heard a colleague or two mention this as "Permanent Head Damage," the alternate meaning to PhD.

Since I've been reflecting on my psychological well being for the last year, I can discuss two effects of the PhD process that are most unpleasant.  The first is the feeling of isolation.  My feeling may be more exaggerated than my cohorts as I have no social life apart from my wife and young daughter.  I do not have time to socialize with cohorts and I live in a city that requires a day trip to see my closest family and friends.  During the academic year, I can only arrange such day trips once a semester.  My interactions with people are dominated by child rearing, sitting in classes as a student, teaching a course, and the occasional conversation with my wife.  My isolation is contrasted with spending half of my life these days on a large Midwestern university campus where many undergraduates and some graduates focus on socialization.  A little jealousy creeps in.  Is this jealous feeling mutual?  Do any of these freewheeling undergraduates wish they were in my shoes nearing the end of my higher education in one field?

Usually the isolation is at its most unbearable at the end of each semester.  That's when I realize it's more difficult to relate to others.  It's also at the end of the semester where the second effect is most noticeable as well, and that is the obsessive-compulsiveness on one's own research interest combined with completing homework assignments.  The more and more engrossed I become in a class, the less and less engaged I am with what's going on in the real world most immediate to me.  I start to become oblivious to local events, and my wife needs to constantly remind me that there is something interesting going on in town.  (She would like a social life with me too.)

PhD studies differ from MA studies in that I felt that I shared the same interests and desire to learn the specific subjects with my classmates when I was an MA student.  As a PhD student, my interests have become more specific, so that only a few share the same interests, but almost nobody has the same level of desire to learn more about that interest.  In a way, this is another kind of isolation.  It's just me and my research topic in the room together and nobody will care until it's done.  I get very excited when I learn more about my research interest and my research interest benefits from the attention I give it and hopefully the added attention it will receive when "we" get published.

The benefit of being a PhD student/candidate is that at least you have your research committee to support you in terms of honing your skills, but they will be gone after the dissertation is done.  Then I will depend on the kindness of peers for review, but not to the extent of support.  Fortunately, I have chosen a research interest that requires me to meet new people and help them if needed, so I expect to find some social purpose to my life in that arena.

I've heard about the love-hate relationship PhD candidates have with the research topic they chosen, but to me it almost feels like another marriage.  Here I am developing a familiarity with my topic that I begin to lose appreciation for it.  This metaphor rings true in that my wife gets upset when I prefer to spend my time developing my research than with her.  There are times when I would like to tell my research to go away, but I need it to finish this PhD process.  When I get in moods like this, I reflect on how easy life was with jobs that require only an MA.  However, most of the years were spent childless as well.

So I have three commitments: my daughter, my wife, and my research.  One of these is temporary, but it is this one that has been receiving more money and attention from me.  But I have put myself in this situation, and I do not regret doing so as long as I do not suffer any permanent head damage from it.

Practice Interviews

Yesterday I conducted 3 practice interviews related to my dissertation here in Japan. None of them really my target participant profile, which is a a new expatriate EFL instructor teaching abroad in a specific country for the first time. The closest one could have fit this profile if she were contracted for a year rather than 2 months, which makes her more of a visitor/tourist than a sojourner. A sojourner is an expatriate who expects to live (and work) abroad for at least a year but intends to return home within a few years (Ting-Toomey, 1999, p. 234).

The purpose of these interviews is to develop my technique in both the creation and delivery of good interview questions. The result so far has been very positive, but I have known these practice participants for a month as my colleagues. I do, however, expect that some of my future participants may also be colleagues of mine. I intend to start interviewing them within 2-4 weeks of their arrival, and they may not know me at all prior to the interview except through a short introduction. So I expect I will need to work harder at building rapport and earning their trust.

Because I do not have IRB approval from the University of Iowa, I did not collect any data about the content of the interview. I made it known to all of my participants prior to the interview that I would not be recording the interview nor writing any information down about the content of the interview. And I informed them of the purpose as I stated in the previous paragraph, so I would only collect data on my interview technique. I made it clear that nothing they said would be published, including this blog post.

I have at least 3 more participants to interview while I'm here, so I will complete this blog post when that is complete. But one tip I learned from my first qualitative methods class was to record my impressions as soon as possible, so here are my impressions of my technique without providing any of my participants' information that I recall from the interviews.

All 3 interviews were scheduled to last no longer than an hour, but all 3 interviews could have easily lasted longer. I had prepared 2 pages of questions for each participant. In fact, for this practice interview I had to design 3 separate interview protocols based on my participants' experiences. The most used protocol is for expatriates who have taught in more than one country and will leave Japan within the next year. The second protocol was for expatriates who have never taught in Japan before, so this one most closely resembles the real protocol I intend to use for my real data collection. The third and final protocol was for expatriates who have taught in Japan for at least 15 years and do not have any plans to leave Japan anytime soon.

Reflecting on the flow and pace of each interview, I predict that one of the three interviews would have lasted at least 3 hours. The shortest of the three, which had a different protocol than the other two interviews, could have gone on for another 30 minutes. I am not too surprised that I didn't have enough time to go through all the questions because I didn't expect this to happen. I am a bit surprised that my predictions (based on my experience as a teacher and my familiarity with the participants) were somewhat accurate about the length of each interview.

I was more surprised about the variation in response. One of the interviews was a lot more conversational than the others as I rarely had to turn to my question sheet. My thoughts on why this was so will reveal some information about the participant, so I will refrain. The other two interviews followed the flow of my questions, although one of them focused on an idea that I planned to ask later. But I did not have a problem with rearranging the order, and I let the participant carry this idea with me providing follow-up questions on it.

I felt myself skipping a question or two for all the participants as I felt that it would disrupt the flow or pace of the interview. If I had more time, I may have gone back to cover those questions.

The interviews did provide me some useful ideas for additional questions or related studies. Getting these new ideas increased my motivation to pursue this research interest. I cannot provide what these questions are specifically as they will reveal some data that I promised not to collect. I hope that similar questions or ideas for future studies will be replicated in my data collection for my dissertation.

I only received positive feedback from my first 3 practice participants as they all commented on the quality of the questions. Nobody voiced any concerns about feeling uncomfortable or awkward. However, I felt a little awkward at times.

Two of the interviews took place in the participants' office. I do not expect many of my target participants to have their own office if my research is in Japan or Korea, based on my own experience. The third interview took place in the university cafeteria. Although I felt mostly comfortable in the cafeteria, I felt awkward to eat while listening. I apologized about eating while listening, but the participant expressed no problems about it. But I will most likely not eat while collecting data in the future unless there is no time limit for the interview.

Reflecting on each question, I found that none of the questions took me to a dead end. Perhaps I was lucky with my first three participants. Even if I were unsure about a question's appropriateness concerning their experience, the participants wanted to hear the question anyway, and they answered all it. I assume that this occurred because of their familiarity with me.

One concern I have is interjecting my own experience into the interview. Most of the time, I was confirming their feelings and opinions as I shared them, but I was worried if this was ethical. My confirmations could be leading them to where I want them to go, however these confirmations almost always came at the end of a certain topic. Once in a while, the participants would ask about my experience, and I felt that I should provide as brief of an answer as possible because the interview is not about me. This left me wondering about the participants' preferences for interviews. Perhaps some interviewees would feel more comfortable if they were learning something about me as well like in a conversation. Although I feel very hesitant to make an interview into a conversation in which 50% of the data is about me. Looking back, I'd say I got to about 10% at the most.

All 3 of these interviews were conducted back to back with little time between each one. In fact, I had to race from one site to another between each one. This did not seem to be a concern for the participants, but I prefer to be early than just in time. I felt that I could possibly do 2 interviews in a row. Even though I conducted to the 3rd interview just as well, I felt that I had to keep myself more actively engaged. This had nothing to do with the participant. I blame my scheduling and eating. It makes me wonder how many interviews are conducted in which the investigator is not fully alert or engaged. Let me state clearly that I was, but I felt the urge to enjoy my meal more. I felt more distracted I guess, but it's hard for me to pin it on one thing like the cafeteria. This does not distract me from conducting another interview in a cafeteria or restaurant. I just won't make such an interview the last one in a series of interviews.

Today I plan to conduct 2 more interviews and 1 on Saturday. There were 2 others that expressed some interest, but I haven't bothered them about it yet. I'll see how this carries me through the weekend, and I will continue reporting in this manner about the other interviews below in this posting.

* * *

A few days have passed, and I have completed my scheduled practice interviews for the summer. I had at least 3 more participants that were willing to be interviewed, but they didn't select a time, and I'm running out of time. Two of these three would have been interesting as they do not fit the expected or dominant profile of the expatriate EFL instructor as their countries of origin are Japan (teaching in another country) and Bangladesh (teaching in Japan).

About the remaining three interviews that I conducted, I felt they weren't as successful as the previous ones. On Thursday, I interviewed two participants that had experiences I had not completely anticipated, so that made many of my questions irrelevant to their situation. I'm sure I could have improved on creating a better interview if I had collected and reviewed their CVs beforehand, thus I learned how vital it is to have some sort of background information like a CV prior to the first interview.

Another problem with those two Thursday interviews was that I felt somewhat exhausted from my day before interviewing them. I was surprised how much my mood played a factor in my ability to ask questions and assess the success of the interview. Perhaps the interviews would have been as good as the first ones if I had a sharper mind. Evidence of this lower quality of question delivery was that I seemed to pay more attention to the list of questions than the pace and flow of the interviews, thus the conversations felt less relaxed.

This morning, I interviewed my final scheduled participant. I felt that this interview went better than Thursday's. However, because this participant's situation was quite different compared to the previous ones, I felt that I could have better organized my questions. Of all the interviews, this one seemed to skim the surface of many interesting topics, but because of the nature and purpose of the interview, I didn't get much depth. That said, I learned the most of how to compose and organize questions for participants like this one. In fact, this interview has motivated me to pursue a case study research on this type of population soon after I finish my dissertation.

I'd like to conclude by saying this interview practice has helped me learn more about myself as both a researcher and as a member of the EFL expatriate community. I expected to learn about my ability to conduct interviews, and I was happily surprised by it overall. What I didn't expect was how I fit in or didn't fit into the EFL expatriate community, and how I can make adjustments to be a better member, and hopefully a leader, in this community.

Interview Questions & Consent Forms

Although I won't be conducting my interviews for at least another 15 months, I need to have my interview questions and informed consent forms written soon. These documents are required by the Institutional Review Board, and Fulbright requires that IRB approval for its application. Fulbright's deadline is September 21 and IRB can take a couple months to approve of a study. I would like to have this done before I leave for an overseas summer job in couple of weeks.

I started writing my interview questions about a month ago. My only experience writing research interview questions comes from the Fall 2010 semester when it was required for my qualitative research course. I actually enjoy writing these questions, so I don't find it to be a painful process.

When I first drafted the questions, I wrote them in list form to see how I could organize them for a second draft. After getting very helpful feedback from a professor, I found out that the interview protocol must be written in with the interview for the sake of transparency for IRB. So I revised the questions in a more conversational manner. I kept most questions, eliminated some redundant ones, and combined a few of them.

This process also helped me to better organize the length of the interviews. I never planned on interview each participant once, but I didn't know how many I wanted to do. After revising my questions, I found that 3 meetings for interviewing each participant would be sufficient.

If I need to interview participants, I need to get the informed consent. Each IRB explicitly states what must be included in these consent forms. I just started drafting a template for the consent forms, and they're about 5 pages in length. That's a lot of careful reading on the participants' part.

Drafting a consent form also helped me find the gray areas in my research plan in terms of ethics. I hope to stop by the IRB office next week to shed some light on these gray areas. Once that happens, I will have another professor look over my questions and maybe my consent forms. After that and a subsequent revision, I plan to formally apply for IRB...pending an agreement by my potential affiliate.

Finding the Right Affiliate

I'm about a month into the Fulbright application process and I have run into the first big hurdle, which is learning that my preferred program to be my affiliate is not willing or able to fulfill that role. According to Fulbright's website, an affiliate is "Any body, enterprise, organization, association, or grouping, organized under U.S. or foreign law and based in the United States, a partner country, or third country, one of whose primary purposes is to engage in fundraising or cost-sharing for the benefit of Fulbright Commissions or posts, and which is controlled, directly or indirectly, by an employee, executive director, or board member of a Fulbright Commission or by an officer of a post (or by a spouse)." In my case, my first candidate was an organization organized under foreign law and based in a partner country.

Although I have given up pursuing affiliate #1, I haven't given up on country #1. I have about a handful of contacts left with potential affiliates in country #1. In fact, I'm already establishing contact with my second potential affiliate this week. This one is more promising than the first because the contact has ties with the University of Iowa and has talked with my cognate advisor. Because this contact has a very executive status, I need to prepare a formal letter of request complete with my CV and research proposal.

The first affiliate seemed to be the best fit for my research according to me, two professors, and the Fulbright officer at Iowa, who has just left her post. Unfortunately, no one at Iowa or any of my contacts in country #1 had connections with this affiliate. I suspect that this is a major reason why I failed to secure an affiliation with them.

I'm giving myself one more month to find an affiliate because time will be running short for IRB approval, which is needed for the Fulbright application. Both IRB and Fulbright require an affiliate in the target country of investigation. If I fail to secure an affiliate by early July, then I must postpone my Fulbright plans for another year.

Applying for a Fulbright Student Grant

The Spring 2011 semester just ended last week, but a week prior to that I found out that I will most likely be taking my comprehensive exams in Spring 2012. This means I will be free to conduct my research for my dissertation as early as next summer. Since I am planning to collect my data overseas, I need to explore as many funding opportunities as possible. The most lucrative option is the Fulbright Program for US Students.

I intend on applying for the 2012-2013 academic year, and the deadline is relatively soon, September 2011. The application process is quite extensive in both time and work. Here is what I have ready for the application so far:

• Target country
• 3 faculty references
• A list of potential affiliates within the target country

For the last one, I'm in the process of finding the most tactful and reliable way of contacting these affiliates. I believe this will be the most stressful part of the application process.

Other components I need to have ready for the application are:

• The application form itself, which I started last week
• Statement of purpose, which shouldn't be difficult as I have already written a final project that is directly related to this grant
• Personal statement, which shouldn't be difficult except for confining it to one page
• Language report form. The self-evaluation will be easy, but the foreign language evaluation may prove humbling.
• Transcripts, which are very easy to get as I am on campus

Upon satisfactory completion of my comprehensive exams in Spring 2012, plan A is living and researching in the target country under a Fulbright grant for the duration of 10 months starting in August 2012.

Plan B is living, working, and researching in an alternative target country for 3 years with 2 of those years dedicated to research and the third to finish up the working contract and apply for university jobs in the United States. I will implement this plan if I am denied a Fulbright grant for the 2012-2013 academic year, however I will reapply for the 2013-2014 academic year as I have 1 more year of financial support to stay in Iowa City.

Plan C is living, researching, and most likely working in a third target country for 1-2 years, hopefully in the sister university of the University of Iowa. This plan will be implemented if I am denied a second time by Fulbright and I was unsuccessful in obtaining a job in the second target country. I have plans beyond C, but I am confident that I need not go beyond plan C.

Three weeks ago, I thought I would be taking comprehensive exams in Fall 2012, thus making plan A start a year later. So when I heard from my advisor that it was possible to comp earlier, my long-term planning suddenly became short-term planning. It took me about a week to be comfortable with this change. My wife was the most delighted person to hear about this change as we wouldn't need another year of living off student loans.