Dissertation progress report.

[rivka]

1. Re-ran my principal analyses using logistic regression techniques, thereby solving the statistical problem my advisor and I identified last Wednesday.

Lots of analyses, and I won't go through them all here. The gold medal result, however, is confirmation of my original hypothesis: parental endorsement of physical discipline techniques is significantly associated with their children's degree of deviance from developmental norms. The more disabled the child, the more likely the parent to select physical discipline as a response to child misbehavior.

It's not really appropriate for a "yay," because it's such a sad result, but... yay. My original findings did not disappear when subjected to more appropriate data analysis techniques.

2. Ran tests of models involving family stress and parent-child attachment quality as mediators or moderators of the relationship between disability severity and physical discipline endorsement.

None of the models are significant. This isn't surprising, for technical statistical reasons which I will not go into unless pressed, but it would've been a good additional contribution to the current state of knowledge if one or more of them had been. So, a minor alas.

3. Researched graduation requirements and deadlines for the University of Iowa Graduate College. Key dates:

June 12: Degree application due, signed by me and by my advisor John, stating that I intend to graduate in August.
June 24: Psychology Department must file a "final exam request" for me, which involves certifying that I've met all requirements for graduation other than the dissertation.
July 3: "First deposit" of finished, complete, formatted dissertation due to Graduate College. They check the formatting against their 46-page thesis formatting manual and give it back to me with a list of required corrections. Only after that may I have my defense.
July 21: Last day possible for the Psychology Department to report that I have passed my defense.
July 23: "Final deposit" of thesis due, with all corrections required by my dissertation committee and the Graduate College duly made.
August 1: Commencement.

It's very helpful to have all these deadlines spelled out. (The other, unspoken, deadline is that if I don't defend by the end of July I have to retake comps, a thought so terrible that I must avert my eyes from this paragraph even as I write it.) I can now start backing up in time and making self-imposed deadlines: if I must have my final draft by July 3, when should I get a first draft to John? If my defense needs to happen before July 21, when do I need to distribute reading copies to my committee? I think it will also help me set appropriate deadlines with John, who has had a draft of my introduction and methods sections for months without reading it. I'm pretty sure that he'll be more focused with concrete deadlines in front of us. I sure hope so.

4. E-mailed my advisor my results and set up an appointment to talk about them on the phone this afternoon.

Yay. My dissertation is finally getting somewhere. I'm starting to believe that I'll really finish.

Comments

[ex-serenejo.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, I believe you'll really finish, too. Yay, you!

This message is formatted like the admissions essays I've been reading. I apologize profusely

[melebeth]

Yay! I'm so glad the end is in sight. I'm sorry I never got back to you about the analysis stuff - our biostats guru and I have not both been in the office for 10 minutes at the same time since you wrote your letter, but logistic regression seemed, instinctively, like the right way to go to me too. And I'm so glad it was still significant!

Eeeek! 46 PAGES of formatting requirements??????

And I'm sure you'll finish. It'll be totally worth driving yourself and your advisor batty not to have to do the unthinkable. (In fact, I won't even write it here. Because it's unthinkably horrible. But it's the thing you said in your parentheses)

Break a leg. I'm sure you'll finish and have a fabulously exiting dissertation, and then you can make all of us read it. :)

(Oh. And on your note two. I assume you're planning on keeping the info on the models in even though they aren't significant. Assuming the models made sense at a non-significant level, they're still certainly worth mentioning in your thesis. As you implied, for stuff like that to hit a level of statistical significance would have been impressive, but not likely in an (i'm assuming) small study where they weren't the primary hypothesis of interest. Some day we can have a nice discussion on why our data aren't polite enough to make all our associations have beautiful significant confidence intervals even when they're obviously trending that way)

(Oh. And one other thing. Are you going to Balticon at all? If so, I hope I get to see you. I'll be there Sat-Mon)

[geminigirl]

Well, it's sorta worth a yay only in that what you originally thought was correct...even if it was a sad result. So Yay for Rivka being smart.

I think you'll finish-because you want to, and it's important to you and all that. And for some reason I just had an outburst of snickering thinking of what your name would be if you shared curiousangel's last name.

And you make me realize how oh-so-far I have to go.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Great! You can do it.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

go you!

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[rivka.livejournal.com]

And for some reason I just had an outburst of snickering thinking of what your name would be if you shared curiousangel's last name.

"Hi, I'll be your psychologist, Dr. Nutt." *grin* Don't think it hasn't occurred to us. I used that very phrasing to soften the blow when explaining to my in-laws that I wouldn't be changing my name.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Excellent news! I look forward to hearing more about this tomorrow, provided you're well enough to join me for lunch then.

[snippy]

I'm curious about the deviation leading to physical discipline--does it go both ways on deviation? That is, if a child deviates from norm by being smarter or an extremely talented athlete, musician, artist...does that also lead to parental endorsement of physical discipline?

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[geminigirl]

Okay, call me crazy if you want, but I'd probably me more inclined to go to a psychologist named Dr. Nutt, or to at least check out his/her qualifications to see if it was the right person for me.

Go you. Congratulations...you're almost there.

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[rivka.livejournal.com]

I can't answer that question based on the data I collected. I've got normal/average kids, including some children who are moderately advanced, and disabled/delayed kids. To answer your question, I'd have to have many more superior children in my sample than I do.

This message is formatted like the admissions essays I've been reading. I apologize profusely

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Eeeek! 46 PAGES of formatting requirements?????

I know! Fortunately, they also have a dissertation template available for download. It includes special taskbars for doing things like adding an Approved-Format Table. So not as bad as it could be.

And I'm sure you'll finish. It'll be totally worth driving yourself and your advisor batty not to have to do the unthinkable. (In fact, I won't even write it here. Because it's unthinkably horrible. But it's the thing you said in your parentheses)

I just asked my advisor about that part, because he was making noises about it maybe being difficult to gather my committee together over the summer and perhaps I'll defend in the last week of August instead. He says that he can make that requirement go away. I'm so dubious, because the consequences to me if he's wrong would be so incredibly dire - but he says he can do it, as long as I'm "essentially" finished by then. We did both agree that it would be better, far far better, for me to defend by the deadline and be done with it.

Oh. And on your note two. I assume you're planning on keeping the info on the models in even though they aren't significant. Assuming the models made sense at a non-significant level, they're still certainly worth mentioning in your thesis. As you implied, for stuff like that to hit a level of statistical significance would have been impressive, but not likely in an (i'm assuming) small study where they weren't the primary hypothesis of interest.

Absolutely. I think it's important to present nonsignificant results and talk about why they're not significant (in this case, it's a multicollinearity problem, because my hypothesized mediating variables are highly correlated with my independent variable). And John thinks I should go ahead and present the one that's at p=.06, because we can make a strong theoretical argument for the relationship.

(Oh. And one other thing. Are you going to Balticon at all? If so, I hope I get to see you. I'll be there Sat-Mon)

I'm going to be dedicating this weekend to the dissertation, but I hope you have fun at Balticon.

[minnaleigh.livejournal.com]

Woo-hoo! You *will* finish, you *will*. Glad to hear about the progress.

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[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

It would also depend, I think, on how responsive the child is to non-physical discipline (I've never hit my kids, but I've surely grabbed them and held them down as recently as this morning when it was the only way available to get them to stop what they were doing) (For reference, both of my kids were diagnosed ADHD (after several hours of testing and several weeks of the university analyzing the data), but one is significantly more hyperactive than attention-deficit, and there are times when grabbing him and forcing him to pay attention is the only method that works).

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Of course you'll finish. You're smart and you do good work.

Besides, I'm dying to start calling you "Dr. Rivka."

[elusis.livejournal.com]

Terrific news that your data came together. :> I'm so relieved for you! I know what it's like to see deadlines looming up at you and worry about motivating others to meet them; you have my best wishes on that topic.

This message is formatted like the admissions essays I've been reading. I apologize profusel

[melebeth]

I shall think lovely dissertating thoughts at you from close proximity then. Rock on!

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

Best of luck!

Just checking my comprehension as a non-US reader - does "retake comps" mean "retake compulsory courses"?

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[rivka.livejournal.com]

Just checking my comprehension as a non-US reader - does "retake comps" mean "retake compulsory courses"?

No, it means retaking the comprehensive exam - which was a two-day, closed-book essay exam covering everything my professors thought I should have learned in grad school regardless of whether or not it was actually presented to me.

There's just no way.

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[rivka.livejournal.com]

Indeed. We've found in other studies that the parents of disabled children most likely to use physical discipline are hearing parents of deaf children. The parents usually don't sign well at all, and the kids usually don't lip-read well at all, and thus there's not much opportunity for reasoning-based discipline.

My advisor's done research showing that kids with ADHD are dramatically more likely to be abused - not only more likely than the average kid, but more likely than their non-ADHD siblings. I think probably most of that comes out of disciplinary frustration. Of course, most parents who use physical discipline are not abusive. However, nearly all physical abuse stems from physical discipline that gets out of hand - so it's a subject of concern.

(Um. This is not, in any way, meant as a personal criticism of how you discipline your kids. I hope it doesn't come through that way.)

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[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

Eek! That does sound nasty. No wonder you want to avoid it!