a new year

Well little arthur was born on the 17th of decemebr and this has kinda put things on hold for a while.

although i say this and things are still ticking over nicely. There have now been about 100 sdqs completed and from the last look about 30 follow up sdqs which should prove pretty useful. I've also had about 40 of the alliance quetionnaires completed. Now al i need to do is to work out how to analyse the whole thing - fun fun fun. I'm presently putting together a huge excel spreadsheet ready for playing about with using some fancy stats package that i don't fully understand but should get something meaningful from.

I have also conducted 1 interview that warrants some word as it was a really strange experience. I think it was really noticeable how much less is communicated through the written word than f2f. Although this is obvious and something i've been working with for a long time, i couldn't help but think there was a lot that i wasn't getting. it may have been that the contact wasn't long enough, but it wouldn't really be possible to get y/p to commit to multiple interviews of over an hour of length. It may however have been my interview style - to start with i have been pretty open with a slight focus based upon the different elements of working alliance theory - goal, task and bond. It makes me wonder if the bond bit may be the hard bit, but again i wonder if it's just my lack of expereince of doing what i'm doing where i'm doing it - mmmm - ie online interviewing. I have my second interview in 40 mins so maybe i will have more of an idea then.

Also trying to organise interviews has reminded me of working with young people. I have found it hard to contact some and had a dna that told very close to the time we were about to meet. In fact i waited for 40mins and then checked my messages and the cancellation was there. This obviously isn't a problem but it reminds me that what i am doing has lots of paralel processes with what i am investigating.

Anyhow - by the end of this year i hope to have considerably progressed in this work!!! i intend to have begun writing up and to have collected all the data that is necessary for a phd - so far this looks as tho it's not going to be a problem at all. The other element of the project is that i have been pretty slack in keeping the org themselves up to date with my work - i plan on getting a report to them asap (it was meant to appear in dec but arthur distracted me good and proper from that) - i'm aiming for the end of jan in my mind now - poss sooner dependent upon how the data inputting goes!!!!

Happy new year to everyone who passes by

Terry