Wednesday, April 27, 2011

tired and unsure of what direction to take

I haven't had a lot of time lately and I'm worrying about finishing my paper. In thinking about it I don't believe there is any "best way" to finish the paper in terms of data to be presented. There are multiple options. I suppose that is better than a single approach but it makes it harder to navigate the shoals.

They asked, waaay back when I submitted my first article, that I wait and combine the data with my intended second article. Now I'm here. I've left out some data from the first article, tightened the eligible articles after repeat readings and presented methodology used and results relevant to definitions of competency from that first article (after removing a few articles, unfortunately, since the first article now includes 7 articles I no longer consider part of the data set for the second article, and the second article is the "other side of the coin" to the first article, an extension of the study on the topic) .

It has been suggested that I just remove the old methodology and refer to the first article, leave in the relevant results (now modified) and combine them with the new data. Sounds pretty simple, right? But I was hoping to avoid referring to the first article by creating a whole new article, this approach being my preference. I'm not sure there is any help out there to help sway me one way or another, I just need to decide. Just because it is more elegant/succinct I suspect I shall be implementing the former approach, tacking the data on to the previous article. Ugh.