Where to begin

Most people in the department who think of me probably think of me as the person who deals with SPSS (it doesn't bite honestly) and if they are a bit more knowledgeable that I tend to work with researchers and also look after something called NVivo as well.

Well I do do that but in doing that and the work around it I do so much more. Just today for instance I have:

• dealt with a doctoral student using Mixed Methods (both SPSS and NVivo), helped her enter data so we can run some sort of analysis in SPSS (her data was lost and she has only got outputs);
• helped another student deal with the analysis of their green roofs in SPSS
• Looked briefly at some data on advertising in Woman's magazines which is in Excel 
• spent some time discovering what Max-Diff methodology was

That is a slightly heavy day but it is not exceptional. The topics people bring to me are varied, probably my main skill is not using SPSS or NVivo but the ability to extract from someone what they understand themselves to be doing with their research. I therefore tend to work very closely and intensely with the researchers I am advising.

I have been doing the job for close on twenty years and there are really two core reasons for doing it. Firstly there is the character of the people who you are dealing with; secondly there is the stimulus of the work involved.


It is good to work with researchers, researchers whether they are doctoral students or professors are usually passionate people about what they are doing. If someone shows an interest in what they are doing they become animated reflecting the  high level of personal involvement in their research. Often regardless of how cynical they have become about academia and the outputs of their research, they remain people who want to make a difference.

Secondly there is the fact I am perpetually curious, I like learning new things, even better I like discovering or helping to discover new things. However I am not good at sitting down and working methodically in one direction, there are too many shiny new things out there to distract me. With this job I get to change what I am working on several times a day. Most researchers work on a small number of topics for a long period of time. Plenty of stimulus for my brain then.

So over the coming weeks I hope to bring to this blog some of the stories of the research at the University of Sheffield I am involved with and also some of my reflections on supporting researchers in the use of computers.