In the middle of January, just after the start of the new academic semester, and at a time that I hoped returning students would see it, I sent out my official call for research participants across social media, fully expecting to receive 3 or maybe 4 responses. With this in mind I made a note to mention such a low number at my upcoming supervision meeting. My supervisors, after all, could know of other digital platforms and people in the world of HE who would also be willing to spread the word.

It turns out I didn’t need to make this assumption, as within 4 days of posting, 61 HE students had completed my 'call for participation' survey.

This was completely overwhelming in both good…and not so good ways. I was incredibly excited to see such a high number of responses, but also aware of the amount of administration work it would generate, the number of interviews I’d need to carry out, transcribe and then code, and the sheer amount of time that would take. Menopausal anxiety is a thing, folks!

My first step was to go through each survey response, weed out anyone who didn’t make the cut - namely overseas applicants who hadn’t realised the call was for UK-based students only, and those who hadn’t answered any of the survey questions, or answered so few of them so vaguely there was nothing interesting to base interview questions around. If I send out another call for participation, I think I need to make the survey questions compulsory and / or ask for responses to be of a certain word length. 

I also made the error of sending a shared sign-up sheet to all those chosen for interview, asking them to add 3 preferred dates and times. Just about everyone opted for the same few dates, and these dates were pretty imminent, leaving me little time to go through each interviewee’s responses and form semi-structured questions based upon them. It takes a little time and thought to repurpose survey responses into related open questions designed to nudge unintended consequences from people.  If I do this again, I should send out a list of times I’m available and ask respondents to put their name against the one that suits them. The sheer number of emails, Zoom invites, rescheduled invites, and spreadsheet updating I did in 3 days made my brain turn into sludge.

Thus, I spent the penultimate weekend of January 2025 sorting through 61 applications and weeding them down to 26 possible interviewees and 11 journal-keepers, sending emails, journal information, participant information sheets and consent forms, and setting up Zoom interviews. There was some relief to be had from realising I wouldn’t need to carry out 61 interviews, as I was working on the assumption ALL interviews had to be carried out in as short a time frame as possible and ALL coding needed to be done in a few short months. 25 interviews may not be as overwhelming as 61, but it still made me feel a little anxious at how I was going to juggle all of this around my work responsibilities.

Both supervisors were pleased with the number of participants I’ve been able to recruit; a good amount for a PhD study apparently, and I didn’t need to spend weeks trying to drum up intertest. Importantly for me, the REALLY GOOD NEWS is that I had been underestimating how long I should take to transcribe and code the resulting data. The 3 to 4 months I’d set myself was, frankly, daft. Both supervisors agreed that a year is much more reasonable and knowing this has lifted a weight from my shoulders.

I’ll write more about the interview process as I get stuck in. But for now, this is a good – if somewhat remarkable –start to the process.