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"Appendixes going strong"
04/25/2003 Entry
I realize this post will have limited appeal to most but here it goes anyway. I just finished a draft of a dissertation chapter and was amused to realize that the length of the Appendixes almost beat out the body of the chapter.. again. I did not expect this at all. With the last chapter I finished it was not surprising. Since I came up with a fairly unique methodology for my study, I had to go into a lot of detail when describing how I collected the data. But this time I was writing up the results so I didn't think I'd fall into a similar pattern. To be sure, the Appendixes didn't win this time, it was close though: 34-31.
Of course, this is all just for amusement. I don't much care about the length of the whole thing. I always find it curious when the first question I get from an undergrad about the dissertation is: "So how long does it have to be?" (Or the milder version: "So how long will it be?" which shows some sensitivity to the fact that there are no length requirements involved.) [Apologies to my undergrad friends reading this, I don't mean you, I mean the people I meet through you.]
For those wondering, the appendixes to this chapter include graphs of cumulative distribution functions, long lists of Pearson's and polychoric correlation coefficients, a very simple correlation matrix and an endless list (97 to be precise) of models where I was checking for collinearity problems. Clearly, I couldn't stick all that into the text. In case you're wondering about the cumulative distribution functions, here's the one that made it into the text itself:
It's a summary of all the data I analyze in the dissertation. It shows the distribution of how long people spent on performing eight online tasks. I asked people to look for various types of content online and this is how long they spent on the tasks. Whereas some people took less than ten minutes, others spent more than three-quarters of an hour looking for information. (This particular graph collapses both successful and failed attempts.) If none of that makes sense, my apologies, I should probably post a bit more about the project at some point. (If you can't wait to learn more about it  my research page has copies of related publications.)
Since I made a few comments about length here, maybe I should wrap up with this Pascal quote which came up at a recent teaching workshop: "I am sorry for the length of my letter, but I had not the time to write a short one."
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