Introduction
- This page is for information about Andy Turner's GEOG2300 Dissertation Support Group Mentoring 2009 to 2010.
- Contents:
Introduction to GEOG2300
People
- Diane Collett
- Student Support Manager 2009/10
- Andy Evans
- Director of Learning and Teaching 2009/10
- Jamie Mullen
- Undergraduate Student Co-ordinator 2009/10
- David Bell
- GEOG2300 BA Dissertation Officer 2009/10
- Students
- Thomas Brown (Tom)
- email
- GEOG2300 tutor
- Web pages
- First one-to-one meeting
- Topic: Immigration
- Interest in economic aspects of international migration and for this study wants to focus on immigration to the UK
- Plan to look at something specific, perhaps related to weighing up the costs or demands of immigrants (state benefits, public service provision (housing, schools etc...)) with the benefits or supply by immigrants (state tax revenue, labour).
- Considerata
- Exploratory data driven approach
- Start by identifying what data exists and considering what it can be used for
- Bottom up approach can form the basis for developing theory and hypotheses which may be tested, but is fundamentally different from a top down theory driven research.
- Tom will need to read up about this approach to be able to defend it...
- Exploring the links between immigration and internal migration.
- Phased migration and establishment of communities and networks of migration
- Effects of changes in regulation
- EU labour market reforms).
- Data
- What exists and how can it be used?
- Census and survey data
- Special Migration Statistics
- Registration data
- Port entry/exit data
- Recently the UK stopped monitoring who was leaving the country
- Sources
- These need to be scoped out...
- We had a look at CIDER
- Methods and methodology
- Using GIS
- Mapping and describing migration
- Tom wants to develop skills in using GIS software
- What are the ethical issues?
- Things to do:
- Define the different kinds of immigration (asylum, economic migrants, return migrants, returning nationals, illegal etc...).
- Review what data is available
- Read up on exploratory approaches to data analysis and research
- Collaboration
- Who else is working on this topic?
- Other students at Leeds?
- What happens when international migrants settle?
- Cluster Nomination Form Idea
- UK Immigration Pressure: What is it, where is it felt and how can it be eased?
- George Chilton
- email
- GEOG2300 tutor
- Web pages
- First one-to-one meeting
- Topic: Recent Economic Slowdown Effects on Housing Market in the London Commuter Region
- Considerata
- Defining study region
- Classifying houses for house price comparisons
- Data
- 2001 Census Commuting Special Workplace Statisitcs:
- Houseprice data
- Travel to work areas
- Methods and methodology
- Data Analysis
- Data Collection: Interview/survey Estate Agents
- Plan A: Open and honest
- Plan B: Undercover pretending to be interested in buying a property
- Collaboration
- Cluster Nomination Form Idea
- Ripples in the Housing Market: Measuring impacts of the current economic downturn in the UK; a focus on London commuter towns
- Matthew Dodman
- email
- GEOG2300 tutor
- Web pages
- First one-to-one meeting
- Topic: Clustering of Private Schools in Bedford
- Is there and if so, why?
- In general it is interesting to look at service provision and public and private differences in distribution
- Other interesting domains are health and sports
- Considerata
- Are there any other similar places to Bedford in the UK?
- Local demographics
- Local Education System differences
- Scale of study
- Boarding/non-boarding
- Special needs
- Privacy
- Religion
- Data
- Methods and methodology
- Using GIS and map based analysis
- Clustering
- Collaboration
- Cluster Nomination Form Idea
- Analysing the distribution of Public and Private Services: A case study of Schools in Bedfordshire
- Sarah Windsor
- email
- GEOG2300 tutor
- Web pages
- First one-to-one meeting
- Topic: Supermarket saturation
- Fitting with studied modules in advanced retail planning and GIS
- Liaison with Graham Clarke
- Considerata
- Types of store/shop
- Product diversification
- Data
- 2001 Census and Population Projections from Paul Norman
- Acxiom from Mark Birkin?
- Store location data file available from Graham Clarke
- Methods and methodology
- GIS
- Spatial Interaction Models
- Collaboration
- Using Population Projections from Paul Norman
- ...
- Cluster Nomination Form Idea
- Affordable Housing Policy: A case study of Surrey from 1990
Documentation
Communication
- This will be face to face at arranged meetings or ad hoc and via email.
- The following email lists might be useful:
Blog
- Proposals marked and assessments emailed to Jamie Mullen.
- 2010-05-05 Final group meeting of the academic year
- Agenda
- Publication, dissemination, communicating, encouraging collaboration
- Feedback on research proposal documents and general discussion
- Next steps
- Dissertation summer plans
- AoB
- Health and Safety forms due in 2010-05-07
- Meeting in year 3 as part of GEOG3600
- Notes
- Publication, dissemination, communicating, encouraging collaboration
- Exposing research proposal online
- Who is going to be able to find out about your research at different stages?
- How are you going to provide others with information about your work?
- Feedback on research proposal documents and general discussion
- Generalisation and specification
- I decided to allow one final iteration over the research proposal document
- Next steps
- Suggestions for George
- Talk to Chris Thompson
- http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/people/c.thompson
- I have talked to Chris and he knows that there is quarterly data on housprice changes going back to the 1970's
- It might be of further interest to look at this as there have been other economic downturns since then.
- Suggestions for Sarah
- Talk to Chris Thompson and Rebecca Hughes
- Suggestions for Tom
- Talk to John Stillwell
- http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/people/j.stillwell
- Access to latest data on immigration of all kinds
- National Insurance Number applications
- GP registrations etc...
- John is a member of a committee looking at improving statistics on immigration
- Find out what this committee is and where its documentation is
- One of the reasons there is not much academic literature on immigration in the 21st century is that there is little data.
- Ask John to give you some relevant academic literature references to read up about.
- Look into the work of Pete Boden and Phil Rees on this topic
- http://www.ein.org.uk/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Asylum_Support_Service
- Suggestions for Matthew
- Continue searching for literature and expertise
- Academic study on location of schools and other public/state and private/independent provided services.
- You want to get a local copy of available schools data with the location of both state and independent schools (in England)...
- http://www.leeds-airport-guide.co.uk/history.html
- 2010-04-29 Research proposal feedback meeting with George
- Browsing
- Health and safety
- Need to inform someone about where and when fieldwork is taking place
- Contingency plan
- Perhaps biggest risk to the research is not having detailed houseprice data since the economic dowturn.
- Houseprice data scraped in 2007-06 would still allow some of this topic to be studies.
- Also there may be aggregate data on house price/sales which means the work can still be done.
- Defining London and the South East, potential source:
- Uncertainty in area definition and impact on analysis
- How does the boundary definition for London effect the analysis?
- 2010-04-29 Emailed feedback to Paul Waley (course convenor) and David Bell about assessment of the research proposal document and its contingency section.
- 2010-04-29 Research proposal feedback meeting with Matthew
- Need to think about aims broken down into steps to achieve objective
- What needs to be done first?
- What to do next?
- Etc...
- A typology of schools, by independent status, boarding status, gender status, faith status, etc...
- A map of the different schools
- Data about school catchment areas
- Study area definition
- Focus on England and on comparing Bedford with one or more similar sized towns in contrasting and similar parts of England.
- Identifying where to compare with is itself an activity/aim requring a method.
- Research methods section
- Discussed on the difference between a method and implementations of the method
- Discussed about different general techniques, interviewing, surveys and GIS work
- Contingency plan
- Either a different topic, or a different focus.
- In general the idea of comparing the distribution of public and private service provision is interesting.
- This is not likely to be needed in Matthew's case
- General feedback
- There is confusion about what is needed to get a good mark for the research proposal document
- It is worth 40% of the mark for GEOG2300
- It may be that it would be better that this was simply pass to proceed too, but that depends on the nature of other exercises...
- We agreed that it would be better if this were a pass to progress rather than a marked exercise
- There is little dependency type risk analysis section in the research proposal document
- Perhaps it is more important to consider what might cause the research to fail, than to come up with a contingency in case it does?
- 2010-04-28 Group meeting feedback (further email sent to students)
- 2010-04-27 Group meeting feedback (email sent to students)
- 2010-04-27 Group Meeting
- Matthew
- Struggling to find literature for review, so we did an online search together using a general internet search engine:
- We used the following and other search strings
- private school locations England distribution analysis spatial
- We formed the following lists to start and the idea was to have a look at these and follow any references that seemed particularly relevant
- General reading on clusters
- Analysis methods/tools
- Similar Studies
- Data
- http://www.privateschools.co.uk/private_schools_england.htm
- In terms of literature search, the aim is to broaden and deepen the search using general internet searches and Web Of Science
- Topic discussion
- Explanatory metrics
- Analysis methods
- Residential and non-residential schools
- Tom
- Topic discussion
- What Immigration is managed and how is it managed?
- Social Cohesion
- Service Demand/provision
- Costs and benefits
- Hidden costs?
- Bonus benefits?
- Why do local authorities take on asylum seeking immigration?
- Cost benefit analysis?
- Central government decision?
- Short, medium, long term
- Case Studies
- Doncaster?
- Newport
- Scotland
- Internet search engine search string:
- immigration management uk asylum resource service provision local government
- 2010-04-20 Group Meeting
- Agenda
- Talk about proposals
- Answer questions
- Help to understand:
- Aims and objectives
- Risk assessment
- Deadline for proposals
- Any other business
- Date of next meeting (week beginning 2010-05-03)...
- Notes
- George and Sarah attended the meeting, but Tom and Matthew did not.
- Talk about proposals
- George and Sarah had printed off their drafts and brought them along, so we all read these quickly.
- George
- Slightly refined topic to consider a comparison of houseprices in two areas: London; and, outside London, but in the South East Region of England.
- This removes the issue of defining commuter zones for London
- I'm happy with this change
- Absolute and relative measures of houseprice change
- I am still to scrape the data for George...
- Preliminary houseprice data analysis prior to conducting interviews over the summer
- The nature of the data might help George consider what and where to focus on in interviews
- Informational and educational benefits
- May be good to show some details of this at interviews
- Ethical considerations of going undercover
- Work needed on the reference section
- Sarah
- Defining and measuring "market saturation"
- Definition of a "supermarket"
- Mapping and analysis
- Measures of the proportion of a population that live within a proximal threshold of a supermarket.
- Proximity measures
- Data issues
- Resolution of population projections
- Help to understand:
- Aims and objectives
- We did not specifically discuss this...
- Risk assessment
- We considered general risks as well as health and safety ones.
- Deadline for proposals
- The deadline for dissertation proposals has been extended by 1 week
- The new deadline is 2010-04-29
- Any other business
- Date of next meeting (week beginning 2010-05-03)
- Provisionally agreed to meet as a group on 2010-05-05 14:00
- 2010-04-19 Emailed students to remind about the group meeting scheduled tomorrow
- 2010-04-19 Notification from Head of School that the deadline for dissertation proposals has been extended by 1 week to 2010-04-29.
- 2010-03-26 Emailed students about
- Immigration and housing
- Edith Benten travel bursaries
- 2010-03-19 One-to-one meeting
- George
- Topic: Recent Economic Slowdown Effects on Housing Market in the London Commuter Region
- Considerata
- Defining study region
- Classifying houses for house price comparisons
- Data
- 2001 Census Commuting Special Workplace Statisitcs:
- Houseprice data
- Travel to work areas
- Methods and methodology
- Data Analysis
- Data Collection: Interview/survey Estate Agents
- Plan A: Open and honest
- Plan B: Undercover pretending to be interested in buying a property
- Collaboration
- 2010-03-17 One-to-one meetings
- George
- Rescheduled (due to illness)...
- Tom
- Topic: Immigration
- Interest in economic aspects of international migration and for this study wants to focus on immigration to the UK
- Plan to look at something specific, perhaps related to weighing up the costs or demands of immigrants (state benefits, public service provision (housing, schools etc...)) with the benefits or supply by immigrants (state tax revenue, labour).
- Considerata
- Exploratory data driven approach
- Start by identifying what data exists and considering what it can be used for
- Bottom up approach can form the basis for developing theory and hypotheses which may be tested, but is fundamentally different from a top down theory driven research.
- Tom will need to read up about this approach to be able to defend it...
- Exploring the links between immigration and internal migration.
- Phased migration and establishment of communities and networks of migration
- Effects of changes in regulation
- EU labour market reforms).
- Data
- What exists and how can it be used?
- Census and survey data
- Special Migration Statistics
- Registration data
- Port entry/exit data
- Recently the UK stopped monitoring who was leaving the country
- Sources
- These need to be scoped out...
- We had a look at CIDER
- Methods and methodology
- Using GIS
- Mapping and describing migration
- Tom wants to develop skills in using GIS software
- What are the ethical issues?
- Things to do:
- Define the different kinds of immigration (asylum, economic migrants, return migrants, returning nationals, illegal etc...).
- Review what data is available
- Read up on exploratory approaches to data analysis and research
- Collaboration
- Who else is working on this topic?
- Other students at Leeds?
- What happens when international migrants settle?
- Sarah
- Topic: Supermarket saturation
- Fitting with studied modules in advanced retail planning and GIS
- Liaison with Graham Clarke
- Considerata
- Types of store/shop
- Product diversification
- Data
- 2001 Census and Population Projections from Paul Norman
- Acxiom from Mark Birkin?
- Store location data file available from Graham Clarke
- Methods and methodology
- GIS
- Spatial Interaction Models
- Collaboration
- Using Population Projections from Paul Norman
- ...
- Matthew
- Topic: Clustering of Private Schools in Bedford
- Is there and if so, why?
- In general it is interesting to look at service provision and public and private differences in distribution
- Other interesting domains are health and sports
- Considerata
- Are there any other similar places to Bedford in the UK?
- Local demographics
- Local Education System differences
- Scale of study
- Boarding/non-boarding
- Special needs
- Privacy
- Religion
- Data
- Methods and methodology
- Using GIS and map based analysis
- Clustering
- Collaboration
- 2010-03-16 Emailed students to remind about tomorrows one-to-one meetings and to arrange date for group meeting on the week beginning 2010-04-19
- 2010-03-03 Emailed students with meeting feedback and the following help for developing a public profile on the web using http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/ (which I recommend to help them develop their research):
- Warning! If you already have a M:\WWW directory then you may want to back up your files!
- Copy the following zip file:
- Unpack it into the root level directory of your M: drive on the university file system (this should create a M:\WWW directory)
- Edit the index.html files
- Replace "Andy Turner" with your name and "geoagdt" with your ISS username.
- Replace "geog1300" with "geog2300". This may be case sensitive (i.e. "GEOG2300" is not the same as "geog2300"). Also change the directory (which contains the second index.html file)
- Check your web page http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~username and see how it looks (replace username with your username e.g. Sarah has username ml07s3w and so her pages are at http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~ml07s3w).
- 2010-03-03 Initial meetings
- These had to be subgroup meetings as not everyone could meet conveniently at the same time.
- Documentation
- Proposed Agenda
- Personal introductions
- Who is in what groups for GEOG2300?
- Introducing topics to each other
- Talk about turning individuals ideas (on the Cluster Nomination Forms) into doable projects
- Arrange further meetings:
- One-to-one meetings to discuss draft research proposals week beginning 2010-03-15
- Group meeting week beginning 2010-04-19
- Group meeting week beginning 2010-05-03
- Make students aware that their dissertation research proposals are to be submitted at the end of Week 22 and will be marked by me as part of GEOG2300
- AoB
- Meeting with Tom, Matthew, Sarah
- Noted GEOG2300 Tutors
- Arrange further meetings:
- One-to-one meetings to discuss draft research proposals week beginning 2010-03-15
- Tom 2010-03-17 14:00
- Sarah 2010-03-17 14:30
- Mathew 2010-03-17 15:00
- Talk about turning individuals ideas (on the Cluster Nomination Forms) into doable projects
- Practice research pitches with each other
- To help refine these and learn what each other are doing.
- Think how you can help each other...
- Distill and enhance research outline
- Think about the title
- Terms in the title will need defining
- What methods are relevant?
- What data exists and is available?
- Appreciating what we have to do and what a dissertation is worth.
- ...
- Meeting with George
- Noted GEOG2300 Tutor
- Arrange further meetings:
- One-to-one meetings to discuss draft research proposals week beginning 2010-03-15
- Talk about turning individuals ideas (on the Cluster Nomination Forms) into doable projects
- Practice research pitches with each other
- To help refine these and learn what each other are doing.
- Think how you can help each other...
- Distill and enhance research outline
- Think about the title
- Terms in the title will need defining
- What methods are relevant?
- What data exists and is available?
- Appreciating what we have to do and what a dissertation is worth.
- Web Browsing about topic
- 2010-03-03 Suzie changed groups
- Based on Paul Waley's advice to change topic as the one she outlined on the Cluster Nomination Form was considered tricky:
- It was about measuring the Social Impacts of 2012 Olympics and focussing on residents views on regeneration.
- The 2012 Olympics is still a way away, so measuring its impacts is hard as there is not a before and after story...
- Actually now might be a good time for data collection and setting up a further study, but anyway, her new topic is regarding alcohol and drug use in Leeds' hospitality and nightlife sector, particularly amongst students and she has joined a group mentored by Eleanor Wilkinson.
- So now there are 4...
- I emailed the group to make them aware of the change.
- I don't think this change will adversely effect anyone in this group.
- 2010-03-02 Preparation
- Began developing web content to support this activity.
- Read the Staff Dissertation Booklet:
- Had a look on the Leeds for Life web site to see information about students
- Preparation for Introductory meeting
- Read allocated students Cluster Nomination Forms.
- Emailed students to try to arrange a meeting
- Developing an agenda:
- Personal introductions
- Who is in what groups for GEOG2300?
- Introducing each others topic
- Talk about turning individuals ideas (on the Cluster Nomination Forms) into doable projects
- Arrange further meetings in Week 21, Week 22 and Week 24 to firm up their proposals
- Make students aware that their dissertation research proposals are to be submitted at the end of Week 22 and will be marked by me as part of GEOG2300
- References that may be useful
- The students are:
- Thomas Brown
- George Chilton
- Matthew Dodman
- Suzanna Everson
- Sarah Windsor
References
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