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<b><h4>What sort of data are you collecting and what methods are you using to analyse your findings?</h4></b>

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<b>Suzanne McClure, Postgraduate Researcher, University of Liverpool</b>

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My research is on literature that was written and published between 1911 and 1928. And I'm using public domain literature so that I don't have any copyright issues with publishing the PhD. And as far as manipulating that data, I use computational linguistic software from Lancaster University, and a few other local universities, to analyse these stylistic tendencies of these authors. 
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<b><h4>How do you measure/assess significance? Do you ever drop or ignore some data/findings?</h4></b>

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<b>Suzanne McClure:</b> It is important, I think, to make sure your data is valid in your research. And in my case, because I was examining 95 novels, I used software called Multi-dimensional Analysis Tagger, and that software identifies the genre of the text. And what I found was of the 95 novels, eight of them were tagged involve persuasion. They were not tagged as fiction. So then I had to make the decision of do I include them in my corpus, and in my research, or do I exclude them? 
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<b><h4>Do you consider different ways of interpreting your findings?</h4></b>

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<b>Suzanne McClure:</b> I do think there are different ways of interpreting findings in my field, which is corpus stylistics. The field has only been around for a couple of decades, and all I think research should be grounded in scholarship, and also originality. So I do find myself sometimes not knowing which way to go, whether something is valid, or should be discarded. And it's at those times where I tend to seek outside advice. Sometimes from the supervisors, but also sometimes from outside the supervisory team.
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<b><h4>What do you do to try to avoid bias?</h4></b>

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<b>Suzanne McClure:</b> I don't really try to avoid bias in my research. Because again, it's a new field, corpus stylistics, hopefully the research is grounded in scholarship. And I think it's OK to have unexpected results. And I think sometimes it's good to have unexpected results.

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As an example I was doing a presentation in a paper on Americanism and literature and how in the era from 1911 to 1928 America was portrayed. And in that research, I found some very unusual statistics using computational linguistics software that's just absolutely phenomenal, and somewhat groundbreaking. So at first it was like this isn't the way I wanted things to go. And then it's like, wait a second this is really interesting. 