My MPhil study at City University of Hong Kong changed my whole life. When I came to the program in 2000, I knew little about scientific research. Fortunately, the program was so small that I was trained under careful supervision of Professor Zhu. He advised me on a range of things: from taking courses to reading books, from choosing thesis topics to correcting grammatical mistakes, and from designing research projects to planning my academic career. Also, he kindly involved me in his research project on "Adoption, Use and Impact of the Internet among Adult Audiences in Greater China", in which I learned how to design research project and implement survey research in the real world.
In my MPhil thesis, I carried out a fairly sophisticated experimental study, with a 2 by 2 by 2 by 2 design, to examine the effect of characteristics of news on message credibility. Throughout the process, I asked naive questions and made stupid mistakes; however, Professor Zhu and Dr. He patiently led me through this painful process. My confidence went ups and downs, yet my thinking skills on theoretical conceptualization got sharper and more mature. More importantly, I found great interest in academic research and decided to make it my career. Therefore, I chose to pursue my PhD study in the U.S.A.
After entering the PhD program in School of Journalism, Indiana University, I realized how precious my MPhil study at City U was. The training I received on theoretical conceptualization, empirical data collection and statistical analysis made me competent for my further study and research despite my being a non-native speaker of English. Take statistical analysis for example. Students usually need to learn statistics four times to grasp it. Since I took two introductory statistical courses at City University and practiced statistical analysis in my master's thesis, I was able to take advanced statistical courses like Structure Equation Modeling in the first year of my PhD study, when most of my classmates were struggling with elementary statistics. Whenever I met research difficulties, I would take out the class notes of my MPhil study and review the fundamental concepts. Even now, when I read those class notes, I can still learn new things because they are well organized, contain comprehensive content and state theories clearly.
Since the first year of my PhD study, I have conducted several independent studies and presented the findings in international conferences. Last year, I published my first SSCI article in Journalism & mass Communication Quarterly, titled "Agenda-setting effects among the media, the public and Congress, 1946-2004". I owe the idea of this paper to my sensitivity to secondary data analysis and my commitment to theoretical development, all of which has been cultivated since my MPhil years.
Tan Yue (MPhil Cohort 2001)
31/10/2008
