Invitation to Grounded Theory, chapter 1

Text Exploration

In this text, the author describes the history of grounded theory and introduces the key attributes of the approach.

Grounded theory is simply a theory that is “grounded” in data. The author makes clear that the methods are principles and heuristics rather than formulaic approaches, emphasizing that the approach is not intended to be positivist in and of itself.

One of the key elements of the theory is qualitative coding, where “we attach labels to segments of data that depict what each segment is about.” This is an analytic approach to make comparisons across data pieces. Another key element is the use of memos, which then lead to “tentative analytic categories.” The data is abstracted over time, and the “work culminates in a ‘grounded theory,’ or an abstract theoretical understanding of the studied experience.”

The author describes the history of grounded theory, starting with a push-back on the generally accepted views that only positivist, quantitative methods can produce meaningful research findings and data. Grounded theory methods evolved through a variety of stages. Glaser and Strauss are cited as recommending the creation, rather than deduction, of theories. They proposed a qualitative analysis process that was rigorous, had its own logic and meaningful approach, and was intended to generate these theories. They described specific components of the approach: simultaneously collecting and analyzing data, working inductively with data, focusing on theory development, identifying categories and related properties, and “sampling aimed towards theory construction, not for population representativeness.” The output is a completed grounded theory, that provides new theoretical understanding and makes explicit the theoretical categories that led to its development.

Grounded theory was then partially challenged by constructivists, who felt that the theory introduced the researcher’s voice as authoritative and treated the research process as objective and removed. Instead, they argued that research itself is influential and meaningful, and must be taken into account as constructing the situation in which the research occurs. This view “shreds notions of a neutral observer and value-free expert.” This is an approach championed by the author, who calls this “constructivist grounded theory.” She explains that “for me, subjectivity is inseparable from social existence.” She proposes a refined set of qualities of what a grounded theorist does, which primarily focus on conducting data and analyzing it simultaneously, analyzing actions and processes, using comparative methods, develop conceptual categories, and refining them into inductive abstract analytic categories.

The author concludes by summarizing that “we are part of the world we study,” and that we “construct our grounded theories through our past and present involvements and interactions with people, perspectives, and research practices.”