Invitation to Grounded Theory, chapter 2: Gathering Rich Data

Text Exploration

In this chapter, the author describes more details of how data is gathered in the field. She emphasizes combining multiple forms of ethnographic observation and data collection, and interrogating the data in detail, to produce a meaningful theory of what was observed.

The author introduces “methods” as a way of thinking about data gathering, explaining that “methods extend and magnify our view of studied life and, thus, broaden and deepen what we learn of it and know about it.” One case study introduces “theoretical sampling process”, although it does not explain it in any detail. The author uses the case study to emphasize that qualitative data collection can change during the study, and this is a positive distinction from quantitative approaches.

The author describes that methods “increase your flexibility” but “wield no magic.” The research problem itself should shape the methods selected. This is a meaningful part of grounded theory, as it guides method selection and approaches. The author emphasizes that data collection approaches should not be forced onto the data; the data offers leads, that should define and shape how further data is collected.

The data that is gathered defines the quality of the study, and also defines the credibility of the conclusions drawn from the study; “the depth and scope of the data make a difference” in how others receive and consider, and believe, the output. The data should be rich and sufficient, which comes from gathering background data, extracting detailed descriptions of a range of perspectives, revealing what “lies beneath the surface,” showing change over time, and helping enable analytic categories that can be compared. This has been characterized by some (Dey) as a “smash-and-grab” approach to data collection.

Grounded theory focuses on processes and actions. Processes can be examined by asking questions of control, meaning, and changes in relationship to process over time. This can be extended to view any events and actions in a setting as worthy of study: “What should an ethnographer study in the field? Whatever is happening there.” The emphasis is on action and not setting or description. Grounded theory emphasizes evaluating and considering data as it emerges, rather than when the research is completed.

Documents provide a rich source of data. Documents can be “elicited” by asking participants to produce the data. Documents can be “extant” in that they exist without intervention from the researcher, typically in public settings. It’s important to realize that documents are always written from a point of view and the contents are curated: they don’t reflect reality, in large or in small.

The author offer 14 different guidelines for examining events that occur, reproduced verbatim here:

1. What is happening in the setting(s)? What are people doing? When do they do it? Why are they doing it? How do people in the setting explain what is happening and their actions concerning it? Which actions, experiences, and events routinely occur within the setting? Which patterns of actions and events do you discern? Which actions, experiences and events are unusual, surprising, and/or cause consternation? For whom? When?
2. What strikes you as most noteworthy, most interesting, or most telling? What tacit knowledge leads to your judgment (Wolfinger, 2002)? What hunches, impressions, and intuitions do you gain that you need to look for and check? Which questions occurred to you while in the field or writing fieldnotes?
3. How would you describe the setting(s)? Who is there? Why? How do people become part of or associated with the setting in each group that you find in it? Are there non-human actors involved in the setting? If so, how? What significance do they hold?
4. Which hierarchies do you discern? On what are these hierarchies based? Who has or takes control? To what extent does an informal hierarchy complement or challenge a formal hierarchy? How do these hierarchies affect individual and collective actions? How and to what extent do various participants and contingents talk about hierarchical arrangements?
5. What do different participants/groups in the setting seek to accomplish? What do various participants/groups take for granted? To which larger groups or networks are participants and/or their actions connected? How?
6. What do participants' experiences mean to them? How do they reveal meanings? How do they talk about their experiences and the events in the setting? What do they say? How do participants use language? Which words hold special meanings to them? What symbols do they share and act upon? How is language related to action – and inaction - in the setting(s)? Which discourses do participants employ? Which purposes do specific discourses serve? For whom?
7. On what criteria do participants and/or groups judge actions, events, and products or outcomes? What do they define as effective actions and successful outcomes? Failures?
8. To whom are participants accountable? How and to what extent is accountability enacted from their standpoints? From your observations?
9. How do participants explain their actions to each other (Goffman, 1989)? How do they present, explain, or justify, their actions to peers and to publics? What do they aim to teach you? Why? Who tries to instruct you?
10. What conventional understandings are reproduced in the setting? How does the reproduction of conventional understandings occur? Which ones are contested, resisted, or rejected? How and to what extent do members' actions reveal these understandings?
11. How are material resources involved? What material resources are needed for the action? How are these resources procured, maintained, controlled, and dispersed? Who has access to the resources? To what extent do participants agree on the distribution of resources?
12. How do your understandings shift and change as your research proceeds? As you have different vantage points in the setting? How do you ascertain that you have represented the setting, its participants, and their actions and meanings fairly (Fine, 1993; Madison, 2011)?
13. What theoretical area does this ethnography address? Why? How do you approach studying it?