The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data:

The wide range of approaches to data analysis in qualitative research can seem daunting even for experienced researchers. This handbook is the first to provide a state-of-the art overview of the whole field of QDA; from general analytic strategies used in qualitative research, to approaches specific to particular types of qualitative data, including talk, text, sounds, images and virtual data.

The handbook includes chapters on traditional analytic strategies such as grounded theory, content analysis, hermeneutics, phenomenology and narrative analysis, as well as coverage of newer trends like mixed methods, reanalysis and meta-analysis. Practical aspects such as sampling, transcription, working collaboratively, writing and implementation are given close attention, as are theory and theorization, reflexivity, and ethics.

Written by a team of experts in qualitative research from around the world, this handbook is an essential compendium for all qualitative researchers and students across the social sciences.

CH 11: Grounded Theory and Theoretical Coding 

Background

Grounded theory (GT) is a research approach in which data collection and analysis take place simultaneously. Each part informs the other, in order to construct theories of the phenomenon under study. GT provides rigorous yet flexible guidelines that begin with openly exploring and analysing inductive data and leads to developing a theory grounded in data. Induction starts with ‘study of a range of individual cases and extrapolates patterns from them to form a conceptual category’ (Charmaz, 2006: 188). Nevertheless, instead of pure induction, the underlying logic of GT actually moves between induction and abduction. Abduction means selecting or constructing a hypothesis that explains a particular empirical case or set of data better than any other candidate hypotheses, as a provisional hypothesis and a worthy candidate for further investigation.

GT was originally developed by sociologists Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss (1967), and has since then been further developed in different versions, such as Glaserian GT (e.g., Glaser, 1978; 1998; 2005), Straussian GT (Strauss, 1987; later developed in collaboration with and furthered by Corbin, see Corbin and Strauss, 2008; Strauss and Corbin, 1990; 1998), constructivist GT (Bryant, 2002; Charmaz, 2000; 2003; 2006; 2009; Thornberg, 2012; Thornberg and Charmaz, 2012), Clarke's (2003; 2005) postmodern version called situational analysis, and Multi-GT (Goldkuhl and Cronholm, 2010). This chapter emphasizes constructivist GT.

Glaser's intellectual background had focused on rigorous training in quantitative methodology and middle-range theories at Columbia University in New York. He also had studied literature for a year at the University of Paris, and became familiar with the literary analysis method called explication de text – a method of careful reading and line-by-line comparisons of text. After his academic training, Glaser continued working at Columbia University under the guidance of Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Robert K. Merton. In contrast, Strauss studied at the University of Chicago (within the so-called ‘Chicago School’) where he continued his undergraduate interest in pragmatism and further developed his interests in symbolic interactionism, ethnographic field studies and comparative analysis. At Chicago, the works of John Dewey, Charles S. Peirce, Robert Park, Herbert Blumer and Everett Hughes influenced his thinking (for further reading on Glaser and Strauss's backgrounds, see Morse et al., 2009).

From the beginning, GT had mixed epistemological roots in positivism, pragmatism and symbolic interactionism. Although Glaser and Strauss's GT took a critical stance towards the positivistic mainstream social research of the 1960s, at the same time they incorporated a taken-for-granted vocabulary and discourse of positivism when arguing for the scientific legitimacy of GT. Hence, the original GT as well as Glaserian GT later on have both been challenged for their unproblematic and rather naive realist view of data, that data ‘could speak for itself’, and the possibility of obtaining objective data ‘by looking at many cases on the same phenomenon, when joint collecting and coding data, to correct for bias and make the data objective’ (Glaser, 2003: 173; for examples of the critical voices, see Bryant and Charmaz, 2007a; Charmaz, 2000; 2006; Clarke, 2005; Corbin and Strauss, 2008; Olesen, 2007; Thornberg, 2012).

In contrast, Charmaz (1995; 2000; 2003; 2006; 2009) and others (e.g. Bryant, 2002; Mills et al., 2006) have developed and argued for a constructivist version of GT, rooted in pragmatism and relativist epistemology. This position assumes that neither data nor theories are discovered, but researchers construct them as a result of their interactions with their participants and emerging analyses (Charmaz, 2006; 2009; Thornberg and Charmaz, 2012). Researchers and participants co-construct data, and the researchers' socio-cultural settings, academic training and personal worldviews inevitably influence these data (Charmaz, 2009; Mills et al., 2006). This position takes a middle ground between realist and postmodernist positions (Charmaz, 1995) by assuming an ‘obdurate reality’ while also assuming multiple realities and multiple perspectives on these realities (Bryant and Charmaz, 2007a; Charmaz, 1995; 2009).

Social realities are mutually constructed through interaction and may be redefined, and, thus, are somewhat indeterminate.