Inquiries regarding reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the above address. This prompted me to undertake a more detailed examination of the topic and resulted in my paper Re-grounding Grounded Theory. Glaser's insistence on claiming the mantle of "Classical Grounded Theory" implies that he would include his own writings as canonical, with those of other variants labeled as departures from the method itself.
Until recently, however, this has been a largely unrecognized and poorly articulated aspect of the method. Clearly, the same data is the basis for differing views on the core concept of what I call grounded theory. Part two consists of a chapter that discusses the background of the development of GTM and another chapter that gives an overview of the method as a whole.
As the later chapters illustrate, there are many ways in which GTM can and has been used imaginatively to good effect, while maintaining the core features of the method. This phrase echoes the title of the famous film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
PART ONE
In some cases, these criteria are aimed at the goal or subject of the research: pure, applied, emancipatory, policy-oriented, and so on. While potentially synonymous with approach, the term strategy is more focused on articulating the reasoning behind a researcher's choice of method(s) and application of method(s) in the research itself. These aspects of research methods refer to the understanding researchers have of their choice of method - the goal the method is intended to achieve and the characteristics of the research process encompassed by the method.
In the case of GTM, one of the key and distinct starting points is what is not required at the beginning. While this is a critical and notable aspect of the method, it has also proven to be a constant concern. One of the persistently troubling aspects of GTM has been the role of literature review.
Applying existing models or constructs such as Glaser's Coding Families or other aspects of the literature. As a consequence, all staff involved in the project could understand what was required of them and other members of the team. In the United Kingdom and most of the English-speaking world, this is usually referred to as Priestley's discovery of oxygen.
He made a similar point regarding the shift from a view of the Earth to a view of the sun centered on the universe.
PART TWO
Strauss and Corbin expressed this clearly in their chapter in the first edition of The Handbook of Qualitative Research in 1994. In the chapters that follow, I give a brief historical account of the method and its founders (chapter 3), before going further . to consider the key features and characteristics of the method as a whole (Chapter 4). Glaser and Strauss began collaborating in the 1960s, leading to the publication of The Discovery of Grounded Theory in 1967; hence the chapter title 1967 and all that.”1.
It originated with Awareness and Time and continues into the present, as illustrated by many of the chapters in The Handbook of Grounded Theory (Bryant and Charmaz, 2007a). Through his teaching throughout the United States and in Germany, Strauss himself was the primary figure in spreading the method in the period from the 1970s to the early 1990s. This is unfortunate as it is the basis for confusion and misunderstandings with both the authors and the.
One of the important publications was Denzin and Lincoln's Handbook of Qualitative Research in 1994. The constructivist turn11 is related to the work of Kathy Charmaz, one of the original participants in the UCSF Doctoral Program. Charmaz was a leading figure in this regard, with her chapter in the 2nd edition of The Handbook of Qualitative Research (2000) being a landmark and the publication of Constructing Grounded Theory (2006) another.
It is therefore not too surprising that Glaser and Strauss did not get further than the OED meaning of the term. Later in this chapter, the essentials and mishaps of GTM are described, and the use of the term induction is placed firmly in the latter category. It should contain "grab" and "work" in the sense of indicating how theory can lead to improved practice and understanding of participants.
This was clearly the case with two elements of the Glaser and Strauss trilogy, Awareness and Time. The essences have been largely covered in this chapter in the discussion of the various aspects that are included by the quote from The Handbook of Grounded Theory. The second accidental aspect of GTM is the injunction against engagement with the literature at the beginning of the research.
As some of the initial doctoral students at UCSF pointed out, this was paradoxical advice even in the 1960s. In her chapter in the second edition of the Handbook of Qualitative Research, Charmaz made the distinction between "objectivist" and "constructivist".
PART THREE
THE GERUNDS OF THE GROUNDED THEORY METHOD
Part two of this book covers key aspects of the historical development of GTM (Chapter 3) and provides an overview of the method as a whole (Chapter 4). In the GTM literature, different authors have employed different strategies to deal with these aspects of the method. The transformation is performed by the researchers as they go through the stages of the method.
The research team, 15 in total, participated in the activities of the local community, with the aim of being active participants rather than neutral observers. Lazarsfeld later felt that this confidence was misplaced or overplayed, to the detriment of the data itself. The outcome of the early coding stages of a grounded theory method (GTM) research project may not look like a model in the usual sense of the term, but it will certainly be an abstraction or series of abstractions, reflecting the focus of the researcher. (s) involved and the interaction between researcher(s) and the context under investigation.
If coding can be viewed in this way, it also has implications for other aspects of the method. But the use of a phrase like "the theory emerges from the data" is problematic because it obliterates the active roles of the researcher(s). So in each case there was a purpose for the selection of the data or the source of the data.
Yet it is worth noting that the only mention of this is in the appendix at the end of the book. Examples of this occurred in the cases of Gamage and Walsh, two of the students whose work is presented above. Glaser's use of the terms objectivity and subjectivity in the second paragraph of the extract is equally misleading.
What is this data about?— The researcher should not assume that the meaning and significance of the data is immediately obvious. Strauss and Corbin seem to have had some inkling of this, given their comments in a chapter in the first edition of The Handbook of Qualitative Research. This kind of question was based on the experience of the researcher and on some reports of [XXX department].
Other researchers have combined GTM with action research [AR], a method that emphasizes the creation of effective interventions in the research field—the use of the term action along with research. Details of the sampling approaches for each of the three phases of data collection are available in the relevant sections of this chapter.
