Grounded Theory

In 1967 two researchers, Strauss and Glaser discovered the ground theory technique when they wanted more from their research. The grounded theory approach, particularly the way Strauss developed it, consists of a set of steps whose careful execution and process is considered to "guarantee" a good theory as the outcome. In light of what we know today, there is no guaranteeing anything in research.

Strauss would say that the quality of a theory can be evaluated by the process by which that theory is constructed. This contrasts with the scientific perspective which states: the quality of a theory is determined by its ability to explain new data. Grounded theory understands the true nature of data and how easy it is to manipulate it. Ground theory, like all good qualitative research, accounts for the researcher in the research.

The basic idea of a grounded theory approach is to read a textual database several times and uncover and identify variables (called categories, concepts and properties) and their interrelationships. The ability to identify variables and their relationships is termed "theoretical sensitivity" and is directly affected by many things, especially one's reading of the literature and one's use of the techniques designed to enhance sensitivity.

Open coding is one aspect of grounded theory and an important part of the analysis; it is primarily concerned with identifying, naming, categorizing and describing phenomena found in the text that is read. Essentially, every word, line, sentence, paragraph and page is read with the primary purpose of searching for the answer to the main question of grounded theory research, "what is this about?"

These labels are suppose to identify a diverse array of things like schools, data, data collection, friendship, social groups, losses, etc. They are the nouns and verbs of the conceptual world of what is being read. Readers or researchers are to find and identify the adjectives and adverbs, or as they are known in the research, the properties of these categories. Whether these come directly from the data itself, from those responding, or from the mind of the researcher depends on the goals of the research. These decisions will be made by the researcher in the way the research is set.

It is important to have fairly abstract categories in addition to very concrete ones, as the abstract ones help to generate grounded theory that leads forward to the rest of the research. Grounded research is just one of the many methods of qualitative research, and provides, what I think, is a worthy example of what qualitative research is.

Quantitative research is rooted in numbers and dependent on them to discover truth. Quantitative is as its name implies... in need of a large quantity of research in order to identify trends. It is a macro-research methodology. Qualitative research is a micro-research methodology. It drills down into one issue and tries to get as much information from that one issue to make a statement that may or may not apply to the over-all population. This is the world of research!