Grounded Theory

I really enjoyed this session by Dr. Walter Fernandez on grounded theory.  I had heard of grounded theory before and I was pleased to learn more in this seminar from someone who practices it and advocates it.  I learnt that grounded theory is an inductive process of theory generation, discovery and exploration.  It focuses on the the development of middle-range theories - R Merton - and sociology.  GT is inductive in that you go to the field and inducting knowledge and then going through the literature.  I like to see it has going from the specific to the general.  In deductive work, you go from the general to the specific as you draw on the literature to test a theory through certain hypotheses and propositions.

Another issue I have come to realize is that when you are conducting such high level research you need to be familiar witht the current state of the body of knowledge in the field - need to understand the knowledge we have now and how knowledge has been built.  In order to understand the creation of knowledge a researcher needs to read and be familiar with the history of the field, such as key figures/academics, key developments, etc.  Then you more clearly can specify your contribution.

In grounded theory you start with your data collection in the field and then go back to the literature in a circular, iterative fashion.  As a result, you delay your literature review as well as the choice of theory.  GT has its own set of challenges.   I think that given you start with the data, you need a really good case site in order to find rich enough data.  The research question emerges through this iterative process, after data collection, analysis, and memo writing by the researcher.  In essence, you are doing the same tasks but in a different order.  It is a different way of looking at it.

GT theory can be used with different types qualitative research including positivist, interpretive and critical as it is compatible with different ontologies and epistomologies.  An interesting point raised was that a research can choose one of these three positions and no one can dispute it, it does not invalidate the other positions so positivist, interpretive and critical research can co-exist together.  A particular researcher may choose to do only one type of research during their whole career or may do one or more types of research.  My supervisor, Habib, for example does more than one type - positivist research when he uses surveys (Mahama, 2006) and interpretive when he does qualitative field studies with ANT (Chua and Mahama, 2007).  Also, in the latter paper, it seems like there is some grounded theory in this paper in the way they do their coding and the reference to a particular reference on grounded theory.

A question I am now thinking is ex anti the researcher knows they are doing grounded theory, but ex post when the thesis and the paper is finished can you tell it is grounded theory apart from the obvious mention in the research methods section.  I assume that the paper overall would read in the same way.

In terms of dealing with reflexivity to avoid your biases I was wondering how you do this and Walter said that basically you write things down first, you ideas, your preferences, certain things that may bias your judgement, so you are aware of them when you collect and analyse data.  However, as the human mind and behaviour is incredibly complex I am wondering if some preconceived opinions, preferences and biases we have are subconscious.  The exercise mentioned would only identify biases that we are conscious about, however I think that there are many biases that are in our subconscious and even we don't know, and yet, they will affect our judgements and interpretations.  They are so deeply embedded within our subconscious because of they way we have been trained since we were born that we just take it for granted.

Walter had an interesting perspective when it came to doing grounded theory in that some say in research there is a dichotomy between rigour and relevance and he feels that this dualism is not true and that research can be both rigorous and relevant.  I probably agree with this.  Situating your research within the literature is what makes it academic and rigorous and doing the fieldwork is what makes it relevant.  Other issues were also discussed, such as internal validity (the concept-indicator model) and external validity.  However, I am not sure if these words are really mentioned in qualitative work because these expressions tend to be associated with more quantitative research.  In some qualitative studies, like (Chua and Mahama, 2007) paper they mention dependability and confirmability and at some qualitative masterclass they said that the term validity is not used in qualitative research but other terms that essentially represent the same thing.

Walter said that while GT is a very powerful research tool, you need to have what it takes.  Specifically, the researcher needs to have a tolerance for uncertainty.  You need to have the ability to cope with not knowing.  However, I think that this is true of all types of research - a true researcher does not know and they are discovering new things, that is the definition of a researcher.  In fact, life is uncertain.

Walter was very helpful in going through various GT techniques and steps, such as Neisser's schemata, iterative data collection and analysis, the role of the literature review, Eisenhart's research model, circle of GT research, open coding, theoretical and selective coding, entering the field, conceptual relationships, theoretical memos, theoretical saturation, theoretical densification, substantive theory as well as other issues. 

Researchers doing GT need to creative and imaginative.  I like to work with both text/writing and figures/graphs.  You need to reach saturation for the scope of your study and obviously the scope of a study varies greatly.  During my studies, I think that I have always reached saturation as I have noticed that there are various stages to reach saturation.  For example, you start reading in a particular area, you start noticing the particular terms that are used (discipline specific), recurring references and substantive content.  As you do more reading it starts to become more familiar and repetitive, you start to get the main issue and the minor issues stemming off from the main issue.  Once you have exhausted your readings to the point that there is nothing new or relevant you have reached saturation. 

GT looks at the underlying processes.  In terms of doing the literature review, it plays a very different role to what is conventionally taught.  You do it later after the collection and analysis of some data.  Also, there are different stages of the literature review, such as the preliminary, thematic and theoretical LT.  To have a more rigorous study, all these stages should be completed where the theoretical LT is completed once you have analysed the data and want to find a theory that fits.  I asked which basket of theories you would typically used in GT and the answer was basically theories from sociology as well as possibly psychology because we are concerned with human behaviour and processes. 

Walter provided us with a comprehensive list of references and GT sources from Glaser, Strauss and Corbin as well as other references including his own work, which I hope to read soon.  A term that caught my attention is theoretical sensitivity.  Based on my experiences, I find that the best way to learn new things is to read the work of others and understanding not only what they are doing, but how and, of course, why.