Goals and Perspective The phrase grounded theory refers to theory that is developed inductively from a corpus of data. If done well this means that the resulting theory at least fits one dataset perfectly. This contrasts with theory derived deductively from grand theory without the help of data and which could therefore turn out to fit no data at all. Grounded theory takes a case rather than variable perspective although the distinction is nearly impossible to draw. This means in part that the researcher takes different cases to be wholes in which the variables interact as a unit to produce certain outcomes. A case oriented perspective tends to assume that variables interact in complete ways and is suspicious of simple additive models such as ANOVA with main effects only. Part and parcel of the case orientation is a comparative orientation. Cases similar on many variables but with different outcomes are compared to see where the key causal differences may lie. This is based on John Stuart Mills# A system of logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive method of differences essentially the use of natural experimental design. Similarly cases that have the same outcome are eamined to see which conditions they all have in common thereby revealing necessary causes. The grounded theory approach particularly the way Strauss develops it consists of a set of steps whose careful execution is thought to guarantee a good theory as the outcome. Strauss would say that the quality of a theory can be evaluated by the process by which a theory is constructed. This contrasts with the scientific perspective that how you generate a theory whether through dreams analogies or dumb luck is irrelevant: the quality of a theory is determined by its ability to eplain new data.Although not part of the grounded theory rhetoric it is apparent that grounded theorists are concerned with or largely influenced by emic understandings of the world: they use categories drawn from respondents themselves and tend to focus on making implicit belief systems eplicit. MethodsThe basic idea of the grounded theory approach is to read and reread a factual database such as a corpus of field notes and discover or label variables called categories concepts and properties and their interrelationships. The ability to perceive variables and relationships is termed theoretical sensitivity and is affected by a number of things including one#s reading of the literature and one#s use of techniques designed to enhance sensitivity. Of course the data do not have to be literally factual they could be observations of behavior such as interactions and events in a restaurant.

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Often they are in the form of field notes which are like diary entries. An eample is here. Open CodingOpen coding is the part of the analysis concerned with identifying naming categorizing and describing phenomena found in the tet. Essentially each line sentence paragraph etc. is read in search of the answer to the repeated question what is this about? What is being referenced here? These labels refer to things like hospitals information gathering friendship social loss etc. They are the nouns and verbs of a conceptual world. Part of the analytic process is to identify the more general categories that these things are instances of such as institutions work activities social relations social outcomes etc. We also seek out the adjectives and adverbs the properties of these categories. For example about a friendship we might ask about its duration and its closeness and its importance to each party. Whether these properties or dimensions come from the data itself from respondents or from the mind of the researcher depends on the goals of the research. It is important to have fairly abstract categories in addition to very concrete ones as the abstract ones help to generate general theory. Consider what is implied in the following passage of test Strauss and Corbin pg. :Tet Fragment Pain relief is a major problem when you have arthritis. Sometimes the pain is worse than other times but when it gets really bad whew! It hurts so bad you don#t want to get out of bed. You don#t feel like doing anything. Any relief you get from drugs that you take is only temporary or partial. One thing that is being discussed here is PAIN. Implied in the test is that the speaker views pain as having certain properties one of which is INTENSITY: it varies from a little to a lot. When is it a lot and when is it little? When it hurts a lot there are consequences: don#t want to get out of bed don#t feel like doing things what are other things you don#t do when in pain?. In order to solve this problem you need PAIN RELIEF. One AGENT OF PAIN RELIEF is drugs what are other members of this category?. Pain relief has a certain DURATION could be temporary and EFFECTIVENESS could be partial. One can see that this sort of analysis has a very emic cast to it even though I think that most grounded theorists believe they are theorizing about how the world *is* rather than how respondents see it. The process of naming or labeling things categories and properties is known as coding. Coding can be done very formally and systematically or quite informally. In grounded theory it is normally done quite informally. For example if after coding much tet some new categories are invented grounded theorists do not normally go back to the earlier test to code for that category. However maintaining an inventory of codes with their descriptions i.e. creating a codebook is useful along with pointers to test that contain them. In addition as codes are developed it is useful to write memos known as code notes that discuss the codes. These memos become fodder for later development into reports. An eample of a code note is found here.

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