Grounded Theory: Strategies, Methods, and Analysis

Grounded Theory: Strategies and Methods

Grounded theory has two main strategies:

Theoretical Sampling

Involves adding to the sample of subjects or situations encountered, additional comments, or further interviews. It seeks to find different cases.

Constant Comparative Method

It is a method to analyze the data at different times in which the researcher interacts with:

1. Classified portions of data:
   • Words
   • Phrases
   • Paragraphs

Categories arise, either intuited or implicit (they are marked, but without a name).

Constant Comparative Method

As the process of selecting pieces of data advances, categories appear with more explicit rules.

The task is to identify:

1. Emerging categories = Issues
   • Categories = Properties
2. Central category = Recurring Themes

Links between categories are established.

Endorsement MEMOS

3. Selection appears early.

As emerging categories and properties, and relationships of these categories with the core category, theory is taking shape.

Saturation of Information

Three Moments of Grounded Theory

1st Moment: Preliminary Analysis

The analysis begins with the first data collection and extends until fieldwork is completed.

1. You must know the material in depth.

1. Interviews (transcripts)
2. Field Notes
3. Various documents (visual, auditory, written)

2. Patterns and emerging issues must be identified.

Topics are identified (situations, behaviors, people, values) recurrently. Based on the recurring themes, the researcher looks to explore the exceptional cases, the different cases.

By studying the diversity, a greater understanding of the subject is achieved.

3. Types are developed.

The types correspond to classifications which require a certain number of typical cases, a whole set of events, situations, or persons.

Classification types

1. The data arising from:

What could you say about your relationship with your partner?

2. Proposed by the researcher:

Are there differences in your relationship with your partners before entering the study of Social Work and after coming to study Social Work?

4. Establishing and exploring metaphors.

They are literary devices, which best express abstract ideas from the reference to specific aspects.

Starting from the examination of the metaphors, categories and propositions are developed intuitively.

A category:

A topic is a variable that makes sense in reference to what the informant says.

Transcript of the story

Today young people studying at the university see us as little. Before, they greeted us, asked us how we had spent the night.

5. Unifying category building and new proposals.

A proposition is:

A phrase that reflects a generalization from the data set.

Transcript of the story

Sometimes they do not even look at us.

No respect in the use of space.

Psychological abuse: emotional

Unifying Categories

Abuse Towards People in the Streets by Students

6. A Review

The data obtained during the investigative process are compared with bibliographies (theoretical background, research).

Second Moment: Interim Analysis

In the second moment, all the material is encoded.

Codification: The particular operation, physical or manipulative process by which a code indicative of the category itself is assigned to each segment of text. The code may be a number, a word, or an abbreviation.

At this stage, one will discover:

• Descriptive coding: Material is read and fragments that are considered the smallest units of meaning are selected. A paragraph or a single word can be selected.
• Axial coding or relational: Involves linking two or more descriptive categories, giving way to more abstract levels in the analysis.
• Selective coding (Central): Currently identifies one or more core categories. It involves a process of triangulation - Saturation.

3rd Moment: Final Analysis

The logical chain of evidence is found, establishing a sequence of factors to gradually give way to an explanation of what is considered a process of gathering pieces of data, making the invisible obvious, to link facts logically.

Theorizing: The process where alternative explanations are constructed from data.

Re-contextualization: Process in which the investigator proves to extrapolate the application of the theory that emerged from the data to populations other than those studied.