Volume 05
Volume 5, issue no.1, November 2005
GT Review vol5 no1 Volume 5, Issue no. 1, November 2005 Staying Open: The use of theoretical codes in grounded theory Barney G. Glaser with the assistance of Judith Holton Keeping My Ways of Being: Middle-aged women dealing with the passage through menopause Helene Ekstrom, Johanna Esseveld & Brigitta Hovelius Weathering Change: Coping in a context of pervasive change Michael A. Raffanti Achieving Rigour and Relevance in Information Systems Studies: Using grounded theory to investigate organizational cases Walter D. Fernandez and Hans Hehmann Staying Open: The use of theoretical codes in grounded theory Barney G. Glaser with the assistance of Judith Holton Theoretical codes (TCs) are abstract models that emerge during the sorting and memoing stages of grounded theory (GT) analysis. They conceptualize the integration of substantive codes as hypotheses of a theory. In this article, I explore the importance of their emergence in the development of a grounded theory and I discuss the challenge of the researcher in staying open to their emergence and earned relevance rather than their pre-conceived forcing on the theory under development. I emphasize the importance of GT researchers developing theoretical sensitivity to a wide range of theoretical perspectives and their associated codes. It is a skill that all GT researchers can and should develop. Keeping My Ways of Being: Middle-aged women dealing with the passage through menopause Helene Ekstrom, Johanna Esseveld & Brigitta Hovelius The meanings given to menopause by women themselves are often left aside. In this grounded theory study, based on interviews and on open-ended questions in questionnaires answered by middle-aged women, the authors found that not being able to know what would happen and what influence menopause would have on them as individuals were sources of uncertainty. A theory of a general pattern of behaviour emerged, Keeping my ways of being, resolving the uncertainties involved. The intensity of the process and the use of its three different stages, those of Preserving present ways of being, Limiting changes and Reappraising, were considered to be dependent upon the central Personal calculation process, in which the women used their individual explanatory beliefs and evaluations of need. The theory used as a model of thinking in consultations with middle-aged women might show a high degree of workability in explaining what is going on. Weathering Change: Coping in a context of pervasive change Michael A. Raffanti This study of organizational change was conducted using classic grounded theory methodology (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Most of the relevant data came from open-ended intensive interviews with educators—classroom teachers, professional developers, learning specialists, administrators, and student teachers. Theoretical sampling was also done in organizational settings such as businesses, nonprofits, and religious institutions. The theory of weathering accounts for how organizational members continually resolve their main concern of survival in the face of pervasive change. Weathering is a basic social-psychological process that enables individuals to endure changes in a manner consistent with their personal and professional needs, goals, and values. In the sizing-up phase, an individual initially confronts an impending organizational change. In the filtering phase, one decides how to cope with the change by processing the information through personal and professional filters. The outcome of filtering determines the behaviors exhibited in the coping stage. Coping is a set of behaviors that are best characterized as resisting and acquiescing. The study suggests that leaders consider the complexities of weathering behaviours as they seek to implement organizational changes. Achieving Rigour and Relevance in Information Systems Studies: Using grounded...A Grounded Theory on Helping Behavior and Its Shaping Factors
Bro. Hans Steven Moran, FSC Abstract In social psychology, the attribution model of helping behavior suggests that beliefs of the helping target’s responsibility for the need for help evoke affective motivators such as feelings of pity, sympathy, or anger. The affective motivation leads to helping or not helping the target. The current emergent theory is an enhancement of this theory by incorporating other personal and situational variables. Through the use of classic grounded theory, I interviewed 80 participants from different De La Salle Schools in the Philippines. This yielded over 1300 individual incidents that were compared and contrasted to form codes, categories and subcategories. A theory on the decision making process of helping emerged that incorporates the helper’s personal conviction, and rational deliberations of the situation. The desire to help is based on the helper’s rationalemotive beliefs (philosophical ideals and values that nurture helping and the knowledge of the nature of risk/problem) and relational-emotive ties (with the one who needs help and with a social group that nurtures helping). The desire to help undergoes a process of rationalpragmatic-deliberations on the appropriateness of the recipients need of help, the cost of helping, the helper’s capability of helping, and the logistics of helping before the actual helping occurs. The theory has implications for current social psychological theories of helping, and the use of classic grounded theory research. Introduction The Brothers of the Christian School is a congregation of religious men founded in the 1700’s in France by Jean Baptiste De La Salle. The integral purpose of the congregation is education of youth, particularly the marginalized. The group grew to become of one of the pillars of Catholic evangelization through school education in at least 80 countries around the world. De La Salle Brothers, as they are popularly known in the Philippines, reached Philippine soil in 1910 and presently has 12 schools offering basic and higher education. In the 1980s there was a strong impetus to rekindle the foundational philosophy of reaching more needy young people. The rallying cry popularized by the head of Brothers was “risking your lives to youth at risk”. The past 10 years ushered movements towards translating this adage into specific programs and activities of the schools. However, the idea of “youth at risk” is at its best a conjuncture of notions with sociological and theological underpinnings. Most members of the Lasallian community are in a quandary on this and how it translates operationally into the leadership and management of schools. This led to the present study of unraveling the various meanings attached to the concept of youth at risk by different members of De La Salle Schools in the Philippines (abbreviated Lasallian community in this study). I employed a qualitative epistemology, and started out with the simple inquiry on what youth at risk means to members of the Lasallian community. Method Participants The 80 participants were religious members (La Salle Brothers), administrators, teachers and students of seven De La Salle Schools in the Philippines, representing the three major archipelagic clusters of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. These islands are likewise distinguished by socio-political and economic variances. Data-Gathering Procedure I used conversations with consent of respondents as opposed to formal interviews to harvest the raw and spontaneous sentiments of the respondents. The interaction climate of conversations are less formal or structured, allowing the nuances of deviating from other topics, which later was found useful. I felt that conversations were more authentic and truer to the precepts of grounded theory...The Postmodern Turn: Shall Classic Grounded Theory Take That Detour? A Review Essay...
Vivian B. Martin, PhD Situational Analysis: Grounded Theory after the Postmodern Turn, Adele E. Clarke, 2005, Sage Publications. 408 pp., paperback/hardcover Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide through Qualitative Analysis, Kathy Charmaz, 2006, Sage Publications. 224 pp., paperback/hardcover Adherents to classic grounded theory have gotten used to spotting the pretenders working under the grounded theory banner. Some of these faux-GT researchers have worked in a fog, misunderstanding fundamentals of the method; these are the studies that leave us shaking our heads and wondering about the doctoral committee and peer reviewers who did not bother to find out more about the method they were evaluating. More infuriating are the authors who are claiming to improve on grounded theory, to reground it, to quote one notable British author who, lack of handson grounded theory experience aside, manages a booklength critique of the method. Two recent books in the “remaking grounded theory” genre are from sociologists with some years of grounded theory projects behind them. Adele E. Clarke, author of Situational Analysis, was a student and colleague of Anselm L. Strauss at the University of California San Francisco. Kathy Charmaz, author of Constructing Grounded Theory, is among the few grounded theorists who studied with Barney G. Glaser and Strauss at UCSF. Although the pedigree of both authors gives more traditional readers comfort that these are not just people wielding the term grounded theory and conflating it with any old interview study, the vision for grounded theory offered in these two books are a challenge to more orthodox notions. Both authors treat a sacrosanct element of classic grounded theory, the core category or concept, as unnecessary or, worse, a barrier to understanding the phenomenon under study. Both accuse classic grounded theory of a lack of reflexivity about the research process, insensitivity to difference and variation, and oversimplification in its quest to create an integrative theory. The overall indictment is that grounded theory is out of step with the ways of thinking and talking about research brought about by postmodernism and other changes in scholarship through the 80s and 90s. Clarke’s stated goal is to “push grounded theory more fully around the postmodern turn” (p. xxi), a shift in the social sciences and humanities that has focused on the fragmentation, tentativeness, and complexities of social life and the need to adopt different methods and ways of gaining entry to these fragments, not to bring about wholeness—that is not possible within the postmodern frame—but to at least begin articulating the possibilities and their connections. If this sounds vague and possibly contradictory, such is the nature of postmodernism. The goal of both authors is to make grounded theory more responsive to it. Toward this end, Clarke proposes changes that pretty much create a new method. Charmaz, though better informed about how the different variants of grounded theory converge and diverge and how they have coexisted,nonetheless endorses a sometimes impressionistic, interpretative approach which, I suspect, grounded theorists who are seeking to utilize grounded theory to bring about understanding and change in practical disciplines would find less desirable and accountable. The daily worlds of nursing, management, information systems, and other fields, I would argue, very much privilege an “objective” reality where phenomena are defined and measured. In posing the question in the title of this review essay, I am asking whether classic grounded theory can and should avoid the postmodern turn, which would be a detour off its main path, which has yet to be fully explored. I...The Roots of Grounded Theory
[From a keynote presentation given to the 3 rd International Qualitative Research Convention, Johor Bahru, Malaysia 23 rd August 2005] Barney G Glaser, Ph.D.; Hon Ph.D. I studied sociology at Stanford 1948 to 1952, which was partially fine but limited in those days. But then I knew I wanted to be a sociologist. Returning to the USA from the army in 1955 to study sociology at Columbia confirmed my goals. I bought the program 100% on doing sociology as my life work. All I do is sociology in every facet of life; work, recreation, family etc. My life is sociology driven and directed. Now let me give you a quote from Barton’s (1955, p.246) article of Paul F. Lazarsfeld [PFL], “Analyzing the logic of research operations to clarify concepts remained a key to PFL’s life”. It has been the key to my life also. “All is data” – that now sloganized tenet of Grounded Theory [GT] – clearly came from PFL per Barton’s words. Robert K. Merton’s [RKM] brief flicker of light – to admit to emergence (see Barton, p. 255) – became the key to GT’s theoretical stance. The Four Dimensions of being a Sociologist In buying the program 100%, I bought the four dimensions of doing sociology – autonomy,originality, contribution and the power of sociology. All dimensions are interrelated; they became a part of my sociological identity and led eventually to my originating GT. Now let’s consider each of these dimensions of my training, how they affected me, subsequently found their way into GT and how they may serve as food for thought in your training. Autonomy PhD training is a training for autonomy. One becomes the doctor, so to speak. One claims one’s own pacing. One claims one’s own ideas and the connections between them. One becomes the theorist and/or research author. Therefore, one must stand on what one has said and achieved. This puts a call on one’s seniors, on faculty and the social structure of departments to allow the PhD candidate to do his own thing, irrespective of faculty and supervisor desires to have the candidate work on their ideas. It puts a call on author idol worship of “grand theorists”; it puts a call on theoretical capitalism; it puts a call on supervisor control and ownership of the candidate’s work in favour of giving him/her full freedom and license. It is a claim that the candidate must stand for irrespective of senior or supervisor obstruction and efforts to the contrary. Try it; you will like it. Please remember, I did my dissertation totally on my own on secondary data from the survey research center at the University of Michigan. It passed easily. My supervisor Hans Zetterberg was delighted. PFL was overjoyed by the core variable and the development of new method analytic techniques. RKM was confounded since it cast grave doubt on his famous paper; “Recognition in Science”. My dissertation was published immediately, given the recalcitrant forces of action. It was requested, not sold by me – since I did not have a clue. Throughout my whole training I resisted the efforts of both PFL and RKM to co-opt me to work for them and those who did were not very smart. I had no time for them personally, just their ideas. It was clear in RKM’s writings on the sociology of science that the key to creativity was to study ideas with autonomous freedom in order to put them together by seeing...Grappling with the literature in a grounded theory study
[This paper was originally published in Contemporary Nurse (www.contemporarynurse.com) and is reprinted here with the kind permission of the publisher. Reference: McCallin, A. M. (2003). Grappling with the literature in a grounded theory study. Contemporary Nurse, 15(12), 6169.] Antoinette McCallin, Ph.D., RN Abstract Student researchers often struggle to understand how to use literature in a grounded theory study where timing and knowing what to read are critical. Despite substantive theoretical documentation on this topic the reality of working through abstract ideas is more challenging. There is a fine line between not doing a literature review in the area of study and being informed so that a study is focused. In this paper a practical example will be presented illustrating how the student can integrate literature yet stay away from preconceived notions. The topic is interprofessional practice. Key Words Grounded theory, Interprofessional practice, Qualitative literature integration Introduction Over and over again student researchers grapple to understand the place of the literature review in a grounded theory study. While the theoretical ideas are well documented in texts on research methodology (Chenitz, 1986; Glaser, 1978, 1992, 1998; Strauss, 1987; Strauss & Corbin, 1998) integrating abstract concepts in practice is sometimes more challenging. Glaser (1998) recognises that reading the literature is problematic while Strauss and Corbin (1998) expect most professionals are familiar with the literature in the field. Misunderstandings arise from the tendency for novice researchers to take a purist stance whereby they accept the general advice to stay away from the literature literally. While the beginner researcher receives that interpretation happily, supervisors and institutional review committees are rather more nervous of such a simplistic approach. Those responsible for student researchers seek some reassurance that the student knows what they are doing, has a general focus, and is at least safe to enter the field. Preparation for any research study is always essential and some pre-research literature reading is still necessary to “frame the problem in the introduction to a study” (Creswell, 1994, p. 23). At the very least, a literature review is needed to find out if the proposed study or something similar has been done before. In addition, this early literature review may be used to prepare a research proposal for an ethics committee, so sound preliminary work goes some way to demonstrate that the researcher knows exactly what she is doing even if she does not know what she is looking for. Thus the mental wrestle quickens with the need to be general but focused, yes, to look at some literature but no, stay away from the main area of interest. Not surprisingly, student researchers may feel baffled with instructions that are apparently contradictory. This is complicated further, as many qualitative researchers work in an environment where clinicians are increasingly asked to justify decisions with the best evidence (Street, 2001). Such issues serve to emphasise that part of being a qualitative researcher is learning to move beyond the either-or way of thinking, in order to embrace bothand thinking that recognises complex possibilities, many truths and viewpoints, and different ways of experiencing reality (Zohar & Marshall, 1994). In this paper the issues and strategies for grounded theory literature integration will be discussed and illustrated with a practical example. What are the Issues? Clearly literature review in a grounded theory study must include literature on both the topic and the grounded theory method. For example, student researchers grappling with the literature will quickly find the debate about emergence versus sensitisation that arose...