Posted by
jillian on Mar 30, 2007 in
Issue no.2, March 2007,
Volume 06 |
Comments Off on All Is Data
Barney G. Glaser, Ph.D., Hon. Ph.D. ……Although data is plural “is” sounds better All is data” is a well known Glaser dictum. What does it mean? It means that exactly what is going on in the research scene is the data, what ever the source, whether interview, observations, documents. It is not just what is being, how it is being and the conditions of its being told, but all the data surrounding what is being told. It means what is going on has to be figured out exactly what it is for conceptualization, NOT description. Data is always as good as far as it goes, and there is always more to keep correcting the categories with more relevant properties. All is data is a grounded theory statement, not applicable to QDA. Data is discovered for conceptualization to be what it is for a theory. It is discovered by constant comparison which generates a category and properties that vary it. The data is what it is and the researcher collects, codes and analyzes exactly what he has: whether baseline data, properline data, vague data, interpreted data or conceptual data (see “Doing GT”). There is no such thing as bias, or objective or subjective, interpreted or misinterpreted, etc. It is what the researcher is receiving (as a human being, which is inescapable). Data is what the researcher is constantly comparing with tedium, to be sure, as he generates categories and their properties. Remember again, the product will be transcending abstraction, NOT accurate description. While the QDA researcher may be disappointed with what he is collecting, the GT researcher’s job is to analyze its components, its type of data, and take a conceptual perspective on it. Good as far as it goes means the GT researcher is always doing a perspective on a perspective (data) with the goal of generating a theory that resolves continually a main concern, which, as I have said many times, accounts for the main action in a substantive area. For the GT researcher the world is totally empirical. As he collects data his job is to deal with exactly what is happening, not what he would want to happen, not what his own interest would wish the data to be. The data is not “truth” it is not “reality”. It is exactly what is happening. The GT researcher has to be oriented to each course of action having its own meaning. To be sure it does. And once the GT researcher lets this meaning emerge and sees the pattern, he/she will feel “sure” that this is what is going on. This sureness can not be known beforehand. It emerges conceptually through constant comparison. That the data may not be reality or the truth, should not disturb the GT researcher. He should keep in mind that, after all, socially structured, vested fictions run the world, accurate descriptions run a poor second. Thus data is what is occurring, it is socially produced and it is up to the GT researcher to figure it out, BECAUSE the participants are doing it, talking it, using it, think it, are it, respond to it, offer it and so forth. It is going on right in front of the GT researcher! For example, treating talk (an interview) as data comprises not just what was said, but that the talk was given, in a certain way, in a certain context, with a certain endurance, in a culture, with talk story attached etc., etc. The...