Issue no.1, November 2005
Staying Open: The use of theoretical codes in grounded theory
By Barney G. Glaser, PhD., Hon. PhD. with the assistance of Judith A. Holton Abstract 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 preconceived 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. Introduction The full power of grounded theory comes with staying open to the emergent and to earned relevance when doing grounded theory (GT). This is especially so with regard to writing up a GT with emergent theoretical codes (TCs). Researchers seem to have the most trouble at this stage of the generating Process – sorting memos and writing up the theory with emergent TCs. Substantive coding comes comparatively easily and is exciting, giving the researcher the exhilarating feeling of discovery. Theoretical coding does not come easily as an emergent and has a beguiling mystique. As one PhD student emailed me: “theoretical codes and interchangeability of indicators were the two aspects of GT that I found the most difficult to comprehend.” (Holton email January 26, 2004). Another GT researcher writes, “The author of this current paper suggests that theoretical coding perhaps places the most demand upon the grounded theorist’s creativity” (Cutcliffe, 2000). Theoretical codes are frequently left out of otherwise quite good GT papers, monographs, and dissertations. The novice GT researcher finds them hard to understand. This article begins the process of trouble shooting this problem by dealing with many facets of theoretical coding and will consider several sources of difficulty in using TCs. The goal is to help the GT researcher stay open to the nonforced, non-preconceived discovery of emergent TCs. The reader may consider this article hard to understand unless he/she has read and studied my several former books. There will be some repetition of the ideas I have already written, but they will be in the service of offering new insights regarding TCs. Readers who are challenged in staying on a substantively abstract level of conceptualization may find this article even harder. Keeping researchers on an abstract or conceptual level is hard – especially for those in nursing, medicine, business and social work – since they are trained at the accurate description level. They tend to slip easily into a theoretical descriptive level as the trained style and practical considerations of their professional field take other. Staying open to TCs will help maintain the substantively conceptual level required by GT and will increase its power. This article is grounded in my origination of GT, in supervising many, many GT researches and dissertations, in reading many dissertations and GT monographs and in intense study of noted QDA methodology books. It is grounded in the hard study of the above caches. It is NOT a “think up” article. It is grounded in what is going on in GT research. The focus of this article, as is my many books, is to help researchers get GT research done – achieve GT products that receive the rewards of PhD degree and career moves. It is not an epistemological...Keeping My Ways of Being: Middleaged women dealing with the passage through menopause...
By Helene Ekström, Johanna Esseveld and Birgitta Hovelius Abstract 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 were sources of uncertainty for the women. The process, Keeping My Ways of Being, emerged in the analysis as the pattern of behavior through which the women endeavored to resolve their uncertainty. 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. Key words: Grounded theory, menopause, hormone therapy, ways of being, personal calculation Background Midlife is not a clearly demarcated period and it was the last segment of the life-span to be discovered (Lock, 1998). It tends to be characterized more by key events than by a particular age period, although this depends on what cohort, culture or context is of primary concern (Lachman & James, 1997). In Sweden, the terms “climacteric” or “transition-age” are commonly used for the years before and after the final menstrual period. In common parlance the terms are used for a wide range of symptoms and circumstances during these years, and thus similar to the content often given to the term “menopause” (Ballard, Kuh, & Wadsworth, 2001). Menopause is a physiological event occurring universally in women who reach midlife. In the medical literature, midlife or middle-age is often redefined for women in terms of menopause (Esseveld & Eldén, 2002). This redefinition implies an emphasis on the loss of fertility and on estrogen deficiency, followed by a focus on problems, symptoms and risks of various diseases (Esseveld & Eldén, 2002; Lock, 2002; Murtagh & Hepworth, 2003). Menopause has been promoted as a critical point of choice in women’s lives. The choices they then make influence their lives and health into old age (Murtagh & Hepworth, 2003). This approach to menopause and the promotion of hormone therapy (HT) have been the subject of intense debate among social scientists, feminists and medical professionals (Guillemin, 1999; Hemminki, 2004; Lock, 1998; Murtagh & Hepworth, 2003). Medical practice in the form of HT has been widely advocated as a remedy for relieving such symptoms as hot flushes, cold sweats and vaginal dryness as well as for the prevention of public health problems such as heart disease and osteoporosis (Hemminki, 2004; Murtagh & Hepworth, 2003). However, in the late 1990s and in the early years of the 21 st century, results from randomized controlled studies such as the Heart and Estrogen/Progestin Replacement Study (HERS) and Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), has turned medical counseling on HT upside down. Today, HT is recommended for the treatment of menopausal symptoms only (EMEA, 2003). In Sweden, general practitioners as well as gynecologists prescribe HT. In general, no referrals are needed and women’s choice of physician does not carry with it a major difference in costs for them. In contrast to the bio-medical conception of menopause, social scientists and feminists but also some medical professionals have emphasized its social construction and have promoted an...Weathering Change: Coping in a context of pervasive organizational change...
By Michael A. Raffanti, Ed.D., J.D. Abstract 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 behaviors as they seek to implement organizational changes. Introduction Relentless calls for reform are etched in the consciousness of American public educators. As debate continues to rage among policy-makers and scholars over high-stakes testing, accountability, and educating an increasingly diverse society, administrators and classroom teachers face the grassroots pressures of improving test scores and student learning. Despite a wealth of theoretical and practical writings on school reform, implementing change remains as challenging as ever. As Evans (2000) observed, “Organizational change—not just in schools, but in institutions of all kinds—is riddled with a paradox. We study it in ever greater depth, but we practice it with continuing clumsiness” (p.4). By examining the “human side” of school reform, Evans sought to illuminate the psychosocial factors of organizational change that rational-scientific approaches do not fully consider. Contemporary scholars of the change process recognize that complex organizational processes are best understood through systems thinking. As Wheatley and Kellner-Rogers (1998) noted, “Since human organizations are filled with living beings…this process can’t be described in neat increments. It occurs in the tangled webs of relationships—the networks—that characterize all living systems”. (p. 1) With its focus on discovering patterns of behavior, classic grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Glaser, 1978) is an ideal, and underutilized, methodology for understanding, explaining, and predicting the patterns of social behavior that occur in complex organizational contexts. A theory that is grounded in the psychosocial behaviors of actual participants in change contexts affords researchers and leaders a “controllable theoretical foothold” through which to implement sustainable change. A grounded theory truly addresses the complex, human side of change. Methodology Grounded theory is a systematic, empirical, and primarily inductive research methodology. The purpose of the methodology is to generate theories directly from data to explain social behavior. The theory that emerges from analysis of the data accounts for how participants in an action context continually resolve their relevant issues and problems (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). The grounded theorist enters a substantive area of study and begins to collect data, usually through open-ended intensive interviews or participant-observation. Rather than pre-establishing interview subjects or generating a list of questions at the outset, the researcher follows the data where it leads through theoretical sampling, the continuous collection and comparative analysis of data. (Glaser, 1978) In constant comparative analysis the researcher open codes the data. That is, one compares incidents, freely and abundantly generating codes in the margins of the notes, transcripts,...Achieving Rigour and Relevance in Information Systems Studies: Using grounded theory to investigate organizational cases...
By Walter D Fernández, Ph.D. and Hans Lehmann, Ph.D. Abstract This paper builds on the belief that rigorous Information Systems (IS) research can help practitioners to better understand and to adapt to emerging situations. Contrary to the view seeing rigour and relevance as a dichotomy, it is maintained that IS researchers have a third choice; namely, to be both relevant and rigorous. The paper proposes ways in which IS research can contribute to easing the practitioners’ burden of adapting to changes by providing timely, relevant, and rigorous research. It is argued that synergy between relevance and rigour is possible and that classic grounded theory methodology in combination with case-based data provides a good framework for rigorous and relevant research of emerging phenomena in information systems. Introduction Information technology (IT) practitioners work in a frantic business world, facing new and complex socio- technical arrangements. New technologies enable companies and people to interact in ways which were simply nonexistent just a few years ago. Practitioners’ knowledge, mainly gained through previous experiences, is often an imperfect tool as the changing environment challenges previous assumptions or common wisdom. These practitioners need relevant IS research that can guide their sense making and their actions. In this context, Information Systems(IS) research has been accused, rightly or wrongly, of being irrelevant to practitioners. Therefore, it is not surprising to find that the topic of rigour and relevance is an ongoing concern in the IS research community (Benbasat & Zmud, 1999; Fernández, Lehmann, & Underwood, 2002; Gray, 2001; Lee, 1999; Nissen, Klein, & Hirschheim, 1991; Robey & Markus, 1998; Senn, 1998). Recent evidence of this concern include the March 2001 edition of the Communications of the Association for Information Systems, dealing with IS research relevance in response to a very “hot” discussion between members of the ISWorld community (Kock et al., 2001), and the full-house attendance at a panel debate on this topic during the premier conference in the information systems field, ICIS 2001 (2001). While many researchers perceive rigour and relevance as opposite paradigms, Stokes (1997) argued that the quest for fundamental understanding and the considerations for practical use can be attained simultaneously. To achieve this dual and simultaneous goal, Robey and Markus (1998) proposed the adoption of three research models: (a) applied theory, where existing theoretical models are used to study real and relevant problems from the practitioners’ world; (b) evaluation research, where researchers evaluate a particular intervention against a set criteria based on objectives and consequences; and (c), policy research, where alternative solutions are evaluated against a set of criteria usually including cost, efficacy, or practicability; where the main objective of policy research is to understand the policy- making process. While these three research models are suitable for rigorous and relevant studies, an important research model has been neglected, as we argue next. Adding to Robey and Markus’ work, we propose a fourth methodological alternative: grounded theory building research, where the emerging theory helps explain, in conceptual terms, what is going on in the substantive field of research. As mentioned earlier, this alternative is of particular importance when the focus is on emerging socio- technical IS phenomena because it avoids the risk of transferring incorrect theoretical assumptions to emerging phenomena. When dealing with emergent sociotechnical organisations, it could be argued that by adopting Robey and Markus’ model of applied theory we could be forcing preconception into the emerging phenomena, this preconception could potentially render the study irrelevant to the practitioner as it may fail...