Editorial

Astrid Gynnild Editor I am delighted to introduce the first issue of the Grounded Theory Review as an open access journal. This means that from now on, all academic articles provided by the journal are freely accessible online, including the archives. As an interdisciplinary, peer reviewed methodological journal, the Grounded Theory Review serves a broad academic community across continents. We are committed to the worldwide dissemination and advancement of classic grounded theory methodology, and similar to an increasing number of academic journals, we support a free...

Stop. Write! Writing Grounded Theory

Barney G. Glaser The message in this book, the dictum in this book, is to stop and write when the Grounded Theory (GT) methodology puts you in that ready position. Stop unending conceptualization, unending data coverage, and unending listening to others who would egg you on with additional data, ideas and/or requirements or simply wait too long. I will discuss these ideas in detail. My experience with PhD candidates is that for the few who write when ready, many do not and SHOULD. Simply put, many write-up, but many more should. And yet writing is taken for granted, since...

Classic Grounded Theory to Analyse Secondary Data: Reality and Reflect...

Lorraine Andrews, Agnes Higgins, Michael Waring Andrews, and Joan G. Lalor Abstract This paper draws on the experiences of two researchers and discusses how they conducted a secondary data analysis using classic grounded theory. The aim of the primary study was to explore first-time parents’ postnatal educational needs. A subset of the data from the primary study (eight transcripts from interviews with fathers) was used for the secondary data analysis. The objectives of the secondary data analysis were to identify the challenges of using classic grounded theory with...

Guest Editorial, Themed Section

Cheri Fernandez University of Windsor As I have supervised or read numerous theses and dissertations and completed countless reviews of manuscripts that purport to do grounded theory, I have been struck by the confusion about what exactly grounded theory entails. In this themed section focusing on constructivist (constructionist) grounded theory, we strive to describe constructivist grounded theory, provide an exemplar of this research, and point out the differences between constructivist grounded theory and classic grounded theory. When grounded theory first emerged as a...

Constructivist Grounded Theory?

Barney G. Glaser Ph.D, Hon.Ph.D Abstract I refer to and use as scholarly inspiration Charmaz’s excellent article on constructivist grounded theory as a tool of getting to the fundamental issues on why grounded theory is not constructivist. I show that constructivist data, if it exists at all, is a very, very small part of the data that grounded theory uses. Introduction Constructivist Grounded Theory is a misnomer. Grounded theory (GT) can use any data; it remains to be figured out what it is. In my book “The Grounded Theory Perspective” (Glaser, 2001) I...

What is Social Constructionism?

Tom Andrews University College Cork Abstract Social Constructionism has been instrumental in remodeling grounded theory. In attempting to make sense of the social world, social constructionists view knowledge as constructed as opposed to created. This paper discusses how social constructionists construct knowledge and argues that social constructionism is concerned with the nature of knowledge and how it is created and as such, it is unconcerned with ontological issues. Society is viewed as existing both as a subjective and an objective reality. Meaning is shared, thereby...