Volume 19
About the Authors
Barry Chametzky, Ph.D. American College of Education, City University of Seattle. Dr. Chametzky holds graduate degrees in Music (Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College, City University of New York), French (Middlebury College), and Foreign Language education (University of Pittsburgh). Dr. Chametzky is an active researcher in the fields of andragogy, e-learning, anxiety and online foreign language acquisition, and classic grounded theory with numerous peer-reviewed publications and book chapters to his credit. He is also one of the reviewers and the copyeditor for the Grounded Theory Review. He facilitates online learning with master’s and doctoral students in the fields of educational technology and leadership, and serves as a dissertation chairperson to a number of candidates. Email: barry@bluevine.net Mark Crowder, PhD. Manchester Metropolitan University. Dr. Mark Crowder is Education Lead for the Department of Strategy, Enterprise and Sustainability at Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK. He is also a senior lecturer in Strategy and Business Psychology. He studied at Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Liverpool before gaining his PhD in cognitive psychology at the University of Chester. He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute. Mark’s research interests are split between educational management and cognitive psychology. As a career educator, Dr. Lisa Goldberg has taught for over 30 years in both the public school and as adjunct professor. She graduated from Fielding Graduate School in 2010 with a doctorate in Educational Leadership. Using Classic Grounded Theory as her research methodology, Dr. Goldberg discovered that value-based decision-making is one of the key concepts in moving on and making voluntary change in one’s life. Her contribution to the field has led others to use concepts from her dissertation. Currently, Dr. Goldberg works as adjunct professor at Saybrook University where she guides and teaches dissertation students. Email: lisakanga1@gmail.com. Maria Mouratidou, PhD. University of Cumbria. Dr. Maria Mouratidou is a lecturer at the University of Cumbria. Her research interests are within HRM, OB and career management. She has a wealth of HR experience, gained in an international context. She studied at the University of Macedonia and the University of Sunderland before gaining her PhD in Human Resource Management at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and is currently studying for an MA in Education. Dr. Vander Linden received her doctorate in education from Fielding Graduate University with specializations in classic grounded theory and higher education. She has a master’s in special education from the University of North Carolina and a BA in mathematics from Queens University. She also has special training in working with children with dyslexia and reading disabilities. Dr. Kara Vander Linden has been a classic grounded theory (GT) researcher and educator for over 15 years. She currently teaches research and supervises classic GT dissertations at Saybrook University. She is a peer reviewer for the Grounded Theory Review and is the founder of the Institute for the Advancement of Classic Grounded Theory (https://classicgroundedtheory.org/). Diego Mauricia Paucar Villacorta, BSSc. Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. Mr. Paucar Villacorta is a young Peruvian Sociologist born in Lima with a five-year professional experience in social innovation for development. Academically, in one way or another, all his contributions explore the methodology of sociological research. At school, he has been invited by students to teach various open courses about qualitative data analysis, theorizing and quantitative data collection techniques. Right now, he is the leader of two independent teams of un-affiliated researchers...From the Editor’s Desk
As with many aspects of life during the age of covid-19, the summer issue of the Grounded Theory Review has been delayed. We are pleased to publish, however late, this issue. The Grounded Theory Review is dedicated to supporting researchers who conduct classic grounded theory research. Classic grounded theory is a unique method of discovering never before recognized processes and patterns of human behavior, a method well-suited to studying current issues and processes. These are troubling days of pandemic illness, cultural upheaval, racial animus, international disruption, and political turmoil. Although politicians and opinion journalists predict the future, the coming months are uncertain. We are in uncharted territory. In response, particularly to covid-19, structural and psychological social processes are changing. Education, family life, health care, work life, business, consumerism, sports, trade, entertainment, government institutions, and travel are all changing. People are assuming new roles or are adjusting their roles to fit new life circumstances. This is a time of great upheaval—a time particularly ripe for grounded theory research. The beauty and value of classic grounded theory is the nature of honest, unbiased discovery of social processes. Proper classic grounded theories cannot be preconceived or conjectured. Unlike verification research, grounded theories provide insightful, enlightening, and often surprising revelations—discoveries. As data is gathered, conceptualized, and organized by the investigator, concepts and processes emerge. Emergence is the key to the discovery of grounded theories. Researchers who use other, usually deductive, methods are sometimes confused by the idea of emergence, which is mostly inductive. We can compare the concept of emergence in grounded theory with how we have learned about covid-19. Since it was a newly discovered virus, there were no textbooks to guide health professionals as they tried to combat the virus early on. Facts have emerged from data as a cascade of covid-19 patients has appeared in hospital emergency rooms in the intervening months. Although it was thought at first that serious cases of covid-19 generally presented as pneumonia for a relatively short duration, we now know that the virus can affect many different parts of the body in unusual ways for an unknown duration. Months later, facts and patterns are still emerging. The process of learning about the disease can be compared to the use of grounded data to discover conceptual theories. In the same way that physicians with open minds collected, organized, and examined medical data to guide their diagnosis and treatment of covid-19, grounded theorists can gather, organize, and interpret data that will help us to understand and navigate the many social changes that are occurring. Explaining grounded theory, Glaser tells us to ask “what is going on” in a substantive area. Today, we have few referents to help us understand what is going on. As a family member who suddenly took on the role of home schoolteacher, I know that traditional ideas about family and school have been turned on their heads and I wonder about other changing social processes. Thinking about grounded theory research projects in the age of covid-19, researchers whose curiosity is sparked might ask questions such as, “What is going on in a given population when suddenly: teachers who are accustomed to classroom teaching are thrust into distance learning modalities? breadwinners lose jobs due to covid? farmers cannot find a way to gather or move their produce to markets? parents work from home while caring for children? physicians must ration care because of high demand and a scarcity of equipment or supplies? business owners...Getting Started
Barney G. Glaser Editor’s note: Especially helpful for those thinking of beginning new research projects, this paper addresses common questions about the particular way in which grounded theorists identify a research problem and craft a research question appropriate for classic grounded theory. Getting Started was first published by Sociology Press in Glaser’s Emergence vs Forcing: Basics of Grounded Theory Analysis (1992). This important chapter has been excerpted and lightly edited for clarity and context. It may sometimes be said that one of the most difficult parts of doing research is to get started. The making of choices and commitments to a research problem seem less secured and structured when doing descriptive research in quantitative or qualitative research. This occurs because the research problem is chosen beforehand and therefore forces the data, thus the yield may be small or nothing since the problem, in fact, may not be relevant. A “thought up” problem may sound juicy, but the preconception leads nowhere. The underlying principal in grounded theory, which leads to a researchable problem with high yield and relevance, is that the research problem and its delimitation are discovered or emergent as the open coding begins on the first interviews and observations. They soon become quite clear and structured as coding, collection, and analyzing begin and a core variable emerges, and saturation starts to occur. In short, getting started in grounded theory research and analysis is as much a part of the methodological process as are the ensuing phases of the research. The researcher should not worry. The problem will emerge as well as the manner by which the subjects involved continually process it. As a matter of fact, it emerges too fast most of the time and the researcher must restrain herself until sure if it is core and will account for most of the variation in the action in the substantive area under study. As categories emerge in open coding, they all sound like juicy problems to research, but all are not core relevant. Only one or at most two. Remember and trust that the research problem is as much discovered as the process that continues to resolve it, and indeed the resolving process usually indicates the problem. They are integrated. Area vs Problem There is a significant need to clarify the distinction between being interested in an area compared to a problem. A researcher can have a sociological interest which yields a research problem and then look for a substantive area of population with which to study it. But this is not [classic] grounded theory. It is a preconceived forcing of the data. It is okay and can produce good sociological description, but it usually misses what subjects in the substantive area under study consider, in their perspective, the true problems they face. This kind of forcing with the support of advisor and colleagues can often derail the researcher forever from being sensitive to the grounded problems of the area and their resolutions. A missed problem is a problem whether the researcher discovers and attends to it or not. It does not go away. We find, as grounded theorists, so often in preconceived research that the main problem stares us in the face as the researcher just attends elsewhere and misses it completely in an effort to describe what is going on. Squelching it from focus does not remove its relevance. In vital contrast, the grounded theory researcher whether in qualitative or quantitative data, moves into an area...Strengthening Devotion: A Classic Grounded Theory on Acceptance, Adaptability, and Reclaiming Self, by Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders...
Ramona Rolle-Berg, Ph.D., HTCP, MS, CPGL Kara Vander Linden, EdD, MS, BA Abstract The experiences of parents rearing an autistic child(ren) framed an exploration of caregiver well-being using Glaser’s classic grounded theory. The theory delineates struggles, stress, and self-growth through service. Viewed as a roadmap, strengthening devotion guides caregivers through a fear-driven landscape of altered perceptions that fuels evolution in awarenss about what it means to love nonjudgmentally with unqualified faith not only in a child(ren) but in one’s own resilience. Acceptance, adaptation, and a reclaiming of relinguished self-focus define strengthening devotion. In accepting, entrapment wanes as emotions signal reengagement; in adapting, self-esteem develops with emotion regulation; and in reclaiming life, resilience signals reimagining of self. As uncertainty and reactivity are delimited through activities of service, devotion evolves, conceptualized as a stage-dependent growth continuum, namely: Strengthening Parental Devotion, Strengthening Relational Devotion, and Strengthening Personal Devotion. Ultimately, parents may use the strengthening devotion roadmap to corroborate where they have been, how far they have traveled, and chart proactively to lower stress, improve health outcomes and re-engage with life’s unlimited potential. Keywords: caregiver, autism spectrum disorders, devotion, classic grounded theory, parenting, presence Introduction One in 45 US children exhibits behaviours representative of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) (Zablotsky, Black, Maenner, Schieve, & Blumberg, 2015). These behaviours produce post-traumatic-stress syndrome-conditioned reactivity in parent caregivers. This research offers caregivers a pathway to thrive rather than survive on the frontlines of daily caregiving. Glaser’s classic grounded theory (CGT) method provided the systematic structure through which Strengthening Devotion emerged as a roadmap for parent caregivers’ experiences of self-growth through service. The Basic Social Process (Bigus, Glaser, & Hadden, 1982; Glaser, 1978) that arose is grounded in data, conceptualizing experiences of parent caregivers for wellness professionals engaged with this population. Source data integrated 33 items, including first-person published accounts in books, web pages, blogs, and direct interviews of parent caregivers responding to the grand tour question: “Tell me about your experience as a caregiver.” Method The purpose was to develop a theory to explain and to categorize the experiences of parents who provided caregiving to their children with ASD. Varied perspectives were sought. Classic grounded theory was used to analyze data systematically. Discovery of underlying patterns of behavior that might lead to escalating levels of abstraction and conceptualization was the goal (Glaser, 1978). Participants were adults 21 years of age and older, who are parents and primary caregivers for a child with ASD and adults identified through theoretical sampling prepared to share experiences of caregiving for a child. Years of caregiving ranged from a minimum of eight to a maximum of several decades. Study participants were also single or married and provided caregiving in situations that included neurotypical children and multiple children with ASD families. Establishing the boundaries of the emergent theory required interviews with participants outside the primary study group (e.g., caregivers of neurotypical children). Recorded participant experiences were transcribed into digital data and then underwent considerable and deliberate fragmentation through conceptual coding, the core CGT process (Holton, 2007). Constant comparison of incident with incident, and incident with concept, etc., initially generated substantive descriptors and later theoretical categories (Glaser, 1992). Incidents were identified line-by-line within the empirical data and then assigned a code. Codes were grouped and compared when patterns or variations on patterns were recognized. Two types of CGT coding procedures were utilized: substantive coding, which collectively comprise open and selective coding, and theoretical coding. Open coding supported the early work with the raw data. ...Self-Balancing Sanctuarying: A Classic Grounded Theory of Relaxation
Ruth Tiffany Naylor, CPsychol, British Autogenic Society, Ltd., London, England Abstract This author aimed to set out a grounded theory (GT) of relaxation as it is carried out under the normal pressures and tensions of everyday life. After switching from using the Corbin and Strauss grounded theory (2008) design to classic grounded theory, the author discovered a five-step theoretical causal-consequence model emerged from the analysis of what 21 non-anxious-to-slightly-anxious people from the community said what they do to relax. Their main concern is self-balancing. A disturbed sense of ease (cause) arising from internal and external threats (context) leads to resolution by switching (core category) in safety (condition). The chosen switching activities are self-emergent. Their continuing use depends upon transforming hindrances and integrating feedback to the process to maximize benefits (contingencies and consequences). Three switching strategies are central. Benefits not consciously or analytically generated are restoring, refreshing, and re-energizing me; maintaining and building me; and growing and developing me. Restoring, refreshing, and re-energising me is characterized by a sense of well-being and lifted mood; maintaining and building me is characterized by integrating and strengthening the core self and connecting to the community; growing and developing me is characterized by expanding self-discovery. Theoretically situating extant descriptive and conceptual models of relaxation is one of the many contributions this research makes. Keywords: anxiety, classic grounded theory, relaxation, positive psychology, interacting cognitive subsystems model. Introduction Prior to this research, relaxation has been viewed as a process of letting go of all tension not only in the body, in the sense of micro-factors of muscle physics and electrical activity (Jacobson, 1964), but also of macro-factors of such as those arising in the environment (Selye, 1946), the mind, and the spirit (Benson, 1975). The debate about psychophysiological relaxation that took place in terms of Claude Bernard’s abstract concept of the constancy of the milieu intérieur (Modell, et al., 2015) and which was made more concrete and practical by Cannon (1932) and then by Selye is now taking place in terms of allostatic balance, load, and overload (Chuang, Glei, Goldman, & Weinstein, 2007). This historic focus on release of muscle tension was driven by a mechanistic medical view of how humans “work.” This means that active relaxation activities have rarely been studied together with passive ones, and that neither have been studied in the context of life as lived. Theoretically, while relaxation is mentioned in related disciplines which do include contextualised activities involving significant body movements, such as in Csikszentmihayli’s extensive empirical, conceptual, and theoretical work on “flow” in work and play (1975), the largest body of recent empirical work directly focusing on relaxation, per se, is Smith’s (1990, 1999) which focuses on passive relaxation activities. Smith (1990) developed a set of structured inventories using factor analysis of words and phrases culled from passive relaxation therapy text books. These questionnaires were then used to develop “R[elaxation]-State” concepts which are said to be emotional, mental, and physical states. Smith (1990) first hypothesized a hierarchical linear model of how people progress through the R-States and later a “dual path” (Smith, 1999, p. 45) model, with the suggestion that any sequence through the R-States may be possible. As mindfulness took hold in the United States, the dual-path model has been re-framed in a mindfulness context and re-named “window of renewal” (Smith, 2007, p. 41). ”Core mindfulness” and “transcendence” were then hypothesized to be anchoring concepts in the new conceptual model, which focuses on the activity itself and not on...