Grounded Theory: Understanding and Sample Practice

How to Collect, Analyze and Interpret Qualitative Data using the 

Grounded Theory Method  

Definition:

It is a systematic and qualitative procedure used to generate a theory that explains at a broad conceptual level, a process or action, or interaction about a substantive topic. - Creswell 2008 - Grounded Theory

·         It is an inductive approach

·         The Key term in this method is process or action analysis.

·         It helps researcher to decode the action of a phenomenon.

The difference between grounded theory and narrative analysis is that narrative analysis is based on individual experiences, whereas phenomenology is based upon multiple individuals' experiences and grounded theory is based upon multiple individuals' engagement with certain processes or actions or stages involved with the phenomenon.

In grounded theory we are dealing with more than 25-30 interviews for one phenomenon and we are trying to determine how in a phenomenon various stages are involved and how the individuals are involved in these stages in a step wise manner.

What is the need of grounded theory?

1) When previous theories are inadequate or are not enough.

2) When no explicit hypothesis is there to be tested before the research is conducted.

3) Even if we have a hypothesis but it is very abstract in nature to be tested in a logical and deductive manner.

4) When the researcher is interested in an entirely new phenomenon to be discovered 

Epistemological backing up of grounded theory:

Before we decide this qualitative method of analysis, you should be aware on why this should be used instead of any other method.

1) What kind of knowledge grounded theory can produce? Answer - Process or action

2) What kind of assumption does grounded theory make about the world? Answer - Grounded theory views social reality as objective and unbiased from researcher's interpretation which means that if you reflect deeply then grounded theory is more towards the positivistic stance (causes and effects, objectivity). The basic root of grounded theory is towards positivism.

The history begins in 1967, and now it is 2020, since a lot of time has passed, there have been varied versions of grounded theory. In all these modifications, the book states that grounded theory falls between positivism and postmodernism.

3) What is the role of the researcher in grounded theory? - The researcher should be unbiased and objective in interpretations. But if you are going towards the postmodernist approach, the researcher ends up being more reflexive and involved in the research.

Coding, categorizing and making relationships between the stages is the basic essence of grounded theory.

Whatever categories the researches choose, is to be based on the categories that people bring up, instead of what the researcher brings up.

 

History of Grounded Theory

·         Glaser and Anslem L Strauss in 1967 - The discovery of grounded theory.

·         They were studying terminally ill patients and couldn't find a methodology to study this phenomenon.

·         Many other phenomena which are hard to make headway could utilize such a basis to get started. Such as this famous Case study of the street corner society or a study on the washroom behaviour of gay individuals. These are classic studies in sociology

·         James Spradley - Book on gender - How women bartenders are catering to the need of men in the bars.

·         Later, when I teach you coding, there could be an initial level coding, but if that is not enough then you must come up with axial method of coding, and some instead suggested the selective coding. 

Summary/Crux of Grounded theory -

Explanation of Grounded theory’s method

·         You select a minimum of 25-30 participants, and all these participants should have a common interest in one kind of phenomena

·         You select in 25-30 participants engaged in the phenomenon. For example - Alcoholic behaviour, or drinking smoking, learning or education, anything that is part of social reality.

·         You begin to interview one participant - you note down the ad verbatim data, and responses. Within this you do the coding - (What is coding - this is very similar to what you did in thematic analysis - where you had come into a subtheme then into the themes) and then you see interrelationships.

·         Open coding, axial coding and selective coding

·         Memo writing - Prepare small chits, kind of like how students do it while cheating on exams

·         Then when one is done with multiple individuals, the goal is to reach theoretical saturation.

·         You analyse data in simultaneity of collecting it.

·         The interview schedule gets modified a bit, to accommodate things that are felt incomplete which leads to a mega question being unanswered, and this would be repeated until the theoretical exhaustion has occurred - no new property can't come up. 

1) Grounded theory is a systematic method to qualitatively analyse data and to construct theories which are grounded in data themselves, rather than relying upon any previous analytical construct or category or variable or existing theory. - There is a small catch here. A question that comes up here - Does grounded theory completely ignore all the previous theory? - No, because you'd require some degree of literature review. And those literatures would be inextricably linked to some theory. Even if you read a previous theory and build assumptions, don't impose those categories on the respondent's categories, otherwise your coding would be wrong.

2) The method involved in grounded theory, begins from collecting data, it could be through observations and interviews but especially interviews (because you need text), followed by the process of coding and comparing segments, preparing analytical notes called memos and constructing levels of abstraction, integrating different categories, deciding upon their properties and coming up with a theoretical framework. - Summary in one line. 

Alertness Requirements While Employing Grounded Theory :

1) A simultaneous involvement in data collection and analysis

2) Construction of analytic codes and categories from the data and not from any preconceived logically deduced hypothesis.

3) Comparative method or comparison at each step of analysis

4) Advancing theory development in each stage of data collection

5) Careful memo writing - where you need to identify categories, their properties, their relationships and you need to identify the gaps.

6) Very important - Use of theoretical sampling (Different from representative sampling) - Sampling is a method of choosing different respondents. People use a representative sample, but here you don't need representation, so you need to choose a sample that they need to justice to the research of the phenomenon you're doing.

Main steps and main designs involved in Grounded theory -

The book that I have on grounded theory has about 4-5 steps mentioned chapter-wise.

1) Researcher begins with certain research area and decides upon certain interesting questions in the research area.

2) The researcher or the ethnographer (this is being purposefully used, because anthropologists generally must use this as an ethnographer) is interested more in the phenomenon as a process or action, instead of just a description. Which means the researcher should record individual and collective action, should take very detailed notes, observe, interview, identify contexts, themes, experiences, etc. You need to remember that within the ethnographic setup you need to apply it.

3) The third step can be intensive in-depth interview where the researcher goes beneath the surface of description. The chapter just talks about how to go deep underneath the surface - such as people's language, behaviour and so on.

4) Coding of the textual data - There are three major kind of designs that determine the kind of coding used

i) Systematic design - Within systematic design we have three kinds of coding

a) Open coding - Open coding is an initial level of coding, where the data is reduced to a small set of themes and is divided into segments and scrutinized for its commonalities that reflect categories or themes. After the data is scrutinized, they are examined for its properties. Within open coding, if you read books, they say that there are various kinds of open coding - such as

I) Word by word coding (String sequence)

II) Line by line coding (Consequence sequence)

III) Incident by incident/Event by event (chronological sequence) 

b) Axial coding - You are trying to select the most important code you have done, and you try to make this fit into a central position and then see the relationships that emerge. Axial coding, an open category is selected, and it is positioned as central to the process being explored as the core phenomenon, and you relate other categories to it. These categories can be of 4 kinds –

I) Based upon causal conditions involving the core phenomenon

II) Based upon the strategies or the actions related to the core phenomenon

III) Contextualizing and intervening factors that influence the core phenomenon

IV) Consequences and the outcomes of the process.

In axial coding, often a coding paradigmatic diagram is prepared.

c) Selective coding - It deals with determining an interrelationship between axial code categories - How do you do it? Develop code clusters in a selective fashion and then you make relational statements about it then you build up on a storyline and you decide upon the discursive set of theoretical properties

ii) Emerging design - In emerging design, you collect data and you analyse it immediately and this helps you to understand what kind of data is next to be collected which helps you to move towards theoretical saturation.

iii) Constructivist design - Latest one, given Charmaz. This takes grounded theory somewhere between Glaser and Strauss and postmodernism, which means this gives importance to the individual participants' views.

5) Memo writing - What are memos? Memos are small noting, which help you to make the comparison between the codes. They are of different kinds like simple and advanced and they are used to compare data with data or data with codes or codes with codes or codes with categories or categories with categories. Memos can also help with identifying the gaps in the analysis. And it can help in interrogating a code that has been constructed.

6) Theoretical saturation - I can give you this question - What do you mean by theoretical saturation in grounded theory research? - What do you mean by it? - It means that no new concepts are emerging for the theory to be validated, no nuances are emerging to discredit the theory. Saturation refers to no additional data being found by the researcher to generate an additional category. Theoretical sensitivity - The term theoretical sensitivity applies here. This means that the researcher is sensitive to the issues in using the kind of data to be used in the theory.

7) Preparation of the final report - This includes a detailed and clear description of the theory. 

Among all these steps, coding is the most significant because it can involve several problems -

Risks of coding -

1) The coding can be at a very general level

2) The code can be constructed in a biased, reflexive manner based on the researchers' category

3) The coding can be out of context

4) The codes attend to the disciplinary concerns rather than the participant's concern.

5) The code identifies topic instead of actions and process.

Challenges of grounded theory method -

1) Working with bias of the researcher

2) Reaching the theoretical saturation can be challenging both in terms of the number of participants that are interviewed and the categories that are generated.

3) When you want to produce a theory with specific components that can be difficult.

Evaluation of other scholars' grounded theory -

1) Check whether there is a clear connection between categories and raw data.

2) See if the theory that you are generating actually useful as a conceptual explanation of the process to be studied

3) Is the theory actually explaining real life problems of a process.

4) Can the theory be further modified as conditions change or when more data is gathered.

Observation :

Participants were selected randomly as to find out the experiences in more diverse aspects and questions were asked to understand various dimensions of experiences like, social, cultural, religious and economic with some supportive basic questions. Some of the general questions were, what was the initial experience regarding the pandemic, how they have managed the lifestyle during lockdown period, what were the refreshments, what were the struggles in that time, how they are adapting to the new post-pandemic situation and what are the strategies and measure taken by them for better lifestyle and so on. Questions were modified and added while interviewing one after another participants whenever it was required to reach to theoretical saturation. Here the interviews are as follows,

Questions to guide the interviews:

1.      What is your occupation and how you have experienced it in the pandemic time?

2.      What is your daily routine?

3.      What are the major changes you have faced during pandemic?

4.      Is there anything which have been added to your lifestyle?

5.      How you have experienced family time?

 

PARTICIPANT 1:

             She is an 47 years old woman. She is a house wife. She was notified about the corona virus outbreak from the news channels. She is an active woman and follows news channels everyday basis to get notified about the current affairs. When she heard about the COVID-19 outbreak, at first she was not that much conscious about the matter. But when she came to know that this outbreak is going on in several countries she had started conscious about the matter and was little tensed as her only daughter was outside the state for educational purpose. Her daughter was in her hostel so she was furious about her health, food and sanitization purpose. She was extremely happy when she was informed by the news that due to the outbreak universities are remaining close and her daughter came back to home. She was relieved to have her daughter back to her in this current pandemic situation. Every day she prays to God for the safety of everyone. She is very conscious about the infection and maintains every precautionary measures and forced to follow her family members as well. Now to well adapt with the situation and keeping herself motivated and energized she sometimes do engage with online shopping. She has visited many online shopping apps, looked for dresses as Durga Puja is coming. She had enjoyed food, watched YouTube and learned many thing like how to do video calling, how to send messages on WhatsApp and how to visit the online markets seating inside the home. so she is well adapted with the situation by reshaping her life with digital tools like online shopping markets and communicating with  her family members through mobile phones So, here some of the codes that have been reflected, those are the ‘source of information'; 'adaptive situation'; and 'refreshment strategy' ‘and ‘all these three are leading to one main theme that is ‘adapting through digital refreshment’

PARTICIPANT 2:

He  is an 50 years old man. He is the head of his family and have one daughter. He is a small businessman, he sells water purifiers and even he provides services for those as well. During this lockdown period he is unable to open his shop and even unable to provide services to his customers. For this reason he is going through his economic loss. He has no that much bank balance for that he is tensed about how he will manage this loss in upcoming days. He is the only earning member in the house and does not have fixed salary. His daughter have got a chance to study abroad. It is hard for him to provide her sufficient money but also trying to provide as to carry on her study. He has an interest on gardening so during this lockdown period as he could not able to go out and even he is concern about the outbreak and taking great care for him and his family’s safety, he is doing gardening in his house instead of going out and spending happy time with his daughter and wife.

During the lockdown time he has learned many things like how to use mobile phone for buying and selling purpose, how to start a business of gardening from home, he had learned many things from YouTube videos regarding his gardening and had started a small business with minimal inputs in his own house. He is also trying to connect with buyers through online digital marketing. He is hopeful for his new initiative. Apart from his main source of income that is business, he is also engaged with gardening.         

 So it can be seen that although he has an economic pressure to take care of his family but this lockdown period also gave him an opportunity to fulfill his hobby of gardening. According to him “ it is better to stay at home and doing something interesting rather than taking corona virus in his locality.  He says that he will manage his economic crisis but safe life is more important than money”. Here, the memos are - 'Uncertainty', 'Economic Crisis', 'Initiative and Hope'

PARTICIPANT 3:

She is a 21 years young lady. She lives in other state for her educational purpose, corona outbreak has forced her to came back to her home before the lockdown. She was tensed about the situation and happy about that she came back to her home safely and before lockdown. She is an active student. She is taking information from news channels as well as internet and social media sites regarding this outbreak situation and  very much concerned about it. When she came back to home she took herself as self-quarantine for 21 days and does not meet with anyone not even gone out of their housing yard. She is taking precautions like sanitization and warm water and heling her family and others by airing them vocally.

She has a great pressure on her head of the assignments provided by her department professors through internet source. She is upset that she is unable to take preparation for her UGC-NET examination as she had thought that she will prepare herself during this long unexpected holidays. But for the pressure of assignment she is unable to complete that wish. Sometimes she is going through some psychological illness when the work is too hard, to get red from that she tries to watch some movies with her father and t cook something new dish. She have a boyfriend as well with whom he is egger to meet. Sometime she feels low about the situation and also hope for best.  

So she is an great example of a student life, whose exam is coming soon and she has pressure for the preparation. According to her, “may it is an unexpected holiday for us but we should use this time, should prepare our self for upcoming new future. ” even she has told about that there is a psychological behaviour that happening to her mind sometimes is that she knows there are lot of pending works to do but she has no mood to do so she takes some rest and after that start working and according to her then the work finishes little early with crisp in nature which concludes that we should take the necessary rest along with our heavy work pressure.   

The memos here, 'Infotainment', 'Management' and 'Responsibilities'

PARTICIPANT 4:

He  is a 25 years old young boy, doing masters in Information technology. He loves to do practical works with computers and all. He was engaging with a project work on making drones. He was happily doing that but lockdown make him unable to go to the field. He does not have any income but being the only child in his family he has great responsibility. According to him preparing assignments that provided by his department professor does not have any meaning, he find more useful to learn something new in this lockdown period. He has a girlfriend, with her he is little egger to meet but controlling his emotion not just to make the other side fall in. he has a great pressure to fulfil his home loan for that he is trying for online jobs as well as he is trying to learn new skills from online courses and collecting online certificates to add in his CV.

According to him this time is to make our self, safe and potential for future journey. He is feeling so bad for the people who are depending on daily wages and tensed about their survival but also he is unable to do anything for them as he has no power or money but  also he does not want to go out to have corona. He is an active and healthy guy and hoping for the best that this situation will recover soon. All the bill payments and purchasing things for household are done by him only. He is the only person who are well aware of the online marketing, purchasing and paying money. So he do that. Apart from that he helps his mother in household work and keep time for his friends also, he talk with them over telephone and WhatsApp. The communication change is a major change that have included in his life.   

Memos: Concreting Knowledge, Education Strategy, Responsibilities

PARTICIPANT 5:  

He is a 55 years old man. He has a grocery shop. During this lockdown period his shop was permissible to be opened. For this reason he is going to his shop everyday but with wearing mask and hand gloves. He is meeting with many people in his shop but he does not come closer to anyone. He does not have any servant to help him for that he has to maintain the whole shop alone. He is tensed with the outbreak situation but trying to aware the people who come to his shop for groceries to maintain physical distance and to use the necessary  precautionary materials. He is an active person but along with that he has a hopelessness of not spending more times than usual that others are doing. Although he has to go out but he only visit the market one day in a week. Apart from this when he come back to home he try to cook something for her family members. He engaged with online shopping for his family. he had started digital marketing, for that he had linked his shop with Amazon in the month of June, 2020, now his workload become more as customers for purchasing his products have been increased, he is busy but happy to have that change in his life.

Memos:  Communication Strategy, Digital Marketting, Familial Responsibilities

PARTICIPANT 6: 

She is a 50 years old house wife. She has one son who is doing his higher study. She is concerned about the COVID-19 outbreak and well aware about the situation. She is an private tutor, she love to teach her little students but  due to this lockdown and outbreak situation students are not coming to her home for taking coaching classes. She loves her students, love to spend their time with them but in the initial days of pandemic she was feeling upset for not having them in her arms. Now she is trying to aware them over telephone and taking care of her family members. She is growing with an new habit of weaving. She is watching videos from YouTube and trying to learn new weaving patterns. She also started taking online coaching classes for her students from the month of June. She did not had 4G smartphone, she had bought a new mobile phone from amazon and resumed her coaching classes. Now everyday she wake up early in the morning, do all the household works and start taking class from 10 am to 2 am, then 6 pm to 8 pm in the evening. Now she is happy to have her duty back. She have a major change in her life, that is online teaching. Initially she used to have some issues with comfortability but now she is well prepared and managed with all the things.

Memos: Management, Refreshment, Online Mode

Analysis and Establishment of Theory:

          Through the above interviews, I have experienced many aspects of our life. Corona virus outbreaking is such an unexpected incident in everyone’s life. Through these interviews I came across to many hearts, experienced many pains of economic pressure, psychological illness, pain of feeling useless, pain of being separate from loved ones. Lockdown is the most precious precaution that have been decided by our government to prevent the outbreak, although we are observing cases to be growing. But these interviews made me feel the inner voices of the people from 2 nuclear family. How they are experiencing this incident. Tried to view the current situation through their eyes. Both the student who is feeling psychological pressure for having lots of assignments and projects, are trying to refresh themselves using mobile or internet connections.

I have found responsible fathers who have economic pressures to fulfil family demands as well as have tension to secure their child by not going out on this situation. How fathers have adapted themselves with new economic strategies for better future and adaptive lifestyle was also came into contact.  

Anthropologists does not judge any heart but experience what the people are experiencing through their eyes. Being an anthropologist I have learned that, Corona virus is keeping it’s bad as well as good impacts in human life, like, the economical and psychological stress but simultaneously  people are trying to learn new things as well, trying to find out the way to enjoy their life with their family, trying to understand the value of time and family members as well. This is the time when we will be together to face the challenge that is provided by a small virus. Through this semi structured interview on 6 individuals for the sake of grounding theory on the basis of collected data, the exploration of the experiences of corona virus in the life of people was an amazing experience for me to hear the inner voice of my acquaintances.

Now when concerning to the establishing of theory grounding on the collected data, the memo writings and simultaneously created codes will be used to establish the theory.  

Table for the Open Coding and Axial Coding :

Considering every aspects of each of the interviews, 3 codes have been created from each interview. From the open coding done after every interview rise to 18 codes in all total, which are mentioned bellow for the accomplishment of axial coding. Axial Codes are mentioned in the heading of each column, formulated from a set of open codes :

Information and Communication	Adaptive Strategy	Changing Lifestyle
Source  of information	Adaptive situation	Refreshment strategy
Uncertainty	Economic Crisis	Initiatives  and Hope
Infotainment	Handling career opportunities	Maintaining responsibilities
Concreting knowledge	Education strategy	Responsibilities
Communication Strategies	Digital Marketing	Familial Responsibilities
Management	Online Mode	Refreshment

It has been seen from the data that each set of code give rise to 3 Axial codes, Information and Communication, Adaptive Strategy and Changing Lifestyle, all these are linked with the Digital Media. In the time of pandemic, digital and social medias have worked as a great source of information and via of communicating with each other. Information, infotainment, communication everything are being accomplished by the help of digital media platforms or devices. Although using of digital media was present before the time of pandemic, but it became as a dependable strategy to prevent the outbreak in the late pandemic period. Adaptive strategies that have been taken during pandemic period like handling career opportunities, economic strategies like online marketing, online teaching everything is done in respect to digital media only. The kind of refreshment like watching movies, listening to music, chatting with friends, watching YouTube videos and anything are done only via different social media apps. Even in the pandemic times the small family responsibilities also took part in the digital media platforms like paying bills, recharge mobile phones or dish TV to shopping all are maintaining using different digital apps just within a second, seating at home corner. So with this three major insights it can be understood that how people have become dependent to  use different Digital media platforms to accomplish daily needs from employment to shopping. So, after looking at all of these contexts, the only possible theory that is arising from the collected data is the “Digitalization theory of lifestyle”.

The Digitalization Theory of Lifestyle:

Generally, Digitalization refers to “the adoption or increase in use of digital or computer technology by an organization, industry, country, etc.” Digitalization is the use of digital technologies to change a business model and provide new revenue and value-producing opportunities; it is the process of moving to a digital business. Using similar concept it can be seen in the data that, although the using of digital media platforms for communication or other purposes were popular in pre-pandemic era but the pandemic period gave rise to the influence of using digital media as e substitute of face to face communication, it has influenced many initiatives to take in the pandemic time, like helping others to start a business from home. In the pandemic period people are depend on digital media for almost every purpose, for education, for occupation, for paying household bills, to purchase necessary products, to start new initiatives, to help needy people and to almost all the lifestyle affairs. So people are digitalizing their lifestyle from face to face interaction to online communication, from manual banking to online cash payment and bank to bank money transfer from home, unless going out to the gatherings to prevent virus transmission people are purchasing dress, groceries, medicine and other products. Lifestyle became easy and comfort after digitalization process. People first came to know about the pandemic from different social media platforms, they kept themselves updated via digital news channels and also came across to the various precautionary measure from the different digital sources only. Then gradually people start adapting themselves and replaced the face to face affairs to online meeting, classes, conferences and webinars. Even many people learned many thing Although it has many health related issues like back pain, eye strain, pressure on eye and brain and many more.

But this process of digitalization of lifestyle is seeing to be prevalent while we talk about the experience in COVID-19 pandemic period.