Problematics of grounded theory: innovations for developing an increasingly rigorous qualitative method
- 25 June 2009
- journal article
- other
- Published by SAGE Publications in Qualitative Research
- Vol. 9 (3), 355-381
- https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794109106605
Abstract
Our purpose in this article is to identify and suggest resolution for two core problematics of grounded theory. First, while grounded theory provides transparency to one part of the conceptualization process, where codes emerge directly from the data, it provides no such systematic or transparent way for gaining insight into the conceptual relationships between discovered codes. Producing a grounded theory depends not only on the definition of conceptual pieces, but the delineation of a relationship between at least two of those pieces. Second, the conceptualization process of grounded theory is done in hierarchical fashion, where individual codes emerge from the data but then are used to generate insight into more general concepts and thematic statements. But various works on grounded theory have failed to provide any systematic way of using data specific levels of scale (the codes) to gain insight into more macro levels of scale (concepts and themes). We offer fractal concept analysis as a means of resolving both of these issues. By using a logic structure generator, fractal concept analysis delineates self-similar conceptual frameworks at various levels of abstraction, yielding a method for linking concepts together within and between levels of scale encountered in the grounded theory coding and categorization process. We conclude that this fractal analytic technique can bolster the aims of grounded theory as a formalized and systematic process for generating theory from empirical data.Keywords
This publication has 21 references indexed in Scilit:
- Basics of Qualitative Research (3rd ed.): Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded TheoryPublished by SAGE Publications ,2008
- The SAGE Handbook of Grounded TheoryPublished by SAGE Publications ,2007
- Vortical postmodern ethnography: introducing a complexity approach to systemic social theorizingBehavioral Science, 2005
- Situational AnalysisPublished by SAGE Publications ,2005
- We have met the other and we're all nonlinear: Ethnography as a nonlinear dynamic systemComplexity, 2004
- Grounded Theory in EthnographyPublished by SAGE Publications ,2001
- Grounding Grounded TheoryPublished by Elsevier BV ,1999
- Is Anthropology Art or Science? [and Comments and Reply]Current Anthropology, 1990
- Grounded theory research: Procedures, canons, and evaluative criteriaQualitative Sociology, 1990
- TIME FOR DYINGThe American Journal of Nursing, 1968