The Varieties of Grounded Theory

Antony Bryant, Author

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781526474315
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526479747
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

The Varieties of Grounded Theory explores the range and depth of grounded theory methodology, and the ways in which discussions in the field have developed and expanded in recent years.

In this SAGE Swift, Anthony Bryant provides a jargon-free overview of grounded theory terminology, whilst examining the impact of recent technological and theoretical advances on how it is currently practiced. Increasingly popular outside of its original settings, grounded theory is now a core method for business & management, criminology, politics, geography and psychology. This book provides a global interdisciplinary perspective on the method?s utility today, and complements The SAGE Handbook of Current Developments in Grounded Theory (April 2019).

1 GTM – A Family of Variants

The first generation – Glaser, Strauss, and Quint

In our introductory essay in 2007 (Bryant & Charmaz, 2007b), we described GTM as a ‘family of methods’, a metaphor that can be construed in several ways, for instance, evoking Tolstoy’s opening to Anna Karenina: ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’. Charmaz also uses the term ‘constellation’ (Charmaz, 2014a), and others have referred to GTM as an ‘umbrella term’ or ‘framework’ (unified or not, as the case may be). Charmaz now avoids the term ‘family’ because of its connotations, ranging from unwavering commitment to conflict and abuse.

The main rationale for my use of the term ‘family’ was derived from Wittgenstein’s discussion of ‘family resemblances’:

we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and cries-crossing [sic criss-crossing]: sometimes overall similarities. I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than family resemblances; for the various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. etc. overlap and cries-cross [sic criss-cross] in the same way. (Wittgenstein, n.d., extract from Aphorisms 66 and 67, emphasis in original)

A close reading of this section of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (2001[1953]) indicates that in addition to postulating the concept of ‘family resemblances’, he was also advocating something akin to the method of constant comparison. Indeed, he uses a phrase that by complete coincidence echoes a key sentiment of Glaser and Strauss.

66. Consider for example the proceedings that we call ‘games’. I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all? – Don’t say: ‘There must be something common, or they would not be called “games”’ – but look and see whether there is anything common to all. For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don’t think, but look! (Wittgenstein, n.d., extract from Aphorisms 66, emphasis added)

In similar fashion, a discussion of the ways in which GTM has developed since the 1960s might be understood as a series of relationships and derivations between and across different generations and offspring of the method from its inception. This is not unique to GTM, but a common feature of many methods, and usually a sign of healthy growth and engaging debate. Action Research (AR), for instance, originating in the work of Kurt Lewin and colleagues in the 1930s, has spawned numerous variants. Some of these alternatives clearly derive from AR, incorporating the term itself (e.g. Participatory AR, Community AR, and so on); others do not (e.g. Soft Systems Analysis). Yet they co-exist and provide the basis for new methodological insights, both for those using AR and for others among the wider research community (see Reason & Bradbury-Huang, 2015). For example, Joyce Duckles, George Moses, and Robert Moses (CD:31) depict how community-based participatory action research combined with constructivist grounded theory can contribute to social transformation.

Our concern in 2007 was to explain that the various forms of GTM testified to its importance and vitality, albeit carrying the potential for confusion and raising issues regarding the core aspects of the method. As I will argue below, GTM proponents largely agree on some ‘core’ or ‘essential’ characteristics of GTM but differ regarding others. Nonetheless, researchers should never forget that the ultimate significance of a method is how it facilitates developing new and critical insights; something that often involves departing from the well-trodden paths of specific disciplines and common procedures. This proviso should come as no surprise to those involved with GTM, since the method itself grew from precisely these motivations.

The metaphor of a family also evokes images of parentage and subsequent generations. The earliest GTM texts, Awareness, Discovery, and Time, (Glaser & Strauss, 1965b, 1967, 1968) must be seen as products of various influences and strands of thought and practice brought together through the work of three progenitors: Barney Glaser, Anselm Strauss, and Jeanne Quint (later Jeanne Quint Benoliel). The contrasting backgrounds of Strauss and Glaser are now fairly well understood, although differing views have been expressed regarding the impact and influence these formations had on GTM itself. (See Charmaz, 2014a; Gibson & Hartman, 2014; and below.)

The role of Quint, on the other hand, has only recently become more widely acknowledged when GTM is discussed. Although her brilliant article, ‘Institutionalized practices of information control’ (Quint, 1965), confirmed her analytic skill, her earliest contributions to the method remain less visible. Quint learned field research from Anselm Strauss and worked with Strauss and Glaser on their projects on death and dying before she wrote her doctoral dissertation on identity among children with juvenile diabetes, receiving her PhD in nursing in 1969. Quint’s role was critical in data collection for the death and dying project, but she seldom appears in discussions of the development of GTM.¹ She made various contributions to the literature on GTM and qualitative methods in nursing research throughout her career (see, for example, Benoliel, 1984, 1996).²

More controversially, Phyllis Stern (2012), in her obituary for Quint, argued that ‘[W]hen Glaser and Strauss treated her data as their own, she beat them to the punch by publishing first’ (emphasis added). The book in question was The Nurse and the Dying Patient (Quint, 1967). Kathy Charmaz, contributing much of the detail here about Quint, has pointed out that her book actually used some of Glaser and Strauss’s substantive concepts, published in earlier papers.

Quint’s book, appearing in 1967, offered a thorough description of what student nurses learned about working with dying patients, and their attitudes and actions towards them. The book contributed to monumental changes in the care of the dying, but was neither a methodological exegesis nor a grounded theory.

Given the important turn in GTM research, and research generally, to question the position from which research is carried out (see below), it is important that Quint’s critical if circumscribed role is acknowledged and understood. For instance, one of the earliest papers resulting from this research appeared in 1964 with the names of all three authors in the following order – Strauss, Glaser, and Quint (1964).

Looking back after 50 years, it might be hard to grasp the impact that Glaser and Strauss’s writings had on US social science. If researchers in the 1960s did not realize it before, then Discovery made it clear that there was a dominant, if largely taken-for-granted and unexamined, mode of doing social science research in the USA. As Adele Clarke points out in her chapter (CD:1), Glaser and Strauss’s impact on conventional conceptions and practices of research cannot be overstated. These conventions encompassed methodological-cum-procedural aspects, but also institutional-cum-hierarchical ones. All neatly evoked by Glaser and Strauss’s imagery of ‘theoretical capitalists and proletarian researchers’, the latter toiling hypothetico-deductively amid the minutiae of the most notable theorists – particularly the Parsonians and Mertonians: i.e. Talcott Parsons and R. K. Merton. Discovery (1967), together with the two paradigm examples of GTM-in-use – Awareness of Dying (1965b) and Time for Dying (1968) – offered new insights into existing research practices as well as a new way of doing research, particularly at doctoral level. Although at first this was only apparent to the fortunate few enrolled on the doctoral program at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), and to some of Glaser and Strauss’s peers, who read and grasped the importance of Discovery. The wider impact of GTM took some time to develop, led initially by Strauss and the earliest generation of UCSF doctoral graduates. (NB: Not every sociologist agreed that grounded theory was new. For some Chicago school ethnographers, grounded theory restated strategies such as induction and comparative analysis, among other ideas that were common in that group.)

Discovery gained a wider readership among graduate students and researchers who wanted to do qualitative studies. In the early years following its publication, both students and established scholars relied on the book more for legitimating inductive qualitative research than for providing an explicit guide through the research process. Strauss’s 1987 book, Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists, and Strauss and Corbin’s (1990 & 1998) Basics of Qualitative Research made grounded theory world-renowned. Clarke points out that the popularity of grounded theory derived from its thoroughly empirical orientation. She places the appeal and development of grounded theory in its historical context. Most sociological research at the time was theory-driven. Clarke explicitly addresses the abductive, iterative movement between empirical materials and theory as part of the method from its early beginnings. Although few researchers wrote about abduction, it had always been part of the method for those who studied with Strauss.

Kathy Charmaz debated whether to include a section on abduction in an early paper (1983) but decided against it because the paper introduced grounded theory to students and was intended to clarify a method that few researchers of the day understood. I now argue (Bryant, 2017) that abduction, or our understanding of it, has come of age and is a vital part of research discussions. Several chapters in both Handbooks (Bryant & Charmaz, 2007a, 2019) provide vital discussions on abduction.

Discovery proposed an alternative to classical hypothetico-deductive research, where theoretical issues and hypotheses were derived from existing ‘authoritative’ work, and then subjected to ‘verification’ in the field. Instead, it was argued that researchers should immerse themselves in their chosen research context from the start, and allow theories to ‘emerge’ from the data. I would argue that this metaphor was often taken too far, even by Glaser and Strauss themselves (see below), who suggested that researchers could and should abandon their previous theoretical knowledge and experience before analyzing their data.

Glaser and Strauss, however, recognized that this naïve inductivism was unrealistic and unworkable, arguing that researchers needed to develop their ‘theoretical sensitivity’; the ability to conceptualize relevant data in theoretical terms, which can be only achieved by drawing on already existing theories and models. Kelle (CD:3) argues that

[T]he development of Grounded Theory Methodology (GTM) was characterized by different attempts to elaborate the concept of ‘theoretical sensitivity’ and to describe modes of a non-deductive use of theories and models in the process of empirically grounded theory building. Thereby a variety of new and complex concepts were proposed like ‘theoretical coding’, ‘coding families’, ‘axial coding’, ‘coding paradigm’, and many others.

It might be an exaggeration to ask ‘who now reads Talcott Parsons and/or Robert Merton?’,³ but it is certainly the case that, at least from the 1990s onwards, far more researchers and students across many disciplines read, cite, and use Glaser and Strauss – both individually and in concert – than do likewise for Parsons or Merton.⁴

A focus on methods has developed since the 1960s, itself in part an effect of the publication of Discovery. From my experience as a doctoral student in social science in the UK in the 1970s, the issue of ‘methods’ was not a priority; there were few, if any, support sessions on the topic, and very few texts particularly on qualitative methods. The situation in the USA, where doctoral programs – such as that at UCSF – included taught qualitative methods courses and epistemological assessments, was markedly different. In the interim, and with apologies to Jane Austen, it is now a truth universally acknowledged that a research student in pursuit of a doctorate must be in want of a clear ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About the Author
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction and Rationale
• 1 GTM – A Family of Variants
• 2 The Core Characteristics of GTM
• 3 GTM from a Logical Point of View
• 4 GTM Paradoxes
• 5 Indigeneity
• 6 Student and Learning Issues
• 7 GTM, Pragmatism and Social Justice
• In Conclusion
• Appendix A: Key Resources and Recommended Reading
• Appendix B: The Sage Handbook of Current Developments in Grounded Theory – List of Chapters
• References
• Index