Grounded Theory
Follow an action. Compare what happens in different situations. Build concepts that explain a process, then return to the field to sharpen the explanation.
What you will learn
- Recognise questions suited to grounded theory.
- Distinguish its main methodological traditions.
- Move from incidents and initial codes to analytical categories.
- Use memos to guide comparisons and further sampling.
- Integrate categories into a grounded explanation.
- Judge the reach, quality, and limits of that explanation.
Orient: Sections 1–4 connect the research question, approach, design, and data.
Work with evidence: Sections 5–10 develop a fictional study of reporters’ verification decisions.
Assess and apply: Sections 11–13 bring together reporting, the lecture, activities, and readings.
Understand the aim
Grounded theory is a research methodology for developing theory through the systematic generation and analysis of data. Researchers compare incidents, construct categories, and investigate relationships among them while the study is still unfolding.
The word grounded points to the relationship between the explanation and the evidence that supports it. A reader should be able to follow how particular encounters prompted a concept, how comparisons changed it, and why the resulting account explains the process under investigation.
Here, a theory can be a focused explanation of a social process. It might show how novice reporters manage uncertainty, how students learn to seek academic help, or how community organisers sustain participation. Its concepts reach beyond individual stories while retaining a clear connection to the circumstances studied.
Ask about action, conditions, and change
A question such as “How do early-career reporters decide when a local claim is ready to publish?” invites inquiry into actions and decisions. It leaves room to discover which circumstances matter: deadlines, source access, editorial expectations, previous mistakes, or something initially overlooked.
The approach is especially useful where existing explanations leave an important process poorly understood. A topic may already have a substantial literature; the contribution can lie in explaining an unresolved relationship or a process in a different setting.
A descriptive starting point
Reporters mention deadlines, colleagues, official records, and uncertainty. These topics help locate the problem.
An explanatory ambition
Investigate how access to checkable evidence and editorial expectations shape decisions to confirm, qualify, delay, or withhold a claim.
Locate the historical contribution
Barney G. Glaser and Anselm L. Strauss articulated grounded theory in their 1967 book, drawing on their research on dying and hospital life. They made the systematic generation of theory a central methodological task. Subsequent traditions developed different accounts of how researchers, data, and theory relate.
Choose a grounded theory approach
Grounded theory includes several traditions with shared practices and different philosophical commitments. Choosing an approach gives coherence to decisions about coding, literature, researcher involvement, and the kind of explanation the study will offer.
Your lecture introduces the Glaserian, Straussian, and constructivist traditions. The table offers an orientation. Read the relevant methodological texts before turning these summaries into a research protocol.
On a small screen, swipe the table horizontally.
| Approach | Emphasis | Common analytical vocabulary |
|---|---|---|
| Classic or Glaserian | Develop conceptual categories through comparison, allowing the analysis to earn its direction. Attend to participants’ main concerns and how they address them. | Substantive coding, open and selective coding, theoretical coding; emergence and theoretical sensitivity. |
| Straussian / Corbin and Strauss | Examine relationships among categories, including conditions, action and interaction, process, and consequences. The procedures developed across editions. | Open, axial, and selective coding are associated particularly with earlier formulations; later work develops concepts, variation, context, and integration. |
| Constructivist / Charmaz | Develop interpretive understandings while examining how researchers and participants shape data and analysis within social circumstances. | Initial and focused coding, memo writing, theoretical sampling, theoretical integration, and reflexivity. |
Connect the choice to the study
A constructivist study of reporters might examine how an interview question invites a professional account of competence, how the researcher’s journalism experience influences follow-up questions, and how newsroom hierarchies shape what can be said. These considerations become part of the analysis.
A Straussian study might organise comparisons around conditions, actions, and consequences, examining how these vary across verification episodes. A classic grounded theory study might pursue an emerging core category that explains how participants resolve a recurrent concern. Each needs evidence and an explicit account of its procedures.
Read coding terms in context
In the familiar Straussian formulation, open coding develops concepts from close examination of material. Axial coding reconnects categories and subcategories by examining relationships such as conditions, action, and consequences. Selective coding integrates the account around a core category. These terms describe related analytical work within that formulation; use the procedures of the edition and approach you adopt.
Design an iterative study
A grounded theory design connects data generation and analysis from the beginning. Early encounters provide material for coding and comparison; the emerging analysis identifies what needs investigation next.
Initial question: “How do early-career reporters decide when a local claim is ready to publish under deadline?”
Initial focus: Recent verification episodes in small local newsrooms.
Starting access: Reporters who can discuss a concrete publishing decision, with additional permissions for any observation or newsroom records.
Analytical interest: How decisions develop and vary across circumstances.
Ask what happened, observe permitted work, and retain relevant contextual detail.
Compare incidents, actions, and developing categories.
Propose a relationship; record the evidence and a competing explanation.
Seek a person, episode, or record that can develop the category.
Begin with a workable question
Identify a process, a relevant setting, and an initial point of access. “What is the impact of everything digital on journalism?” leaves too many decisions unresolved. A question about publishing a disputed local claim points towards episodes that can be described, observed, and compared.
Keep a question log. If early material redirects the study towards how reporters make a decision accountable to an editor, record what changed and which evidence prompted it. The refined question should grow through analysis.
Plan for movement
Reserve time between interviews to code, compare, and write memos. Budget for follow-up conversations and changes to recruitment. An ethics application can describe an adaptive design, likely participant groups, foreseeable topics, and the process for approving significant changes.
Use a simple study log with four entries: current question; material examined; analytical development; next comparison and its reason. This turns the study’s movement into something you can explain and review.
Generate useful data
Useful grounded theory data reveal what people do, how they interpret a situation, and what changes from one encounter to another. Interviews, observations, documents, and other material can contribute when they serve the developing analytical question.
Ask for an episode
Start with: “Tell me about a recent local claim you had to check before publishing.” Then follow the sequence: “What first caught your attention?” “What did you do next?” “Who became involved?” “What could you confirm?” “How did the decision change?”
Specific questions produce material about decisions and circumstances. An interviewee who says “We always verify” can be invited to describe the last occasion when confirmation was difficult. Ask what happened when the preferred source was unavailable, a document conflicted with a witness, or the deadline moved.
Early questions open the field
“How did you handle that claim?” “What mattered to you then?” “Can you describe another occasion when you handled it differently?”
Later questions develop a category
“What made that confirmation acceptable to the editor?” “Could a colleague’s reassurance substitute for a record?” “When did you decide to wait?”
Compare accounts with other material
With appropriate access, observe a reporting session, examine successive drafts, or discuss a redacted verification note. An interview can explain how a reporter remembers an episode; observation can reveal interruptions and negotiations; a draft can show how the wording changed. Record what each source makes available.
Capture the circumstances around an extract: the prompt, the speaker’s role, the stage of the episode, and relevant uncertainties. Preserve the difference between a participant’s recollection, an observed action, and an inference made during analysis.
Focus groups can reveal how people discuss a decision together, while documents can preserve formal expectations or changing wording. Numerical material can also contribute when it answers a developing analytical question. Choose each source for what it can add to the category and record how it was produced.
Keep participation and disclosure clear
Explain the research purpose, recording arrangements, use of quotations, and any agreed withdrawal limits. Seek consent for follow-up contact. A reporter’s agreement to an interview covers their participation; newsroom observation, editors’ involvement, confidential sources, and unpublished records require their own access decisions.
Use participant codes, restrict access to identifiable material, and keep identity keys separately. When the sample expands, check whether the new group or material fits the approved protocol. Describe how you will handle professional vulnerabilities, such as an account of a disputed publishing decision.
Code actions and incidents
Coding gives a concise analytical name to a segment of material. Initial coding keeps the researcher close to particular actions and meanings while opening several possible directions for comparison.
Read a passage carefully and ask: What is happening here? What is the person trying to accomplish? What conditions enter the action? Which words carry the participant’s own understanding? In constructivist grounded theory, action-focused labels often help the analysis retain movement.
On a small screen, swipe the table horizontally.
| Incident | Extract | Possible initial codes |
|---|---|---|
| E01 · A colleague checks | “I sent it to a senior I knew. Once she said she had checked with the ward office, I could show the editor why I used it.” | Seeking a trusted intermediary; relying on another person’s check; making a decision explainable. |
| E02 · A contact is unavailable | “He was offline. I looked for the dated notice, but it was old, so I left the time out and asked readers for an update.” | Changing the checking route; assessing currency; narrowing a claim; seeking further confirmation. |
| E03 · The deadline approaches | “We had ten minutes. I wrote what we could confirm and marked the closure time as unconfirmed.” | Separating confirmed details; marking uncertainty; adjusting the published claim. |
| E04 · A record is difficult to inspect | “I had the circular, but its date was blurred. The editor wanted a clean copy before using it.” | Questioning a record’s usability; requesting inspectable evidence; delaying acceptance. |
Keep codes provisional
E01 could initially attract the code “relying on seniority.” Yet the passage also mentions an actual check and the ability to explain a decision. Preserve these possibilities until comparisons establish what the code needs to capture. A compact label should help you ask a better question.
An in vivo code uses a participant’s own expression when that expression carries analytical value. “Show the editor why” might become a useful provisional label. Record the extract and its location so the expression retains its context.
Choose the scale of coding
Line-by-line coding can slow down an early reading and expose assumptions. Incident-by-incident coding can help compare bounded actions or events. Select a scale that serves the material and the chosen grounded theory approach, then explain how you used it.
Later, focused coding can select analytically significant codes and use them to examine larger amounts of material. In this example, “adjusting the claim” could connect E02 and E03 while preserving their differences. Importance rests on explanatory value; a rare incident can expose a decisive condition.
Develop categories through comparison
Constant comparison examines similarities and differences among incidents, codes, and categories throughout the study. Each comparison can sharpen what a concept means, identify its variations, and suggest a relationship worth investigating.
Compare incidents before settling the explanation
Compare E01 with E02. One reporter reaches a colleague who has checked with an office; another turns to a notice when a contact is unavailable. Both seek a basis for publication, but they follow different routes. E03 adds a further possibility: publish a narrower, qualified claim.
E04 complicates a simple “people versus documents” division. Possessing a document does not settle whether others can inspect the detail that matters. This comparison prompts a more useful question: what makes evidence usable within the decision?
The researcher can then compare codes. “Making a decision explainable” and “requesting inspectable evidence” might contribute to a candidate category, assembling an accountable basis for publication. That name remains open to change as the study develops.
How reporters gather and present grounds on which a publishing decision can be examined.
Through a colleague, through records, or through several sources together.
From an account another person must take on trust to evidence they can examine directly.
Confirming, qualifying, delaying, or withholding particular details.
How do time pressure and editorial expectations change these actions?
Give the category boundaries
Write a working definition, examples that fit, and an incident that challenges the definition. Ask what distinguishes assembling a basis for publication from seeking advice, following a rule, or simply passing responsibility to someone else.
Keep contextual detail where it changes the explanation. A reassurance from a colleague may carry different weight when the colleague has performed a check, when the editor knows their checking routine, or when the reassurance is a hurried guess. The words “a colleague confirmed it” can conceal these differences.
Compare across and within accounts
A single interview may contain episodes handled differently. Comparing them can reveal a change in deadline, editorial oversight, or access to evidence. Comparing accounts across participants can then show whether the emerging distinction travels beyond that one person.
Write analytical memos
An analytical memo develops an idea about the data. It records what a category might explain, how it relates to other concepts, which evidence supports it, and what further comparison could change it.
Write memos from the beginning. A short early memo might notice that several reporters explain what they could show an editor. A later memo can examine how this concern varies with the checking route, the editor’s involvement, or the possibility of withholding a detail.
From obtaining confirmation to making a check examinable
Material: E01–E04 and the current coding notes.
Working idea: Reporters appear to assemble grounds for a decision that someone else may question. E01 makes a colleague’s checking available through an account; E04 requires a readable record.
Comparison: E02 and E03 adjust the published detail when confirmation remains incomplete. This suggests that managing the claim may be as important as securing a source.
Alternative: These accounts might primarily describe compliance with an editor’s instructions. The candidate category may overstate reporters’ own initiative.
Reflexive question: My emphasis on verification may encourage interviewees to present themselves as careful professionals. I need questions about hesitation, disagreement, and occasions when their preferred action changed.
Next comparison: Seek an episode with limited editorial involvement and one where a reporter and editor disagreed about acceptable evidence. Ask what made the eventual decision workable.
Current status: A developing interpretation requiring further inquiry.
Let the memo perform analytical work
A summary says what each reporter discussed. A memo asks how incidents relate and what those relationships might mean. In M03, the key movement is from a source-centred explanation towards a decision process involving evidence, audience, and possible challenge.
Give each memo a date or version, a title, linked incident IDs, and the category under discussion. Preserve earlier versions when the interpretation changes. This record shows how an attractive initial idea was developed, limited, or abandoned.
Keep different notes connected
A fieldnote records an encounter and the researcher’s observations. A reflexive note examines involvement and assumptions. An analytical memo develops conceptual relationships. These forms can overlap, but headings help you distinguish evidence, interpretation, and decisions about the next step.
Follow theoretical sampling leads
Theoretical sampling directs further data generation or selection through the developing analysis. Researchers seek material that can elaborate a category, explore its variation, examine a proposed relationship, or resolve an analytical uncertainty.
Initial purposive sampling provides an entry into the problem: reporters with relevant experiences. After coding and comparison, M03 supplies a more specific reason for recruitment. The researcher now needs episodes that illuminate who makes a decision accountable, to whom, and under what circumstances.
On a small screen, swipe the table horizontally.
| Analytical gap | Possible next material | What the comparison could develop |
|---|---|---|
| Is an editor driving the process? | An episode reported with limited editorial involvement; a follow-up on who anticipated a challenge. | Whether accountability is directed towards editors, readers, sources, professional expectations, or several audiences. |
| Does seniority explain reliance on a colleague? | An experienced reporter checking a claim without a familiar intermediary. | The relationship between experience, checking routines, and access to usable evidence. |
| When does time pressure lead to delay? | A disputed claim held despite a deadline, alongside an episode published with explicit qualification. | The conditions that separate narrowing a claim from withholding it. |
| Does a claimed check satisfy everyone? | With consent, separate accounts of a reporter–editor disagreement and relevant redacted drafts. | How standards of acceptable evidence are negotiated and whose judgement prevails. |
Sample incidents as well as people
The next useful comparison may be a follow-up interview with an existing participant, an observed decision, an earlier draft, or a contrasting episode from the same newsroom. A new participant can bring several relevant incidents; an incident can also involve several participants.
Write the sampling reason before collecting the next material. For example: “M03 raises the possibility that editorial oversight shapes the category. I will seek a contrasting episode where the reporter had substantial discretion.” Afterwards, record what the comparison actually changed.
Follow the consequence of a surprising case
Suppose a later interview, E05, describes an experienced reporter who works alone, keeps a dated checking log, and delays an ambiguous detail despite a deadline. This fictional case weakens the idea that accountability requires a senior intermediary. It redirects attention towards evidence that can be revisited and decisions that can be explained.
E05 also raises a fresh question: does keeping a log change the decision, or is it mainly a record made afterwards? A follow-up could reconstruct the timing of the entries. If feasible and permitted, observation could compare the retrospective account with work as it happens.
Use reasoning and literature
Theoretical sensitivity is the capacity to recognise what may matter conceptually in the data. It grows through close engagement, comparison, disciplinary knowledge, experience, and reflection on how these resources direct attention.
A journalism researcher may quickly notice source credibility. Sensitivity also involves asking what that familiar concept leaves unexplained. E04 draws attention to whether evidence can be inspected. E05 asks whether an anticipated future challenge shapes present work.
Move between kinds of reasoning
Induction develops concepts through examining incidents. Comparing E01–E04 suggests that reporters make both evidence and decisions available for scrutiny.
Abduction begins with something puzzling and considers plausible explanations. Why would a reporter with an official circular still delay publication? Possible explanations include the blurred date, concern about the document’s origin, a changed editorial threshold, or another unresolved detail. Further inquiry helps assess these possibilities.
Deductive checking within analysis asks what one would expect if a proposed relationship held. If inspectability matters, the researcher might seek episodes where a readable record changed acceptance while the source remained the same. The comparison may support, qualify, or redirect the idea.
Use literature with an explicit strategy
The timing and role of literature differ across grounded theory traditions. Classic approaches often advise delaying close engagement with substantive theories to reduce their influence on emerging categories. Straussian and constructivist approaches generally permit earlier engagement while treating concepts as revisable resources.
Thornberg’s informed grounded theory addresses the use of existing scholarship during theory development. For a student beginning research, a workable strategy is to establish the problem, record the concepts brought to it, and repeatedly check whether those concepts illuminate the material.
Later, compare the developed categories with relevant research. Ask whether existing work explains the same relationship, overlooks a condition exposed by the study, or suggests a better interpretation. Keep a literature memo alongside the analytical memos so the influence of reading remains visible.
Treat sensitising concepts as invitations
A concept such as gatekeeping may alert a media researcher to selection and authority. Let participants’ actions show which aspects matter. If a study of verification repeatedly reveals the work of making evidence examinable, retain that development even when it shifts attention away from the starting concept.
Integrate an explanation
Theoretical integration brings developed categories into a coherent account of the process. It explains relationships, relevant conditions, variation, and consequences using concepts supported by the study.
The lecture highlights advanced coding, theoretical coding, and a storyline. Depending on the chosen tradition, integration may centre on a core category or organise several categories around a central process. A useful integrative statement should reveal how the explanation works.
Propose the relationships
In the fictional study, candidate categories include assembling an accountable basis for publication, negotiating an evidence threshold, adjusting a claim, and preserving a checking trail. Their proposed central process is making a verification decision defensible.
Assemble grounds for a decision and negotiate what counts as adequate checking.
Consult people, examine records, and make the checking route available for scrutiny.
Confirm, qualify, delay, or withhold details as evidence and expectations change.
Later questions or corrections may reshape the contacts, records, and expectations used in the next episode.
Feedback returns to future checking and decision-making ↺When uncertainty becomes consequential, reporters assemble an account of what can be checked. Access to inspectable evidence and expectations about acceptable checking shape whether they confirm, qualify, delay, or withhold a claim. Later scrutiny can reshape whom they consult and what records they preserve in subsequent episodes.
This storyline illustrates integration. The limited teaching extracts leave several relationships open and cannot establish a completed grounded theory.
Develop conditional propositions
Translate a connection into a statement that can be examined. For example: “When the available evidence cannot support a time-specific detail, reporters may narrow or delay that detail; the choice depends partly on what the newsroom regards as publishable uncertainty.”
Now ask where the proposition fits, where it breaks down, and what other conditions matter. A safety-critical claim may be handled differently from a routine event notice. A policy may forbid publication without a particular source. These comparisons can refine the scope of the explanation.
Separate an analytical model from a recipe
The diagram helps inspect the proposed relationships. A newsroom’s actual activity may loop, interrupt, or combine these actions. Link each connection to evidence and a memo, including unresolved cases. The model should earn its clarity through comparison.
A substantive theory explains a process within a particular area of inquiry. Developing a more general or formal theory requires further conceptual work and comparisons across substantive areas. Describe the level and reach of the account you have built.
Judge and report the study
A strong grounded theory account connects its conceptual contribution with a transparent record of inquiry. Readers should be able to assess the categories, relationships, comparisons, and methodological choices that support the explanation.
Assess theoretical saturation through category development
Theoretical saturation concerns how adequately relevant categories, their properties, and their relationships have been developed through further inquiry. Ask what the latest comparisons added and whether important variations or connections remain poorly explained.
Saunders and colleagues distinguish uses of saturation and argue for an account that fits the methodology and analytical purpose. Repeated comments can coexist with an underdeveloped category. A category may recur frequently while its conditions and consequences remain unclear.
Category: Adjusting the claim.
Developed so far: Qualifying uncertain details and postponing their publication in several described episodes.
Unresolved: How disagreement with an editor affects the decision; whether anticipated harm changes the threshold; how actual practice compares with retrospective accounts.
Decision: Seek targeted comparisons if feasible. If access or time prevents them, report the gaps and limit the explanation accordingly.
Use quality criteria suited to the approach
For constructivist grounded theory, Charmaz and Thornberg discuss credibility, originality, resonance, and usefulness. These invite concrete questions: Is the account well supported? What does it add? Does it capture the complexity of participants’ situations? What can someone understand or do with it?
Other traditions use their own formulations, including fit, relevance, working explanatory power, and modifiability. Identify the criteria you use and show how the study addresses them. Transparent comparisons, rich evidence, reflexive decisions, and attention to challenging cases help readers evaluate the work.
Write the findings around the explanation
Introduce the central process, define each major category, and show its relevant variation. Use selected extracts alongside analytical commentary. Then explain how categories connect, which circumstances change the process, and where an alternative interpretation remains plausible.
In the fictional study, a findings section on assembling an accountable basis could compare E01’s mediated check with E04’s unreadable date. The commentary would explain what the contrast adds to inspectability. The extract serves a conceptual claim, and the claim directs the reader back to evidence.
“We adopted ______ grounded theory to investigate ______. Initial participants/material were selected because ______. Data generation and analysis proceeded together through ______. Memo ______ prompted the comparison ______, which changed category ______ by ______. We assessed category development through ______ and addressed researcher involvement by ______. The resulting explanation applies to ______, with the following limits: ______.”
Report the contribution and its reach
Explain how the developed account relates to existing scholarship and what it helps illuminate. Distinguish demonstrated relationships from proposals needing further research. State access restrictions, missing perspectives, changes in recruitment, and practical limits where they affect the account.
Participant discussions can reveal an interpretation that feels unfamiliar, incomplete, or overly tidy. Ask what fits and what it overlooks, while retaining responsibility for the analytical judgement. In team research, record substantive disagreements and how they changed the analysis.
Watch and practise
Use the lecture to revisit the method’s central practices. Pause at the chapter links, connect the explanation to the worked example, and attempt the activities before opening the suggested responses.
Dr. USP · Grounded Theory Explained: Mastering Qualitative Research · 23 January 2023 · 11:54. If the embedded player is unavailable, open the lecture on YouTube. Timestamp links open YouTube at the relevant chapter.
Attempt each activity before revealing the response
Activity 1 · Choose an action-focused code
Fictional extract: “I saved the old version because I knew someone might ask why the wording changed.”
Task: Propose two initial codes and one follow-up question.
Suggested response: Possible codes include “preserving a decision trail” and “anticipating a challenge.” Ask who might question the change and whether that expectation affected the earlier decision. Compare the answer with an episode where no version was saved.
Activity 2 · Justify the next sample
Prompt: Your current explanation says senior colleagues provide the confidence needed to publish. E05 describes an experienced reporter working alone with a checking log. What would you seek next?
Suggested response: Investigate how the log entered the decision and compare an episode in which a colleague was available but their reassurance was questioned. These comparisons help distinguish personal seniority, a recognised checking routine, and inspectable evidence. Record the analytical gap that each selection addresses.
Activity 3 · Turn a summary into a memo
Summary: “Reporters discussed documents, colleagues, and deadlines.”
Task: Turn this into a short analytical memo with an alternative explanation.
Suggested response: “Reporters appear to assemble different grounds for publication depending on what can be checked in time. E01 relies on a colleague’s account of checking; E04 exposes difficulty inspecting a record. Editorial instructions may explain the difference better than evidence access. Compare episodes with different levels of editorial involvement.”
Activity 4 · Assess a saturation claim
Prompt: “The final three interviews repeated ‘we verify before publishing’; therefore, the theory is saturated.” What would you examine?
Suggested response: Examine how the major categories and relationships have developed. Repeated wording leaves questions about what counts as checking, who judges adequacy, and when a claim is qualified or withheld. Seek relevant contrasts or report these gaps. Explain the stopping decision using the study’s analytical record.
Your self-study project
Work first with the fictional extracts in this chapter. Create a one-page analytical portfolio containing:
- An initial research question and the grounded theory approach you would adopt.
- Initial codes linked to E01–E04, with a brief reason for two coding choices.
- One candidate category, its definition, and two properties.
- A memo that compares incidents and proposes an alternative interpretation.
- Two theoretical sampling decisions, each tied to a specific analytical gap.
- A small conceptual model, with its strongest connection and one unresolved relationship marked.
Check your work: Can another learner follow the route from extract to code, category, memo, sampling decision, and proposed explanation? For a project involving real participants, arrange the appropriate ethical review, permissions, and consent before recruitment.
Glossary and readings
Use these terms to describe analytical decisions precisely. The readings provide fuller accounts of the traditions and procedures introduced in this chapter.
- Grounded theory
- A methodology for developing theory through systematic data generation, comparison, and analysis; the term also describes the resulting theoretical account.
- Incident
- An event, action, or meaningful occurrence selected for analysis and comparison.
- Initial code
- A provisional analytical label attached to a segment of material.
- In vivo code
- A code that retains a participant’s own expression because it has analytical significance.
- Focused coding
- Using selected, significant initial codes to examine and organise more material, particularly in constructivist grounded theory.
- Category
- A developed analytical concept that brings incidents together and helps explain a process.
- Property
- An aspect or characteristic through which a category is developed.
- Dimension
- A range or form of variation within a property.
- Constant comparison
- Repeated comparison of incidents, codes, and categories to develop conceptual distinctions and relationships.
- Analytical memo
- A written exploration of a concept, comparison, relationship, or analytical problem.
- Theoretical sampling
- Selecting further material because of what the developing categories and relationships need.
- Theoretical sensitivity
- The capacity to recognise and develop the conceptual significance of material.
- Abduction
- Reasoning from a puzzling observation towards plausible explanations that can be explored further.
- Core category
- A central integrative concept that organises the explanation in approaches that use this formulation.
- Theoretical integration
- Developing a coherent explanation of relationships among categories.
- Theoretical saturation
- A judgement about the development of relevant categories and relationships through further inquiry, justified in relation to the approach and study.
- Reflexivity
- Examining how the researcher’s position, assumptions, interactions, and decisions shape the inquiry.
- Substantive theory
- A theoretical account developed for a particular area of social inquiry.
Core methodological readings
- Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Aldine. Book record.The foundational statement of theory generation, comparison, and theoretical sampling.
- Charmaz, K. (2024). Constructing grounded theory (3rd ed.). SAGE. Publisher’s page.A guide to constructivist grounded theory, including interviews, coding, memos, and writing.
- Corbin, J., & Strauss, A. (2015). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (4th ed.). SAGE. Publisher’s page.Developing concepts, examining variation and context, and integrating an account.
- Birks, M., & Mills, J. (2023). Grounded theory: A practical guide (3rd ed.). SAGE. Publisher’s page.A practical route through the research process, from proposal to presentation.
- Chun Tie, Y., Birks, M., & Francis, K. (2019). Grounded theory research: A design framework for novice researchers. SAGE Open Medicine, 7. https://doi.org/10.1177/2050312118822927An open-access explanation of the interplay among the method’s recurrent tasks.
- Thornberg, R. (2012). Informed grounded theory. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 56(3), 243–259. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831.2011.581686Examines how existing scholarship can inform theory development.
- Charmaz, K., & Thornberg, R. (2021). The pursuit of quality in grounded theory. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 18(3), 305–327. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2020.1780357Connects methodological choices and theoretical development with the assessment of quality.
- Saunders, B., Sim, J., Kingstone, T., Baker, S., Waterfield, J., Bartlam, B., Burroughs, H., & Jinks, C. (2018). Saturation in qualitative research: Exploring its conceptualization and operationalization. Quality & Quantity, 52, 1893–1907. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-017-0574-8Clarifies why saturation needs a stated meaning and a justified use within a particular study.
- Pandey, U. S. [Dr. USP]. (2023, January 23). Grounded theory explained: Mastering qualitative research [Video]. YouTube. Watch the lecture.The accompanying lecture on coding, memo writing, sampling, and theoretical sensitivity.
Carry the question into another method
Ask what your next study needs to explain. Ethnography develops understanding through sustained engagement with a social world. Content Analysis offers another route for examining patterns in selected material. Return to Research Methodology when connecting that choice to the wider design.