Analytic Induction

Rather than beginning with a theory, an explanation, or an interpretation and then seeking evidence to confirm, disconfirm, or otherwise test it in a deductive mode, inductive thinking starts with evidence—the particulars—and builds theories, explanations, and interpretations to reflect or represent those particulars. The close relationship between empirical observation and conceptual formulation guides most inductive approaches.

Analytic induction is the process of developing constructs such as categories, statements of relationship, and generalizations as well as the theory resulting from integrating categories and generalizations by examining incidents, events, and other information relevant to a topic. Abstraction from the concrete to a more inclusive formulation is a key task in analytic induction. Analytic induction asks the following of any event, activity, situation, or attribute: What kind of event, activity, situation, or attribute is this particular one? Classification is another central feature of analytic induction. From a close analysis of an initial case, constructs are generated and are refined through consideration of succeeding instances.

Most important to the developing category system and generalizations are succeeding instances contrary to initial instances, called negative cases. Negative cases may delimit a theory, indicating the boundaries of the theory's applicability, or they may compel a revision of a theory so that it will account for the variation. Analytic induction is an iterative process, a kind of recursive thinking from instances to idea to a search for negative cases to be added to the initial instances to refined idea and so forth until a construct is devised to adequately represent all relevant known phenomena.

Arguably one of the first formally named methods for analyzing qualitative data, analytic induction was formulated during the 1930s by Florian Znaniecki to describe how he and W. I. Thomas examined, explained, and interpreted the materials they collected for their magisterial work, The Polish Peasant in America. Alfred Lindesmith further developed the method of analytic induction in his study of addiction during the 1940s, and successive generations of [Page 16]qualitative researchers have adopted and adapted what these scholars explored.

Znaniecki's vision of analytic induction has been criticized by some methodologists as seeking universal certainties, but this interpretation is debatable because Znaniecki disparaged efforts of others to use induction to arrive at absolutely true generalizations. He emphasized that, so long as human life continued, theories would need to change to reflect changing human conditions, changing human experiences, and (especially) changing human knowledge and understanding of the world.