Qualitative Interviewing and Grounded Theory Analysis

Qualitative Interviewing and Grounded Theory Analysis

Researchers across disciplines and professions adopt grounded theory more frequently than any other method of analyzing qualitative data (Bryant & Charmaz, 2007b; Morse, 2009; Yamazaki et al., 2009), and consistent with other forms of qualitative inquiry, they use interviewing more frequently to collect data than any other form of data collection. Interviewing for a grounded theory study both resembles and differs from interviewing for thematic qualitative inquiry. We will point out the main points of divergence. Grounded theory is primarily a method of data analysis, with profound implications for collecting data that have largely remained unaddressed (but see Charmaz, 2009b; Charmaz & Bryant, 2011). In this chapter, we show how grounded theory methods shape qualitative interviewing and how they guide the analysis of interview data.

What is grounded theory? The term grounded theory refers to a systematic method for constructing a theoretical analysis from data, with explicit analytic strategies and implicit guidelines for data collection. In addition, the term refers to the products of the method, the completed theoretical analysis. We emphasize the flexible strategies that constitute this method and aid the researcher to (a) study social and social psychological processes, (b) direct data collection, (c) manage data analysis, and (d) develop and test an abstract theoretical framework that explains the studied process. These methods are guides for grappling with constructing this abstract analysis rather than an inflexible series of procedures. As Janice Morse (2009) argues, grounded theory cannot be standardized.

Grounded theory is an inductive, comparative, iterative, and interactive method (Charmaz, 2006). Researchers subject their inductive data to rigorous comparative analysis that successively moves from studying concrete realities to rendering a conceptual understanding from these data. Successive data collection and analysis each inform and focus the other as the iterative process proceeds. [Page 348]The logic of grounded theory and enactment of its strategies keep researchers interacting with their data and nascent analyses.

The founders of grounded theory, Barney G. Glaser and Anselm L. Strauss (1967), aimed to develop middle-range theories through successive analysis of qualitative data that generated abstract theoretical categories, demonstrated relations among these categories, and specified the conditions under which theoretical categories and relationships emerge, change, or are maintained. Glaser and Strauss constructed a method for studying fluid, emergent processes. Since 1967, grounded theory has become both a general method (Charmaz, 2005, 2010; Corbin & Strauss, 2008; Strauss & Corbin, 1994) and a generalized method (Charmaz, 2009c, 2010). It is a general method because versions of its strategies have become part of the common lexicon of qualitative inquiry and stretch across disciplines and professions. It is a generalized method because qualitative researchers have adopted its strategies, but in diluted ways. What strategies do grounded theorists use? The strategy of simultaneous data collection and analysis has been a hallmark of grounded theory that has permeated qualitative inquiry. Ironically, numerous researchers who claim to use grounded theory state that they conduct their interviews first and analyze them later. This strategy weakens the analysis because it curtails the iterative, comparative process that fundamentally defines grounded theory.

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