Grounded theory is a qualitative research approach that attempts to uncover the meanings of people’s social actions, interactions, and experiences. These explanations are called ‘grounded’ because they are grounded in the participants’ own explanations or interpretations.
Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss originated this method in their 1967 book, The Discovery of Grounded Theory. The grounded theory approach has been used by researchers in various disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, psychology, economics, and public health.
Grounded theory qualitative research was considered path-breaking in many respects upon its arrival. The inductive method allowed the analysis of data during the collection process. It also shifted focus away from the existing practice of verification, which researchers felt didn’t always produce rigorous results.
Let’s take a closer look at grounded theory research.
- Meaning of Grounded Theory
- Process of construction Grounded Theory Research
- Features of Grounded Theory
- Application of Grounded theory with examples
- Advantages of Grounded Theory
- Disadvantages of Grounded Theory
1) Meaning of Grounded Theory:
Grounded theory is a qualitative method designed to help arrive at new theories and deductions. Researchers collect data through any means they prefer and then analyze the facts to arrive at concepts. Through a comparison of these concepts, they plan theories. They continue until they reach sample saturation, in which no new information upsets the theory they have formulated. Then they put forth their final theory.
In grounded theory research, the framework description guides the researcher’s own interpretation of data. A data description is the researcher’s algorithm for collecting and organizing data while also constructing a conceptual model that can be tested against new observations.
Grounded theory doesn’t assume that there’s a single meaning of an event, object, or concept. In grounded theory, you interpret all data as information or materials that fit into categories your research team creates.
2) Process of conducting Grounded Theory Research
Now that we’ve examined what is grounded theory, let’s inspect how it’s conducted. There are four steps involved in grounded theory research:
- Step1: Culling out concepts from interviews, Observation and Reflection
- Step 2: Organizing the data into categories representing sub themes or sub plots
- Step 3: Comparing the developed categories with one another to identify two or more theories thar compete
- Step 4: Designing the construction of the research hypothesis statement or the concept map.
Grounded theory is a relatively recent addition to the tools at a researcher’s disposal. There are several methods of conducting grounded theory research. The following processes are common features:
Coding: Codes are sets of words that are used for describing the meaning of a concept. Usually they are recorded through interviews, observation, and other data sources. Grounded theory starts with codes and after making the codes, the researcher must select concepts that represent each code.
Memoing: The researcher must identify some interesting existing theories and understand them. He must further develop a connection between these existing theories and the new research. It is an internal process and is usually done to form concepts and verify the validity of the research.
Putting together the findings: Once a new theory has been developed from data, the findings must be written. This is the final step. The researcher can write a tentative hypothesis from their research findings.
3) Features of Grounded Theory:
The grounded theory is unlike other research techniques and has some unique features that make it distinct from others. Some of its characteristics are
- Personalized Interaction: This theory is all about personal interaction between the researcher and the participants. The researcher in this method is supposed to ask questions from participants, spend time with them, observe them in situations and interview them, whether in group or personally. They must ask each participant about anything that is related to their research. It could be experiences, observations, or anything else. The purpose is to decipher the opinion of the respondent. This might not happen in a single interaction and it’s a possibility that the researcher might have to convince the participant to meet him and give him time and. Effort until the researcher is not convinced that he has understood the perspective of the respondent. In some situation, to make the respondent participative, the researcher might have to give monetary or non-monetary benefits or rewards to the respondent for giving his effort and participation in answering the questions or participating in the survey.
- Easy to Mold: Being flexible is one of the most important tenets of grounded theory. This is because the grounded theory is supposed to focus on the participants, their interpretations, and explanations. These cannot be standardized and there is a lot of scope for subjectivity here. Each respondent or participant is a distinct personality and may have his own opinion and preferences. The grounded theory needs to be flexible enough to incorporate the distinctiveness in each response and eventually compile them together under categories with similar responses. Many times, a researcher cannot get to any conclusion about the preference or behavior of a respondent by in one interaction or direct questioning. One or more interpretations may be derived which were previously unknown. These interpretations are called as constructs.
- It begins with a case study: The grounded theory approach often starts with a case study. A group or an individual is observed here, and the researcher develops a tentative definition of their constructs through the case analysis. Later case analysis is used to create a hypothesis which explains the construct. The validity of all the hypotheses needs to be proven for the purpose of acceptance and explanation.
- Continuous Assessment of Data: Since the grounded theory deals with interactions with the respondents an interview guide is a prerequisite. It is a set of questions which are asked in such a way that that the meaning of the construct is made clear and elaborated. The gathered data is looked upon by the researcher to see whether the construct is true, false, or partially applicable. This becomes a long and continuous process as when more and more data keep coming in it keeps adding on to the constructs and new theories can developed in the process.
4) Application of Grounded Theory with Examples:
Organizations used grounded theory to create advantage from the competitors and its application is getting acceptable globally in corporations for decision making in different domains.
Some of the applications of grounded theory are.
- Usually, the marketing team in an organization uses the grounded theory to get information from employees, particularly the marketing executives to understand how the product or the service could be further improved in a better and more structured way.
- The HR department may use this theory to understand the causes of dissatisfaction or frustration amongst the employees. Employees can explain what they feel is lacking in the organizational policy for employees. This data that the HR gathers, upon analysis can help them to reach to the root cause of the problem ad also identify effective solutions.
- The organization can take effective branding decisions based on this theory. Such as creating more appealing logos, tag lines or promotional strategies. The marketing department may interview existing and potential customers about their preferences, likes and dislikes. They will gather coded data that relates back to the interviews taken and use it for second iteration.
These are only some of the applications and examples of the uses of the grounded theory in business setting. This theory can be applied in various other important aspects of decision making in an organization.
- 5) Advantages Of Grounded Theory:
The grounded theory is extremely flexible in its uses, and this makes it a widely acceptable theory. Other than the flexibility advantage, there are a few more advantages of this theory. These are:
· This theory is based in the quest for finding the meaning. It does not rely upon what has been done in the past. Rather, researchers are more interested in what the participants are saying about their likes, dislikes, experiences. This adds a lot of novelty and subjectivity to the theory.
· It allows the researchers to use inductive reasoning. This makes the theory away from prejudices and allows the researcher to view the opinion and perspective of the respondent. This gives an advantage of objectivity to the process and takes it away from biases when it comes to data collection and analysis of data.
· This theory gives the platform of constant comparison of data to concepts. This refines the theory as the research proceeds. There are some methods that only look for verifying existing hypotheses. This theory is more advanced and contrast to those.
· This theory allows the researcher to conduct experiments. This gives a support to their research hypotheses. Through the experiment researcher can put to test the applicability of ideas and provide support to the hypotheses and the theory development with the help of the results of the experiments.
· It produces a clear theoretical model which is far from being abstract. It gives the opportunity to the researcher to establish connections between cases and understand how each case fits with the other.
· With grounded theory researchers can produce analysis that is more detailed than with any other method.
· The grounded theory lays a lot of emphasis on objective interpretation of data. Researchers in this theory get the freedom to introspect their own preconceived ideas about a topic and analyze them critically to understand their usage and applicability.
6) Disadvantages of Grounded Theory:
Like any other method or theory, the grounded theory also has some disadvantages, and the researcher must be aware and should consider them.
· The grounded theory does not promote the concept of consensus and hence there are always competing view on the same concept. This may sometime defer or come in the way of the acceptance of any research done by this theory by the community.
· It is open ended in nature where the responses and results are theoretical in nature and not concerned with true or false but more with individual perspective where all can be right in their own way. The subjectivity element here makes it overly theoretical in nature.
· To understand and apply the grounded theory, the researcher must be highly skills and knowledgeable and have critical thinking skills developed. A novice researcher may not be able to justice to this theory as he or she is supposed to be objective in their approach, be unbiased ad conduct the interviews without any biases and personal agendas influencing the results.
Conclusion
Thus, to conclude we can say that the grounded theory is a systematic methodology that has found its application in qualitative research that is the forte of social scientists. It is inductive reasoning where the construction of hypotheses and theories is done after the collection and analyses of data. This contrasts with the deductive model which has been predominantly used in traditional scientific research.
Any study undertaken for Grounded theory begins with a collection of qualitative data. As the researchers review that data that has been collected, the concepts start becoming apparent to him. These ideas and concepts emerge out from the data. To structure these concepts and tags, researchers give them codes. As data keeps getting collected as a continuous process the grouping of codes is done and they get formulated into higher level concepts and eventually into categories. These categories become the foundation of the hypotheses or a new theory. As an inductive approach, the hypotheses are formed in the end after the analyses of data is done and that is what makes it unique, flexible, and widely applicable.
The grounded theory approach is a strong analytical tool and can be of great help to researchers and when there are decisions to be made a workplace. In the present times, knowledge and application of analytical tools is the most sought-after skill in the professional world. Managers who can apply these tools, such as the grounded theory in the research the more value addition they are able to make to their organization.
