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I have been reading about the Grounded Theory and I have discovered that this type of analysis requires three main elements:
- Asking questions
- Making comparisons
- Defining concepts
I have also found that the Grounded Theory has three levels of concepts:
- Description: Its purpose is to contextualize, persuade and to concince that phenomenons happen within the different variables.
- Conceptual ordering: It organizes data into categories according to the properties and dimensions, types and stages.
- Theorizing: It compares and contrasts the different categories of data in order to draw a valid conclusion when explaining the phenomenon. Corbin and Strauss state that there should be only one salient category and taken together with other concepts it explains the what, how, when, where and why of the phenomenon.
The following are other important concepts I consider important in order to understand the Grounded Theory:
- Concepts are designations or labels which are attached to individual events or indicators. The researcher must look for indicators of provisional concepts of data.
- The central ideas or sensitizing concepts are transformed into provisional research questions.
- The brainstorming of categories and literature is made, that is, compared and fit in with the research question(s). These are a summary of of collective and abstract concepts which may become releveant for the most varied fields of investigation and types of problems. Only a few indicators will be appropriate and relevant.
- During the process, different indicators are investigated and compared with one another and similarities and differences are considered. On the basis of this analysis of indicators, concepts are finally specified. Here the theoretical concepts are dimensionalized or determined.
- Changing indicators that generate new properties of a code will proceed only so far before the analysts discover saturation of ideas through the interchangeability of indicators. This means, the more numerous the indicators that are of equal significance for a concept, the higher the degree of saturation of properties of that concept for the emerging theory.
- Concepts are developed, categorized and dimensionalized . They are enriched with indicators like textual examples or exerpts.
- By means of permanent comparison of the concepts using the associated text units they are categorized, related to each other, ordered, put into hierarchy and dimensionalized. Through this process, the data is broken down into dimensions, while variables are established at different levels.
- During the coding process, the investigator is permanently switching between inductive and deductive thinking, setting up and testing concepts to create hypotheses.
