Grounded theory in psychological research.

Abstract

Generating theory that is grounded in semistructured interviews, fieldwork observations, case-study notes, or other forms of textual documentation is one important principle of much qualitative social science today. It is often specifically associated with the methodological approach adopted by the American sociologists Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss during their investigation of the institutional care of the terminally ill (1965), which they subsequently termed grounded theory (1967). Grounded theory studies are often prompted by quite general research interests at the outset. These might include identifying actors' views or perspectives on a topic or investigating processes or phenomena of interest within their local contexts and settings, and from there arriving at insights and explanatory schemes that are relevant to ("grounded in") realworld problems, a previously unresearched topic area, or both.Since the late-1980s psychologists have been interested in using the principles and practices of grounded theory (see Henwood & Pidgeon, 1992;Rennie, Phillips, & Quartaro, 1988). In this chapter we argue that its usefulness for psychologists is both as a node around which there are discussions of a wide range of contemporary methodological issues (e.g., epistemology, design, interpretive practice, and validity) and as a resource for framing studies and analytical strategies that deal in principled and practical ways with the exigencies of conducting systematic but creative qualitative research that has clear relevance to substantive problem domains. In so doing we also hope to avoid presenting grounded theory as a unitary method (for some it is the method of thematic qualitative inquiry), instead preferring to reflect contemporary developments in thinking about the place of the approach within qualitative inquiry in general.We wish to thank Marcus Sangster, Huw Davies, Paul Finch (of the Forestry Commission), Sarah Pearce, Ffion M. Roberts, Sue Hunter, and all of the individuals who contributed to both the North Wales Community Focus Groups and the Stakeholder Panel. Our colleague Barry Turner, who died unexpectedly in 1995, shared with us many of his insightful thoughts on the use of grounded theory method. Mildred Blaxter has been a valued commentator and discussant. The opinions expressed here are, however, solely ours.

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