本课程将介绍社会科学中质性研究的基础理念。你将会学习用质性研究方法进行数据收集、描述、分析和解释。质性研究通常是一个不断迭代演进的过程。我们会重点关注研究过程所需的要素：数据收集与分析。学习本课程不只是需要观看视频，我们会留作业督促你通过观察和访谈进行数据收集，并对所收集的数据进行分析和解释。课程中我们会讨论到质性研究中最重要的概念，诸如质性研究的准则、高质量的实践、道德准则，并记录一些分析方法和混合方法的使用。我们希望同学们能够去除偏见，并对质性研究保持热情。
5.5 Grounded Theory
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定性研究方法
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從本節課中
Qualitative Analysis
In previous modules we discussed how you should observe a social situation or conduct a qualitative interview. Now we will focus on what to do with your data, by discussing qualitative analysis. In this module you will try to do a qualitative analysis by interpreting your observed data and try to code it.
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Gerben MoermanDr.
Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences
The most cited work in qualitative analysis definitely is The Discovery of
Grounded Theory.
Discovery of Grounded Theory was written by Glaser and Strauss in 1967.
And it has become really,
really popular throughout the qualitative analysis landscape.
Why is that?
Why is Grounded Theory so immensely popular?
Well, probably because it's often mis-cited, but
that's a bit of a false argument.
Why it's so popular is because of its influential key concepts.
Several key concepts in Grounding Theory,
several key elements in Grounding Theory were really revolutionary, new,
and triggered the sociological imagination of many researchers.
Second reason why it is so popular is because, it was one of the first books
in which the complete book was about a certain specific methodology.
And was highly detailed, so it would help you in giving rules,
how to go about in your research, and
to help you in taking small steps to your interpretation and still grounded to data.
And lastly, the last 20 years have become really popular due to software.
Software developers found out that Grounded Theory
was ideal to translate into software tools.
Key concepts from Grounded Theory, key rules in Grounded Theory,
were pretty easily transposed to software.
And therefore, new qualitative researches that,
the touch upon qualitative analysis started with
this software and then ended up with doing or reading about Grounded Theory.
So, therefore, Grounded Theory is extremely popular nowadays.
It was revolutionary in 1967.
It was very new.
It was innovative.
Why, why was this so revolutionary?
Well, in the 1960s, there was another view of science pretty dominant.
Especially in American sociology,
it was more about deduction, about grand theories that were applied.
Discussions were going on about how to do research top down or
bottom up, and there were discussions going on about theoretical
imagination versus rigorous methodologies.
But Grounded Theory was revolutionary because it didn't say,
we are going to do theory, or we are going to do data analysis.
No, what they said was, we are going to link data analysis with theory.
And Grounded Theory was inductive, as opposed to much of the deductive work,
but wasn't naive inductivism.
Grounded Theory was also revolutionary because what they said was,
data analysis takes place during data collection.
And obviously, ethnographers did that for ages.
But in sociology, this was pretty new.
And many people would first get a data and then start analyzing, or start writing.
It was also revolutionary because they were very much against a hypothetical,
deductive view of science that was pretty popular at that time.
And they said, well, what these hypothesis checkers are doing is
they're not testing their hypothesis, but they're just checking their theory, so
they're not falsifying, they're verifying their theory.
And if they can't verify their theory, they say the hypothesis is wrong,
and but the theory is still okay.
And what they do is, they create new hypothesis that become really small.
And less linked to the live world of people.
Under study, so it becomes less relevant, they said.
And they were also revolutionary because they said, we need qualitative analysis,
not for description.
We need qualitative analysis because of the deficit
of this hypothetical deductive view.
We need qualitative analysis in order to create theories,
we need to build theories.
So pretty revolutionary.
And what are the key elements then in this Grounded Theory?
What are these influential key concepts?
Well, the most important concept in Grounded Theory is constant comparison.
It was so important that at first,
they even planned to call the book The Constant Comparative Method.
Because this is central.
It's not about coding, it's not about the revolutionary bit.
This is revolutionary, the constant comparison.
What is this constant comparison?
Well, I will show you.
For an instance, you interviewed this first hippie.
You remember, it's 1967, the Summer of Love?
You interview him about his views on the world, about love and peace.
And then you go about and interview the second person.
And what you do is, you compare them.
You compare what this person says to what this person says.
And then you compare it to this person.
And when you do comparison, you can compare interview one with interview two.
And in order to do so, you have to reach a higher level.
Why? Because always when you compare,
especially when you compare three, four, five different interviews.
You have to reach a higher level in order to do this comparison.
You need a more abstract level.
So, you reach concepts.
So when comparing this interview with this interview, with this interview,
with this interview, at a certain point of time,
you start to talk about similarities and differences.
And these are on a more abstract level.
So, at first, you're comparing data with data.
And then later on, you start comparing these concepts with new data.
And then new data again.
And new data again.
And new data again, and again.
So, what you do is compare data with data, data with concepts, concepts with data,
and then, you start to compare concepts with concepts.
So, these are little steps you take.
Constantly, you're comparing data, data, data concepts, concepts, concept.
And that's revolutionary.
Second key element of Grounded Theory is,
its strong focus on the research process, as a process.
How? Well,
first, they use the concept of Blumer about sensitizing concepts.
Every concept is temporary, and they're provisional,
they give some guidance, but that's it.
You shouldn't pin them down.
They're not written in stone.
Concepts are temporary, and you develop them throughout your research.
So it's a processual approach.
The second bit is, that you're testing for deviant cases.
Like an analytic induction, you are on the look out for deviant cases.
In your constant comparison,
you try to find these deviant cases, because they help you.
Similarities help you, definitely.
But contradictions help you probably much more.
A third aspect of this focus on process is the writing of memos.
Way more important than coding is the writing of memos in Grounded Theory,
in order to build your theory.
Create your transparency, your famous audit trail, and reflect.
The third key element of Grounded Theory, and
the third revolutionary aspect of Grounded Theory is that, sampling in
Grounded Theory is completely different from sampling in survey research.
In survey research, you take a small sample
with which you're trying to say something about the population.
In qualitative analysis, that's often ridiculous.
What you want to do is to take a small sample and say something about theory.
So, what you try to do is not representation, but saturation.
You try to have theoretical saturation.
And theoretical saturation, you reach when your theory is so
sophisticated that every new data point, every new interview does not lead
to more refinement of your concepts or your categories that you have created.
The fourth key element of Grounded Theory is, as I said before,
the creation of a theory rather than just describing Glaser and
Strauss, we need theories.
Theories that are connected, grounded in the data.
So what steps do we need to take, then, when doing Grounded Theory?
Well, as Glaser later said, all is data.
So when you gather your material, you can gather everything.
You can use interviews, you can use observation, you can use advertisements.
You can use anything that is relevant for you.
So all is data.
And then, when you do this constant comparison,
you compare data with data, and concepts will arise.
And not just a single concept, but many concepts.
And from these concepts, new categories arise,
and these categories, they do not arise automatically.
Now, they arise because you compare a concept with a concept.
And you say, well, maybe they fit in.
Maybe this is a sub form of this category.
So you try to organize all these different concepts into categories.
Many people would call these codes.
And then, you try to link those categories to certain properties, probably some
conditions or consequences, or any other properties of these categories.
And you try to link these categories to each other by relations,
or theses, or theorems, or whatever you want to call them.
But you try to relate these categories.
And in the end, you try to create a core category,
a single category that is the most important aspect.
All of your complete theory, and
you try to build the storyline around this core category.
So this looks pretty simple, but is it?
Well, obviously it's not.
In later forms of Grounded Theory, many discussions how to go about, and
how to do this, and how to take these steps have been held.
Now this core category is very important in thinking about different levels of
theories, different types of theories.
As you can see here, there are two dimensions of Grounded Theories.
First there's the dimension of substantive versus formal theory,
and there's the dimension of micro theory, up to macro theory.
Usually Grounded Theories start around here, and
more of micro level based and substantive.
But the goal of a Grounded Theory in the long run,
is to get to more formal level theories.
What does it mean.
Well, it means that, here, you describe a bit more.
You get to a theoretical level, but
your theory is applicable to a certain substantive field.
Whereas, if you develop your theory more, and more,
and more, probably, or that's at least what you strive for,
your theory will be applicable to more different substantive fields.
And then become more formal.
And it might become more macro, but it doesn't need to be.
So they are different Grounded Theories.
And in another lecture, I will show that there are different forms of
Grounded Theory, based on different authors.
