Grounded Theory and Disability Studies: An Investigation Into Leg ...

seen as analogous to the casting of a play, with the coding of their data as the creative process that is involved in the story and plot developments. This coding process is described further in the following text and represented in figure 1.

1. Open coding. This is a form of pilot study where initial data are collected and works of literature are searched and compared simultaneously. This research identifies concepts and further participants in the study and leads to a form of theorisation and modelling of notional constructs. This phase of the fieldwork can be seen as analogous to choosing the characters and main events in the play.

2. Axial coding. After initial conceptualisation connects theories and original models together, a second phase of fieldwork is conducted in order to test the initial theoretical models and problems that are raised. In terms of writing the play, this can be seen as analogous to writing the plot and connecting relationships to the now mainly developed characters.

3. Selective coding. This is reentry into the field in order to find the stories behind the connections between participants in the research and their concepts in similar or equivalent contexts. This phase of the fieldwork can be seen as analogous to delivering a final draft of a play, with fully scripted story lines that put the ultimate plots and subplots together in this first cycle of a story and that can undergo a further edition later.

There have been a number of criticisms of grounded theory’s founding philosophies’ claims to be consecutively empirical, creative, and interpretative. British social scientists Bryman and Bell (2007) in particular highlighted that it was difficult to gain funding for grounded theory studies because the nature of the analysis life cycle meant that each project theoretically had no specific beginning or end, and thus overall conclusions in these studies were difficult to determine. This problem also made it seem that grounded theory was inappropriate for projects with specific aims, such as evaluations.