| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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The founding of Grounded Theory
Grounded theory is based on the systematic generating of theory from data, that itself is systematically obtained from social research. Thus the grounded theory method offers a rigorous, orderly guide to theory development that at each stage is closely integrated with a methodology of social research. Generating theory and doing social research are two parts of the same process. How the analyst enters the field to collect the data, his method of collection and codification of the data, his integrating of the categories, generating memos and constructing theory—the full continuum of both the process of generating theory and of social research—are all guided and integrated by the emerging theory. (Glaser, 1978, p. 2)
The grounded theory model was initially designed by the American medical sociologists Glaser and Strauss as an inductive methodology; it followed a study of processes of dying in a California hospital during the early 1960s (Glaser & Strauss, 1965) and was published as The Discovery of Grounded Theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). The authors came about this methodology because they found that no meaningful model of data gathering for social theory on this topic existed, a problem that was common to many similar esoteric investigations. To counter this problem, and rather than attempting to employ an experimental methodology that compared data to preconstructed theories, these authors designed a structured process of induction for developing and testing data and theories simultaneously.
In his later work Doing Grounded Theory, Glaser (1998) discussed the immediate influences on grounded theory and the academic influences on his and Strauss’s strategies during their first study. He identified two schools of sociological thought, those at Columbia University and the University of Chicago, as their two main guides, with the theories from the universities of Paris IV (the Sorbonne), Michigan, Stanford, and Harvard playing more minor yet significant roles. In this later reflection,