(e.g., her constant laughter during the interview when she was nervous) and the participant’s (possibly culturally, possibly idiosyncratic) desire to impress her advisor by creating what her advisor believed to be an “over-zealous” research design (Johanson, 2001).
VI. Reaching a Saturation Point in the Data Collection Process
A chief advantage of the recursive nature of grounded theory research is that it enables the researcher to identify process in the phenomenon being investigated. By marking carefully his or her reactions to the data in either a research log or through reflective memos12, the researcher can determine when to stop collecting data and when to begin the final write-up of the research report. Once the researcher reaches this saturation point in the data, he or she would be advised to compile all memos written up to that point and expose them to the same codification procedures as listed above. If he or she has been diligent in recording his or her reactions to the data in the research log or memos, all there remains to be done is to weed out the “dead-ends” and write up the findings in a final research report. Like all aspects of qualitative research, however, this is easier said than done.
VII. Conclusion
This paper serves as a brief, user-friendly explanation of what it
12 In all, the author composed more than 300 memos, ranging from a couple of sentences to several
means to conduct grounded theory, a type of qualitative research, in the social sciences. Drawing on his own research on the role of interactions in the academic writing of five Taiwanese doctoral students pursuing advanced degrees at an American university, the author explains the basic tenets of qualitative research and demonstrates how to implement the necessary coding processes on samples of actual data. It is the author’s hope that this article, despite its myriad limitations, inspires Taiwanese researchers in the social sciences and beyond to consider the benefits of conducting this type of naturalistic inquiry.
Appendices
Appendix A: Terms Frequently Used in Conducting Qualitative Research
Set out below is a list of some terms commonly used in the qualitative research literature. While this list is far from exhaustive, it should give the consumer and producer of qualitative research enough information to familiarize him/herself with this type of research inquiry.
●Case: “a particular instance of a phenomenon of interest to the researcher” (Gall et al., 1996, p. 754).
●Case study research: “The in-depth study of instances of a phenomenon in its natural context and from the perspective of the participants involved in the phenomenon” (Gall et al., 1996, p. 754).
(See Yin [1994] and Stake [1994, 1994] to read further about case studies.)
●Chain of evidence: “the validation of a study’s findings by
demonstrating clear, meaningful links among the study’s research questions, the raw data, the data analysis, and the findings” (Gall et al., 1996, p. 754).
●Coding: “The analytic processes through which data are fractured, conceptualized, and integrated to form theory” (Strauss & Corbin, 1998, p. 3).
●Constant comparison: “In the grounded theory approach, a process for analyzing qualitative data to identify categories, to create sharp distinctions between categories, and to decide which categories are theoretically significant” (Gall et al., 1996, p. 756).
●Construct validity: “the extent to which a measure used in a case study correctly operationalizes the concepts being studied” (Gall et al., 1996, p. 571).
●Convenience sample: “A group of cases that are selected simply because they are available and easy to access” (Gall et al., 1996, p.
756).
●Cross case analysis: the process through which the analyst compares the findings of each case (in a collective case study) with the other cases
●Emic perspective: “The research participants’ perceptions and understanding of their social reality” (Gall et al., 1996, p. 758).
●Etic perspective: “the researcher’s conceptual and theoretical understanding of the research participants’ social reality” (Gall et al., 1996, p. 759)
●External validity: the extent to which the relationships drawn between elements of the phenomenon being investigated can be
generalized to other settings
●Generalizability: the extent to which the findings of a study can be generalized to similar such cases
●Grounded theory: “An approach to theory development that involves deriving constructs and laws directly from the immediate data that the researcher has collected rather than drawing on an existing theory” (Gall et al., 1996, p. 760).
●Informed consent: “The ethical and legal requirement that a researcher tell all potential research participants about the study’s procedures, the information that they will be asked to disclose to the researcher, and the intended uses of that information” (Gall et al., 1996, p. 761).
●Intense-case sample: “A group of cases that manifest the phenomenon of interest to a considerable degree, but not to an extreme degree” (Gall et al., 1996, p. 761).
●Internal validity: “the extent to which the researcher has demonstrated a causal relationship between X and Y by showing that other plausible factors could not have caused Y” (Gall et al., 1996, p.
571).
●Interpretive validity: “The extent to which the knowledge claims (i.e., interpretations) resulting from a qualitative study satisfy four criteria: they have useful consequences’ they take context into account; they acknowledge the researcher’s role in the study; and they are accepted as authentic by readers” (Gall et al., 1996, p. 761).
●In vivo concept: a term that exists in the data and that the investigator chooses to use as its own category to represent the
phenomenon under investigation (Strauss & Corbin, 1998)
●Matrix: “In a qualitative research report, a type of variable that has defined rows and columns for reporting the results of data analyses and other information” (Gall et al., 1996, p. 763).
●Member check: a process in which the researcher confirms the accuracy of his or her impression of the results of the study with the participants
●Microanalysis: “the detailed line-by-line analysis necessary at the beginning of a study to generate initial categories (with their properties and dimensions) and to suggest relationships among categories, a combination of open and axial coding” (Strauss &
Corbin, 1998, p. 57).
●Observer effect: “Any action or bias of an observer that weakens the validity or reliability of the data that the observer collects” (Gall et al., 1996, p. 764).
●Participant-observer role: “the observer’s assumption of a meaningful identity within the group being observed, but that does not involve engaging in activities that are at the core of the group’s identity” (Gall et al., 1996, p. 765).”
●Participant observation: when the researcher becomes part of or an actual participant in the situation being observed.
●Peer debriefer: a person who serves as a sounding board for the researcher during the data-collection and analysis procedures for a study.
●Postmodernism: “A broad social and philosophical movement that questions the rationality of human action, the use of positivist
epistemology, and any human endeavor (e.g., science) that claims a privileged position with respect to the search for truth or that claims progress in its search for truth” (Gall et al., 1996, p. 767).
●Qualitative research: “Inquiry that is grounded in the assumption that individuals construct social reality in the form of meanings and interpretations, and that these constructions tend to be transitory and situational. The dominant methodology is to discover these meanings and interpretations by studying cases intensively in natural settings and by subjecting the resulting data to analytic induction” (Gall et al., 1996, p. 767).
●Reflexivity: “the researcher’s act of focusing on himself of herself as a constructor and interpreter of the social reality being studied (Gall et al., 1996, p. 768).
●Reliability: “the extent to which other researchers would arrive at similar results if they studied the same case using exactly the same procedures as the first researcher” (Gall et al., 1996, p. 769).
●Snowball sample (chain sample): “A group of cases that are selected by asking one person to recommend someone suitable as a case of the phenomenon of interest, who then recommends another person who is a suitable case or who knows of potential cases; the process continues until the desired sample size is achieved” (Gall et al., 1996, p. 770).
●Structured interview: “A type of interview in which the interviewer asks a series of closed-form questions that either have yes-no answers or can be answered by selecting from among a set of short-answer choices (Gall et al., 1996, p. 771).
●Subjectivity audit: (see Strauss & Corbin [1998] for more information)
●Tacit knowledge: “Implicit meanings that the individuals being studied either cannot find the words to express or that they take so much for granted that they do not explicate them either in everyday discourse or in research interviews” (Gall et al., 1996, p. 772).
●Theme: “an inference that a feature of a case is salient and characteristic of the case” (Gall et al., 1996, p. 772).
●Theoretical saturation: “In the grounded theory approach, the point in data collection when the researcher concludes that no new data are emerging to call into question established coding categories, no additional categories are necessary to account for the phenomena of interest, and the relationships between categories are well established” (Gall et al., 1996, p. 773). [See Strauss & Corbin, 1998, p. 143 for more information.]
●Thick description: “a richly detailed report that re-creates a situation and as much of its context as possible, along with the meanings and intentions inherent in that situation” (Gall et al., 1996, p. 773).
●Triangulation: “The use of multiple data-collection methods, data sources, analysts, or theories as corroborative evidence or the validity of qualitative research findings” (Gall et al., 1996, p. 773).
Appendix B: Some Useful References To Consult Regarding Qualitative Research
Adler, P. A., & Adler, P. (1994). Observational techniques. In N. K. Denzin
& Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Best, J., & Kahn, J. (1998). Research in education (8th ed.). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Bogdan, R., & Biklen, S. (1998). Qualitative research in education: An introductory to theory and methods (3rd ed.). Needham Heights, MA:
Allyn & Bacon.
Denzin, N. K. (1978). The research act. (2nd ed.). New York:
McGraw-Hill.
Denzin, N. K. (1989). The research act: A theoretical introduction to sociological methods. (3rd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. (Eds.) (1998). Strategies of qualitative inquiry. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. (Eds.) (1998). The landscape of qualitative research: Theories and issues. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Fontana, A., & Frey, J. H. (1994). Interviewing: The art of science. In N. K.
Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Gall, M., Borg, W., & Gall, J. (1996). Educational research: An introduction (6th ed.). White Plains, NY: Longman Publishers.
Gay, L.R. (1996) Educational research: Competencies for analysis and application (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Hodder, I. (1994). The interpretation of documents and material culture. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Huberman, A. M., & Miles, M. B. (1994). Data management and analysis methods. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1995). Establishing trustworthiness. In Y. S.
Lincoln & E. G. Guba (Eds.), Naturalistic inquiry (pp. 289-331).
Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Patton, M. Q. (1990). Qualitative evaluation and research methods (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Spradley, J. (1979). The ethnographic interview. New York: Holt, Rinehart
& Winston.
Stake, R. E. (1994). Case studies. In Y. S. Lincoln & E. G. Guba (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
Stake, R. E. (1995). The art of case study research. Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage Publications.
Sternglass, M., & Pugh, S. (1986). Retrospective accounts of language and learning processes. Written Communication, 3, 297-323.
Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory processes and techniques. Newbury Park, CA: Sage
Publications.
Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1998). Grounded theory methodology: An overview. In N. Denzin and Y. Lincoln (Eds.) Strategies of qualitative inquiry (pp. 158-183). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Yin, R. K. (1994). Case study research: Design and methods (2nd ed.).
Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
Works Cited
Bogdan, R., & Biklen, S. (1998). Qualitative research in education: An introductory to theory and methods (3rd ed.). Needham Heights, MA:
Allyn & Bacon.
Gall, M., Borg, W., & Gall, J. (1996). Educational research: An introduction (6th ed.). White Plains, NY: Longman Publishers.
Johanson, R. (2001). The role of interactions in the academic writing of Taiwanese doctoral students in a U.S. graduate school of education.
Doctoral Dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin, May 2001.
Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1998). Grounded theory methodology: An overview. In N. Denzin and Y. Lincoln (Eds.) Strategies of qualitative inquiry (pp. 158-183). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.