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Abstract
This article portrays the conceptual journey of three professionals as they grapple with the epistemological, ontological and axiological underpinnings of grounded theory within the context of practice‐based research. Writing from the stance of ‘epistemorph,’ the authors use the concepts of ‘functionalist drift’ and ‘interpretive drift’ to depict the intellectual crosscurrents set in motion by their taken‐for‐granted assumptions about the nature of knowledge. An evolving set of questions reflects shifts in thinking that occur as these assumptions are surfaced and examined. From the ‘ground’ of this journey, the authors come to an interpretive reframing of key ‘logics’ of the grounded theory method including theoretical sensitivity, theoretical sampling, coding, constant comparative analysis and memoing.
Notes
* Correspondence to Maria Piantanida, PhD, University of Pittsburgh, 2506 Hollywood Drive, Pittsburgh, PA 15235, USA. Email: [email protected]
Interestingly, it is not just novices who undergo a resocialization process as they come to question a ‘received view of science.’ In a collection of essays edited by Heshusius and Ballard (Citation1996), noted researchers and evaluators (including Guba) recount their ‘morphing’ experiences as they moved from positivism to interpretivism.
In time, we came to understand that our concerns about ‘the privileging’ of scientific research arose more from our own insecurities than from actual monolithic views of research within our respective fields. As we became more immersed in the discourses relevant to our studies, we found other scholars who shared our interest in interpretive modes of inquiry.
Duke and Beck (Citation1999) make a similar point that dissertation authors, regardless of method, consider carefully the philosophical and paradigmatic aspects that underpin their research.
Strauss and Corbin (Citation1998) in the Basics of qualitative research make a distinction between methodology as ‘a way of thinking about and studying social reality’ and method as ‘a set of procedures and techniques for gathering and analyzing data’ (p. 3). Their concept of methodology is akin to Smith and Heshusius’s concept of method as logic of justification and our concept of research genre. Because ‘methodology’ literally means the study of method, we find it a less appropriate descriptor for ways of thinking about procedures in a particular study.
Glaser and Strauss’s original formulation of grounded theory itself offers an excellent example of an interpretive representation of a phenomenon—i.e. a particular mode of theorizing. Having themselves engaged in this particular theorizing process, Glaser and Strauss faced the dilemma of explaining their process to others. First they named it, using what is, in essence, a core concept—grounded theory—to characterize their inductive mode of theorizing that they grounded in field‐based, qualitative data. Next, they had to represent what is essentially an invisible process of thinking. Coding and constant comparative analysis are key concepts for portraying this internal process and elaborating on the core concept. Everything else (e.g. types and levels of coding, theoretical sampling, saturation, memoing, frameworks for analysis), it seems to us, is concepts, categories and properties that flesh out their substantive theory of theorizing. Viewed in this way, the essence of the theorizing process lies not in faithful adherence to specific techniques/procedures but in the quality of thinking the researcher brings to bear, a property of grounded theory that Glaser and Strauss characterize as theoretical sensitivity/wisdom. Given the debates in the literature of grounded theory, we wonder, at times, if Glaser and Strauss themselves might be caught in functionalist and interpretive drift.
Heuristics are conceptual devices (e.g. principles, guidelines, typologies, models, hypotheses) of complex phenomena. As such, heuristics serve to further discourse and inquiry by offering coherent portrayals of phenomena. Heuristics are not claimed as correspondingly verifiable accounts that correspond directly to an external, objective reality.
For a more extensive discussion of issues surrounding the concept of ‘text’ in interpretive research see Ricoeur (Citation1991), Tierney and Lincoln (Citation1997) and Bazerman and Paradis (Citation1991).
Those who are inclined to rely on computer‐based data analysis programs can be especially vulnerable to such drift. While such programs can be extremely helpful in managing, sorting and retrieving large amounts of data, they are not useful for generating interpretations. For more thorough discussions about the issues related to computer‐based data analysis, see Coffey et al. (Citation1996); Fielding and Lee (Citation1991); Weitzman (Citation2000); and Weitzman and Miles (Citation1995).
