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The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research

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Authors: Barney G. Glaser, Anselm Strauss
Publisher: Aldine Transaction
Category: Book

List Price: ~~$28.95~~
Buy New: $26.05
You Save: $2.90 (10%)

New (19) Used (14) from $23.01

Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 271
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.9

ISBN: 0202302601
Dewey Decimal Number: 300
EAN: 9780202302607
ASIN: 0202302601

Publication Date: June 1, 1967
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
This volume is directed toward closing the gap between theory and empirical research and improving social scientists' capacities for generating theory that is relevant and useful to their research.

Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

Theory Development any1 can understand April 24, 2008
If you are a social science student doing research and would like to do something different (from theory verification) this is the book for you. Grounded Theory as explained by Glaser and Strauss is useable, even to the novice. Soon you too will be on your way to theory development!

4 out of 5 stars

Grounded Theory March 22, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

This is an excellent reference for those doing research that uses grounded theory to build theories.

5 out of 5 stars

Seminal Work in Grounded Theory October 26, 2005
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

This book is a must for anyone looking to write theory, or for researchers looking to do qualitative analysis.

4 out of 5 stars

Grounded Theory Rocks September 25, 2005
Glaser and Strauss's book is easy to read and offers a qualitative theory building strategy that is well structured. They provide a concise overview of the history of grounded theory and its uses. Moreover, they offer readers solid guidance on comparative qualitative studies and defense of the same in the world of research.

2 out of 5 stars

Experimental and theoretical investigations September 19, 2005
7 out of 22 found this review helpful

A. The term "theory" is used to mean many different things as can be seen in dictionaries. Even a simple guess of which the origin is ignored by the guesser and which has no proof can be called a theory. Consequently, there is a general distrust of theories even among scientists, and one often hears the slighting remark "it's only a theory." This attitude is most conspicuous in human sciences, such as psychology and sociology, for example. There was even a period during which theory construction was prohibited in those disciplines as pointed out by the authors in relation to sociology: "Those who still wished to generate theory had to brook the negative, sometimes punitive, attitudes of their colleagues or professors" (p. 10). So, the authors' aim appears to be to find a method of theory construction that will produce theories that are "grounded" in experimental data and therefore cannot be derogated as "only a theory." In reality, a theory has to be based on, or "grounded in," experimental data to be considered scientific. The real issue is how the grounding has to be done. We will see what the authors recommend and what physicists did an still do.br /br /The authors do not explain what they mean by "theory," and instead, they say that the kind of theory constructed with the method advocated by them "provides us with relevant predictions, explanations, interpretations, and applications" (p. 1). What they overlook is that empirical knowledge too does the same things. Thus, the authors appear not to see the difference between empirical knowledge and scientific theories, and between experimental and theoretical methods of scientific investigation. This insufficiency is apparent even in the title of their book: "The discovery of grounded theory." The laws of nature can be experimentally discovered, but a theory is not something that exists in nature and can be experimentally discovered. A theory is constructed using the appropriate and unique method and is then tested, as explained below.br /br /The authors' insufficiency in differentiating between experimental and theoretical investigations is reflected also in the second part of their book's title: "strategies for qualitative research." The term "research" indicates experimental investigation more often than theory construction, as in the nomenclature of The American Psychological Association, for example. So, the authors seem to say in the title of their book that reliable theories can be discovered by using adequate research strategies, which they will explain. Their text supports this view.br /br /"We argue in our book for grounding theory in social research itself - for generating it from the data" (p. viii). "We believe that the discovery of theory from data - which we call grounded theory - is a major task confronting sociology today" (p. 1). "The basic theme in our book is the discovery of theory from data systematically obtained from social research" (p. 2). The issues involved in generating grounded theory from the data are listed as follows: "sampling, coding, reliability, validity, indicators, frequency distributions, conceptual formulation, construction of hypotheses, and presentation of evidence" (p. viii). The key issues are "construction of hypotheses" and "presentation of evidence." br /br /B. The construction of hypotheses is explained thus: "The comparison of differences and similarities among groups not only generates categories, but also rather speedily generates generalized relations between them. It must be emphasized that these hypotheses..." (p. 39). So, "generalized relations" constitute hypotheses and are derived from the data. The authors also talk about "many levels of generality," "working" or "ordinary" hypotheses, "theoretical" hypotheses, and their integration (p. 40), but they do not clarify what they precisely mean.br / br /Physicists are experts in theory construction but do not write about its method, because it looks most natural to them, for the reason mentioned below. It is only said that a theory is constructed by integrating at least one hypothesis with known facts. At the end of his book Principia, Newton explained very briefly the beginning of the process of theory construction and illustrated the rest of it by constructing his theory of mechanics. Judging from what Newton and other great theoreticians of physics said and/or did, hypotheses are framed in physics as explained by the authors (p. 39), but a hypothesis leads to theory construction only when it is generalized to cover phenomena of which the data do not allow the deduction of that hypothesis, contrary to the author's belief. For example, Newton assumed that, in accordance with his third law of motion, the Earth was attracting the Sun with the same force with which the Sun was attracting the Earth, even though this cannot be deduced directly from empirical data without using Newton's theory, i.e., it cannot be proved through direct measurement. A theory is made up of some basic statements, or laws, which contain at least one hypothesis that cannot be deduced from the analysis of every phenomenon to which it applies; when it is used to study a particular phenomenon, these laws are integrated with knowledge about that phenomenon. "Integration" means in this context deducing common consequences from the laws and the particulars of the phenomenon that is studied theoretically. All this means that the authors' explanation of the generation of hypotheses is valid only concerning a hypothesis that turns to empirical knowledge by being deduced from the data related to every phenomenon to which the hypothesis is supposed to apply and which is used to test it. Thus, the authors' conception of the generation of hypotheses is not valid in theory construction. br /br /C. In relation to the "presentation of evidence," the authors require "an excessive piling of evidence to establish a proof" (p. 40). What they mean by this becomes clear when they explain the verification of some hypotheses, or hypothetical theories, on pages 119-131 and elsewhere. In each one of their examples, the verification is done by showing that the hypothesis, or the theory, is seen to be valid about a particular phenomenon, meaning that it can be deduced from the data related to that phenomenon. What the authors overlook is that when a hypothesis, or theory, can be deduced from the data related to every phenomenon to which it applies, it stops being a hypothesis or a theory and becomes empirical knowledge, as mentioned. For example, when ice is heated, it turns to water. This causal relation can be adopted as a hypothesis when it is observed for the first time; but after it is observed each time ice is heated, it becomes empirical knowledge. In opposition to this, a scientific theory contains at least one hypothesis that cannot be deduced from the data related to every phenomenon to which it is supposed to apply, as mentioned above. For example, the equations of the electromagnetic theory as they existed before Maxwell were not considered a theory but a group of empirical knowledge. They became "the electromagnetic theory" after Maxwell added to one of them the hypothetical term related to displacement currents which are not detected in any way even today. Because a theory contains at least one hypothesis that cannot be deduced from the data related to every phenomenon to which it is assumed to apply, it cannot be deduced from such data by definition. A theoretical hypothesis, or a theory, is tested not by deducing it from the data but by deducing some of its consequences from the data, which also means that the data support the consequences of the hypothesis or theory. Some scientists, notably psychologists, believe that untested hypotheses have no scientific value. The truth is that it is precisely non-testable hypotheses that make theories possible. Such hypotheses become tested together with the theory to which they belong - through their consequences that are supported by empirical data, which also means that those consequences can be deduced also from the data.br /br /D. So, what the authors call "grounded theory" is in reality empirical knowledge, both because of the generation of its hypotheses and its verification. They ignore what a theory is and how it is constructed and tested. Worse than that, because they present the acquisition of empirical knowledge as theory construction, they close the door to real theory construction although they acknowledge the lack of, and the need for, theories in social sciences. However, the authors cannot be blamed for this mistake, because the process by which the grand theories of physics have been constructed, and are still constructed, is not explained in detail anywhere in the literature. This is a shameful blind spot of some disciplines of science and prevents progress in them. In my books, I have explained the method of theory construction in detail on the basis of what the great theoreticians of physics have said and done, profiting also from the views of Bertrand Russell, and I presented many examples of theories constructed using this method, including a psychological theory of automatic responses such as the symptoms of non-organic mental disorders, dreams, cerebral lateralization as a structural response, etc.br /br /In reality, the method of theory construction is built into the brain/mind by evolution and is used by everyone automatically in daily life because of its survival value. Physicists have been the first scientists to use that method consciously, beginning with Newton.br / br /E. So, the book of Glaser and Strauss explains not how scientific (reliable and respectable) theories are constructed but how fruitful research (experimental investigation) can be conducted. It may deserve five stars concerning the "strategies for qualitative research" and also as an illustration of the general ignorance reigning in social sciences about what a scientific theory is, how it is constructed, and how it is tested; but as a book about the construction of scientific theories, it deserves five black holes. br /br /

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