Applying a contemporary grounded theory methodology

Abdureim Abdurashytov ELT 506

20123590 26.11.2012

1) The title of the article is “Applying a contemporary grounded theory methodology”. The author is Licqurish S, and Seibold C. They present useful information on the application of a research project exploring the experiences of students studying for midwifery degrees in achieving competency.

The author analyzes the experiences of students studying for a degree in midwifery. They used the constant comparative method together with “theoretical sampling” which is a process in which the researcher engages in ongoing data analysis to identify emerging themes or leads in the data. More to the point they used situational analysis concurrently with coding to provide more in-depth analysis of interview and observational data.

The three maps offered by Clarke are “situational maps”, “social world/arenas maps”, and “positional maps”. The author produced situational maps in a creative process drawing on coded interview and observational data, and prior knowledge and research. They were used to identify the major human, non-human discursive and other elements in the student midwives situations, as well as the relationships among the identified elements. The social worlds/arenas maps identified the participants, non-human elements on the arenas of commitment and discourse in which the student midwives were engaged. Positional maps identified the major positions taken and not taken by the student midwives and others. Data for situational maps were drawn from interviews and observational data as well as texts and journal articles. Maps were initially hand drawn and later they were created using NVivo 7 and Ms Notebook programs.

The investigation brought to next three findings. These were “realization”, “adaptation”, and “assimilation”. Realization represents the students’ recognition that the clinical learning environment is highly medicalised and interventionist. Adaptation represents the students’ responses in the clinical learning environment as the developed strategies to adapt to the situation and “fit in”. Assimilation represents the way in which the students developed competency by integrating and applying the knowledge and skills they had learnt throughout their course.

It is greatly to the author’s credit that his article is comprehensive analysis of applying a contemporary grounded theory methodology. It must be noted that the author believes that the

process of creating situational maps allowed for a more in-depth analysis of clinical learning environment experienced by the student midwives being studied.

2) This article was written by Pamela Williamson, Christina R. Carnahan, and Jennifer A. Jacobs. Using a grounded theory approach, they try to understand what influences reading comprehension and how meaning is made from text among high-functioning individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). They investigate factors that contribute to reading comprehension, reading intervention for students with disabilities, cognitive style, and construction-integration model of text comprehension.

Using grounded theory, a qualitative method to produce theoretical knowledge, they addressed the following research questions: How do high-functioning individuals with ASD make meaning from text? What influences comprehension among these individuals? Given the unique cognitive profile of individuals on the spectrum, and given that reading comprehension is a cognitively intensive task, providing researchers with insights into how students on the spectrum interact with text may lead to more effective reading comprehension intervention.

As a method they employed a constructivist grounded theory approach. This was selected to explain comprehension influences and how individuals on the spectrum interact with and make meaning from text. Theory calls for systematically following analytical procedures including open coding, axil coding, and selective coding against the use of extant literature available in the topical area.

Participants for this study were recruited from a private school in a Midwestern state that provided services to students with ASD. The second author shows relationship with the school faculty, and the school had sufficient numbers of students with ASD from which participants could be drawn.

Findings structured in two sections. First, they address how high-functioning individuals make meaning from text. Their analyses revealed three reading comprehension profiles- text bound, strategic, and imaginative. In the next section, they address what influenced comprehension across reading comprehension profiles.

In my opinion, this article is well-substantiated with examples. This gives us reading comprehension profiles, which may lead to improve academic and life out-comes for these individuals.

3) The headline of the article is “The place of the literature review in grounded theory research”, which was written by Ciaran Dunne.

Current article seeks to offer some clarity on the topic and provide novice grounded theory researchers in particular with advice on how to approach the issue of the literature review in grounded theory. The main issue of this article is to define how students and researchers should approach and use the existing literature relevant to their research topic. Another aim is when literature review should be conducted, and how extensive it should be.

Two discrete approaches to engaging with existing empirical research and existing theoretical concepts were ultimately adopted. “Geography of a subject” was central to the formulation and justification of the research questions which previously had been largely overlooked. During his research ideas and tentative hypotheses began to emerge. He drew on numerous theories with which he had been previously unfamiliar.

The central concern of this article has been to discuss in detail the role of extant literature in grounded theory research.

Author draws on his own experience of using grounded theory for his PhD research to show how extant literature may be used and discusses how the existing literature may impact upon the overall written presentation of a grounded theory study. It deserve to be mentioned that the article is an excellent, lucid and well-motivated presentation of the place of the literature review in grounded theory research.

4) The article is entitled “Using QSR-NVivo to facilitate the development of a grounded theory project: an account of a worked example.

The author draws our attention on how the software package QSR-NVivo can be used to facilitate a grounded theory approach. Article argues that qualitative data analysis software can be used to encourage good quality grounded theory research by facilitating many key processes and characteristics associated with this approach. More to the point, it identifies a number of grounded theory characteristics, common to all revisions of the methodology. Then it describes the development of a recent study, which examined how people successfully maintain long-term physical activity behavior change.

The aim of this is to show how different functions of QSR-NVivo may be used in conjunction with the key grounded theory characteristics. If we used this kind of tool appropriately, it can facilitate many aspects of the grounded theory process from the design and early sampling procedures, through to the analysis of data, theoretical development and presentation of findings.

They created a memo structure to manage the grounded theory process. Managing the iterative process of grounded theory presents researchers with a significant organizational challenge. One analytical strategy that helps to facilitate this is keeping a research diary to detail the ongoing theoretical development, and all sampling and analytical decisions made.

The data obtained for this study were all interview transcripts. However, NVivo can accommodate a number of additional types of data (e.g. videos, digital photos, PDF ect). However, when transcripts were imported into NVivo project, the attribute function was used to record descriptive information pertaining to each interview (e.g. age, sex ect.)

After closer inspection of the data, they observed that a number of health and competence-related perceptions represented potential determinants of willing participation. However, coding stripes on the willing participation code also demonstrated that large sections of the data stored at that code were not coded to either health or competence-related perception.

Here we can notice that article supports QSR-NVivo, and the author believe that it can be used to facilitate many aspects of a grounded theory approach. The author gives well-structured analyses with excellent presentation of what QSR-NVivo is and shows the best way of its using.