Writing my Grounded Theory

 

Writing my Grounded Theory

Like in the other stages of this course, I began this stage by looking at the assigned reading. Unlike the detailed reading I did at the beginning of the other stages, however, I found it easier to use the materials in this section as references works; looking things up as needed and reading them as I went along.

I began by reading Stebbins (2001) Chapter 4, which is quite general, but with lots of good suggestions that motivated me to begin the writing process. I also looked at Charmaz (2014) Chapter 11, which I found overwhelming in the amount of detail it provided. While reading it, I highlighted some points I considered salient while writing my own paper. I also read Woods (2006) Chapter 4, which intrigued me with the many creative ways that there are to present the research. Regardless, I decided to follow a more traditional format for writing my research paper since I am familiar with that form and believe it would do an excellent job of communicating my research and conclusions.

I then wrote a simple outline, roughly following Wood’s (2006) suggestions in Chapter 3. I didn’t consider this outline written in stone, and accepted that it may change as I moved through the material. My outline included the following components: abstract; introduction; literature review; materials and methods; summary of findings; discussion; conclusion; references and appendix. Some of these major headings included subheadings that I added to or removed as I progressed. Reflecting on this outline when I was finished the paper, I concluded that it had worked quite well for me, and while the iterative process of writing the research resulted in many rewritings, particularly of the discussion section, the outline itself remained relatively static, and provided a very good backbone for the exploration and analysis of the research data.

While I followed a traditional and familiar format, I did not write the components in order. Unlike traditional research where the literature review guides the development of the research questions and informs the conclusions, in grounded theory research, the researcher collects data and then uses it to reflect on the conclusions of related research (Charmaz, 2014). With this in mind, it may seem better to avoid looking at previous literature at all before doing a close examination of the current data. In fact, since the literature review is not as important for the development of the research question, a grounded research paper may not have a literature review at all. Instead, reflections may appear within other chapters, or the literature review might appear later in the report. I decided a cursory examination of some of the previous work in the interest area was important to prevent duplication of previous studies, but I avoided writing the literature review until later in the writing process to avoid other work from influencing my own explorations and conclusions. I still included one near the beginning of the paper since it provides rationale for the research and a good context for understanding the material in later sections. I kept this literature review short, and used it to form a context for my findings by focusing on how the literature supported or deviated from them.

I began the writing process while I was still coding the data. I started by adding notes to the categories of my outline, and then preparing rough outlines of each section. Since I had been writing memos to record thoughts and add details during the coding process, I simply moved many of them into the appropriate part of the outline. I also added more notes that had come up in the course readings and other thoughts I deemed potentially useful to communicate the themes and analysis as clearly as possible.

 I decided to write what I considered the most straightforward parts of the paper first. I began with the introduction, in which I defined FASD, identifying characteristics of the disorder, prevalence, and its impact on individuals with the disorder, their families and larger society. I explained that because of the unique nature of FASD as a preventable disability, many people have complex feelings in relations to their birthmothers. I then introduced the research question and explained the purpose of this study. This introduction ended up providing me with an example of how our unconscious biases can impact our research, as after having moved on from the introduction to working on other sections, I suddenly realized that I had spent some time in the introduction talking about the stigma associated with FASD, in anticipation of my later results. I humbly moved that paragraph to the discussion section.

Next, I wrote the section on materials and methods. While most of this was a simple report summarizing my data sources and the iterative process of coding, I also included a section about my own experience with FASD, and my epistemological and ontological perspectives and how they align with grounded theory and may influence my results. The most difficult part of this section of the paper was keeping it short, as I felt that while it was important to include, the analysis in the summary of findings and discussion sections should make up the bulk of the paper.

Since I considered the summary of findings and the discussion to be so important, I scheduled a significant amount of time to work on those sections. That was prudent because even though I had done a lot of categorizing and written a lot of memos and notes while coding and reading the course materials, I wasn’t prepared for how much the ideas I planned to write about would change and grow while I wrote about them. For example, during the first coding, I discovered that the longer a person had known they had FASD, the more they seemed to have positive feelings about their birthmother. At first, I wondered if this had to do with their age and ability to think abstractly about the complexities of their experiences, but this somehow didn’t seem right. During the time I was writing the discussion, I suddenly realized it might have more to do with having time to grieve. Thinking about the grief process, I realized this seemed to fit with what I was reading in the testimonials. Certainly, if I was doing interviews, I would have asked more questions and explored this in more detail.

At this point in the writing, I was reminded of what Stebbins (2001) said, that to be an effective exploratory researcher, one must adopt an analytical lifestyle; always asking questions and thinking about the research, even when one is not actively collecting data, coding, formally analyzing or writing about the subject matter. At this point I was contemplating the themes and evidence at all times of day of the day or night and although I found the topic interesting, it also raised some uncomfortable emotions for me as I considered my own children’s struggles with their feelings about their birthmother. I continued to write memos about these feelings and their impact on my conclusions well after the coding was finished and I was writing up the results. This reflexivity is important not only for my own understanding of myself and my children’s feelings, but because as Charmaz (2014) explains, “without engaging in reflexivity, researchers may elevate their own tacit assumptions and interpretations to ‘objective’ status” (pg.238).  

The goal of grounded research is to reach a point of saturation. Unfortunately this was not really possible with a study of this scope. It still had to end somewhere, however. As Dr. Wilde (2022, May 15) explained to me, grounded theory isn’t about knowing everything, but rather, seeks to make social reality a little less messy. It is important that I remember that this research is an event in a longer stream of inquiry and does not stand alone. I critically assessed what I had included by considering the list of questions supplied by Charmaz (2014, p. 290) and filled in some areas I felt I had neglected. I then proofread the document carefully and edited it, following the guidelines in Woods (2006) Chapter 6. During this editing phase, I continued to rearrange sections to improve flow, and add or remove examples or information as needed. I had difficulty sticking to Stebbins (2001) suggestion to only include excerpts from data about every second page. I needed to remember that these passages didn’t “prove or validate” generalizations, but only illustrated them (p. 45).

Overall, the process of completing my first grounded theory research was both challenging and extremely rewarding. I really enjoyed this course, thought it was organized well, the workload was reasonable for a course at this level, the readings were applicable, and Dr. Wilde was responsive and helpful. I learned a lot and am eager to use this method in the future for my final MA-IS project.

References

Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing Grounded Theory. Los Angeles: Sage.

Stebbins, R. (2001). Exploratory Research in the Social Sciences. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Woods, P. (2006). Successful Writing for Qualitative Researchers New York: Routledge.