Adapt or adopt: developing and transgressing the methodological boundaries of grounded theory
Bibliographic record
Abstract
AIMS: While acknowledging that there is an existing debate regarding the nature of grounded theory, the aim of this paper is to highlight a number of common and key areas/issues where adaptation/adoption of Glaserian grounded theory in nursing-related studies often occurs. These issues are: the differences between conceptual description and conceptual theory; beginning the study with a 'general wonderment' or a more defined research question; establishing the credibility of the theory; identifying a basic psycho-social process and emerging vs. forcing. BACKGROUND: Since the development and introduction of grounded theory in 1967, the number of studies, in a wide range of disciplines including nursing, that purport to be using a grounded theory method has grown enormously. While Glaser and Strauss acknowledged then that it was entirely appropriate for the methodology to evolve and develop, some of the studies that claim to be based on grounded theory methodology share little methodological similarity, and at times, bear only a passing resemblance to Glaserian grounded theory. DISCUSSION: Some methodological transgressions in papers that purport to be grounded theory studies are such that it would be inaccurate to term the resulting method grounded theory at all. Instead such studies are more accurately thought of as a form of qualitative data analysis. Such transgressions include a study that has no evidence of conceptualization; one that does not identify a basic psycho-social process; and one that moves from 'emerging' to 'forcing'. Other methodological adaptations of grounded theory, such as beginning the study with more than a general wonderment and broadening the approach to establishing the credibility of the theory, are more in keeping with Glaser and Strauss' position on the evolution of the method. In such cases, it is necessary to distinguish such methods from 'pure' Glaserian grounded theory, and it would be prudent and methodologically accurate to describe the resulting method as 'modified' grounded theory.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.448 | 0.400 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.009 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.073 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.029 | 0.030 |
| Open science | 0.008 | 0.029 |
| Research integrity | 0.011 | 0.027 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; the direct Gemma label and the distilled Codex classifier agree on what is shown here.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".