Is content analysis appropriate for grounded theory study?

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Grounded theory is an emergent research methodology in the field of sociology, by which theories “emerge” organically from the researcher’s observations of a given research situation. That is, the collected data drives the formulation of the codes and categories from which the theory takes shape.

The first stage of the research process consists of collecting data by observing and interacting with the concerned population. During this stage, the researcher identifies the basic concepts at play in the situation and codes them into categories. This is an inductive process, by which the researcher’s understanding of the situation develops through the constant comparison and coding of incoming data. These data are gathered from a wide variety of sources, including conversations, interviews and exposure to any social or cultural media that shed light on the situation and its impact on the population.

Content analysis is a method of summarizing and reporting the explicit and implicit meaning of written text. Although content analysis is formally regarded as a separate discipline, its analytical methods can be used during the data collection and coding stages of grounded theory research, and grounded theory methods are often used during the theoretical stage of content analysis.

Content analysis comprises a strict and systematic set of procedures for the examination and analysis of any form of communicative material, both structured and unstructured. It can be applied to any written material, from documents to interview transcriptions to media products, and focuses on language, linguistic features and meaning in context. The patterns and trends revealed by content analysis assist the researcher in identifying and coding the focus of individuals, groups and institutions in reference to the situation being studied.

Content analysis is particularly useful in grounded theory research, due to the fact that texts have no objective reader-independent qualities; they have multiple meanings and are subject to different interpretations. The meaning of a text may be personal and relevant to specific contexts and purposes. The role of content analysis is to determine who is saying what to whom, how that person is saying it, the reasons for and purposes behind the communication, the context of the communication and its inferred effects.

Within the context of grounded theory, content analysis starts with a sample of texts, defines the units of analysis (such as words or sentences), reviews the texts in order to code them and place them into categories, then counts and logs the occurrences of words, codes and categories. Statistical analysis and other quantitative methods are then applied, resulting in an interpretation of the text from which theoretical conclusions can emerge.

Codes can be defined at different levels of specificity and generality, with some codes subsuming others. This can result in a hierarchy of codes, from the general to the specific. Codes may be descriptive, including perspectives held by individuals, ways of thinking about people and objects, activities, relationships and social structures. To be faithful data, which is the primary concern of grounded theory, the codes themselves must derive from the data rather than be imposed on them; thus, the researcher ascribes a code to each unit of data as it is encountered. The researcher is advised to become thoroughly familiar with the data, in order to note any interesting patterns, surprising or puzzling features or apparent inconsistencies or contradictions, as may arise among groups, within groups or between what people say and what they do.

In grounded theory, coding begins immediately with the examination of incoming data and continues simultaneously with the data collection process. The result is a rapid proliferation of codes in the early stages of research, which become increasingly difficult to manage and could prejudice future coding due to the researcher’s conscious or unconscious desire to avoid new codes by applying existing ones. The disciplined researcher will, therefore, undergo a constant process of reiteration, by which some codes used in the earlier stages are modified. This requires the researcher to go through data sets more than once, to ensure consistency, refinement and exhaustiveness, as some codes become redundant, and others need to be broken down into finer codes.

Resource by Will

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