To understand administrators’ responses to a women’s empowerment programme, a researcher alternates interviews and analysis, constantly compares incidents and categories, and selects further participants to develop an explanatory theory. She continues until further data add no substantial properties or relationships to its central categories. Which approach is being used?
Grounded theory approach
Grounded theory develops an explanatory theory through iterative collection and analysis, constant comparison and theoretical sampling. The stopping criterion described is theoretical saturation. Merely finding themes or approaching interviews openly would not uniquely identify grounded theory.
Important Questions from Research Designs - Teaching
Which of the following best illustrates an example of a mixed-methods research study?
An ethnographer studies participants’ experiences and feelings by collecting pre-existing diaries, letters, photographs and other objects, without interviewing their creators during collection. Which data-collection strategy is this?
What is the distinctive feature of case study research?
Which of the following research designs is the most appropriate for depicting lived experiential realities?
Which research design centres on interpreting individuals’ life stories and how they organise experiences over time, using autobiographies and personal conversations as data?
