I like grounded theory as a methodology since we didn’t have to plan out every detail of our study beforehand (yes because I’m lazy…). This is often a challenge in exploratory field research where researchers are not aware of all peculiarities of the setting we are about to conduct a study in. When using grounded theory, it is “officially” part of the research methodology that questions are refined over time, that not all interviewees are pre-determined, and that the resulting theme is unknown beforehand. Similarly, we were able to change direction during the study when we found interesting themes to follow-up on. This is something that frequently happens in qualitative research, but grounded theory makes it explicit.
Going into the grounded theory study and the coding practice, I was concerned that after all the open coding, there would be no “core category” that emerged from the data, but in fact, it seems a bit like magic the way that sufficient coding would eventually lead to a clear perception of category or conceptual label. Although we group only went through probably 5 posts, I can say that we did encounter some core categories that came out pretty clear.For example, we group found students are quite concern about cost and they also seemed pretty close to each other and behave as a community. I think this is one of the benefits from the “explicit” nature of grounded theory. During the open coding, the use of grounded theory helps us ignore pre-conceptions of how and why certain incident occur. Going through the posts on a line by line basis forces us to think about every aspect of the data collected and allows us to consider everything the subjects encounter. Grounded theory coding process also forces us to focus on concepts that become part of the theory because they are present in the data more than once. This makes it easier for us to focus on themes that are relevant in the study context rather than themes that only matter to us (the researchers).
Another thing I was thinking about but not sure is, the role of research questions when using grounded theory as methodology. We usually have questions going into a study, but these questions could be refined, changed, and altered throughout the study. This could present a challenge when reporting the research questions for a study. To be thorough, we would have to report the initial questions along with their iterations over the course of the study. However, research papers usually aim at the dissemination of research results rather than a discussion of the research process itself. So should we only report the final set of questions?