Although I missed class, and hence the in-class activity, I will nonetheless offer up a few general thoughts concerning this topic. I very much appreciated the way in which Strauss & Corbin (1994) described it: a general methodological approach that “explicitly involves ‘generating theory and doing social research [as] two parts of the same process…,'” and its emphasis on what I believe would fairly be called “organic” theory development wherein the data drives the development and conceptualization of the theory (i.e. a more inductive rather than deductive approach). As someone who has been firmly entrenched in the Socratic method of argument and reasoning and trained to apply deductive approaches to reasoning, the inductive approach of Grounded Theory is clearly a completely different way than I am used to in terms of conceptualizing, analyzing and discoursing on questions and topics of interest. I can also understand why Charmaz (2006a) contends (in “Invitation to Grounded Theory”) that the grounded theory approach and process to doing research will “..bring surprises, spark ideas and hone your analytical skills” (p.2), and “foster seeing your data in fresh ways and exploring your ideas about the data…” because data are collected from the beginning of the project with an eye towards theoretical analysis and development. The researcher is thereby constantly forced to evaluate new data in light of existing data, and the synthesis (or, as Charmaz puts it ‘sense making’) of these data drives new constructs which in turn raises additional questions of interest concerning the phenomenon being studied, and leads again to the collection of new data to be incorporated into the developing construct. For myself, while I will probably continue to reflexively revert to my deductive roots, I will nonetheless be mindful not only that deductive approaches are not the only approaches but that, particularly in terms of brainstorming and “thinking outside the box” about a problem, there is much to be said for taking an inductive approach – and particularly the approach outlined in Grounded Theory.
With all that said about grounded theory as a general research/ theory development approach, I will now offer a few thoughts specifically concerning coding as a data analysis tool vis-a-vis grounded theory. Given the inherently iterative nature of grounded theory, I can certainly see where coding of data could be a particular challenge! Since the data are, essentially, a moving target (constantly being updated and reinterpreted) – even at the time of “initial coding” – assigning codes to each piece of datum and putting them into nice neat buckets or categories based on these codes (i.e. “focused coding”) would presumably be a constant exercise – whether because reevaluation of the data collectively leads to the conclusion that the original code no longer “fits”, or that a piece of datum doesn’t belong where it was initially “placed”, or because the original buckets themselves no longer “work”. This, of course, recalls what Charmaz (2006a) indicated concerning the importance of “flexibility” in grounded theory in general – so it is rather difficult to imagine how any other analytical approach would work within the framework of grounded theory. Indeed, as Charmaz (2006b) also says (in “Coding in Grounded Theory Practice”) – “We play with the ideas we gain from the data…Coding gives us a focused way of viewing (it)” and “Through coding we make discoveries and gain a deeper understanding of the empirical world” (p. 71). Moreover, coding “gives us a preliminary set of ideas that we can explore and examine analytically… (and) if we wish, we can return to the data and make a fresh coding” (or, implicitly, revise the existing). In short, coding in grounded theory in particular “is more than a way of sifting, sorting and synthesizing data…[i]nstead [it] begins to unify ideas analytically because [the researcher keeps] in mind what the possible theoretical meanings of [the] data and codes might be.” I have above characterized Grounded Theory as being an organic research and theoretical methodology, I would submit it’s also fair to say that coding – particularly in connection with employing grounded theory methodology – seems to be a fairly organic approach to organizing and analyzing the data collected. I consider, in fact, that this is an example of where a research/ theoretical methodological approach and an analytical/ organizational approach seem to be mutually supportive.