Formal Grounded Theory: Knowing When to Come Out of the Rain
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Abstract
Getting started on a formal grounded theory is daunting for many grounded theorists, but now, as I tweak a nearly complete one, I find that knowing when to stop, to come in out of the rain, so to speak, can be a challenge, too.
After more than a decade of procrastinating, one of the lessons for me was one I knew but needed reminding of—the implications of the core help shape and delimit the formal grounded theory (Glaser, 2007). Maybe if I had pasted this to my computer and read it each day I could have cut my theory development time considerably. But having a mantra does not clear the path to a theory. A formal grounded theory takes on the world of knowledge far more boldly than does a substantive theory, which is based in one subdiscipline. It is not always simple to clear a path through the competing knowledge claims and epistemologies on the phenomenon one is studying. This was especially true of my theory on defensive disattending, which is evident throughout micro and macro level spheres of life.
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References
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