What Is Grounded?

Grounded  is a past participle, past tense of ground. Grounded is a verb. It means:

• Prohibit or prevent (a pilot or an aircraft) from flying.
• (of a parent) Refuse to allow (a child) to go out socially as a punishment.

What is Grounded Theory?
Grounded Theory is

• a research method that will enable you to
• develop a theory which
• offers an explanation about
• the main concern of the population of your substantive area and
• how that concern is resolved or processed.

For example in my study, the main concern of learners is finding the time to study and temporal integration is the core category which explains how the concern is resolved or processed. That is: Jugglers and Strugglers employ successful temporal integration strategies enabling them to study whilst Fade-aways and Leavers are less successful in devising and adopting temporal integration strategies. Understanding how temporal integration does or does not happen has implications for learning design and learner persistence.

For the nurses of  Nathanial's study, their main concern was moral distress and the core category which processed their concern was moral reckoning. For McCallin's' interdisciplinary teams the main concern was client service delivery and the core category - pluralistic dialoguing. We recommend that you read these studies to get an idea of what a Grounded Theory is - and is not.

Grounded Theory is a general research method (and thus is not owned by any one school or discipline); which guides you on matters of data collection (where you can use quantitative data or qualitative data of any type e.g. video, images, text, observations, spoken word etc.); and details strict procedures for data analysis.

Grounded Theory is a research tool which enables you to seek out and conceptualise the latent social patterns and structures of your area of interest through the process of constant comparison. (A bit like being the x-ray machine of the social world? Though just take the quick idea from that metaphor as it doesn't bear too much examination!) Initially you will use an inductive approach to generate substantive codes from your data, later your developing theory will suggest to you where to go next to collect data and which, more-focussed, questions to ask; which is the deductive phase of the Grounded Theory process. (See page 37 of Theoretical Sensitivity)

Grounded Theory is first and foremost a research method
But the term 'Grounded Theory' is used in two ways; (1) if you adhere to the strictures of Grounded-Theory-the-research-method you will engage in a research process that will produce (2) a theory-which-is-grounded-in-data ie. a Grounded Theory. Thus both the research method and the output of the research process have the same name - which can be confusing!