Kearney, M. H. (2009). From the Sublime to the Meticulous: The Continuing Evolution of Grounded Formal Theory. The SAGE Handbook of Grounded Theory, 127-150. doi:10.4135/9781848607941.n6
By Margaret H. Kearney
Kearney raises questions I’ve asked in my mind, “what degree of abstraction is appropriate in a postmodern age?” (127)
The uses of theories and satisfactions of theorizing
- Practice disciplines need theories to understand dynamic human lives and behaviours; we need theories to understand UX designers
- Grounded theory analysis leads to dynamic and interactive conclusions, unlike static conclusions in other methods. It’s not about A always leading to B; the degree of A leading to B depends on factors influencing A and B
- Grounded formal theory (GFT) takes guts to claim; Researchers will often hide exposing GFT by being vey descriptive about the particular conditions required for the theory to apply (128)
- Kearney sets out to revise Grounded Formal Theory in post-modern (Strauss) age – “meta synthesis” as GFT
What does GFT look like?
Theorizing & Grounding by Glaser and Strauss
- Glaser and Strauss’ “Awareness of Dying” contains an appendix that includes grounded theory fieldwork
- Validity checks: understandability, fit, generality, control… does my GTM have to go this granular in defining validity?
- How do you screen out subjective observations? Is GT possible to do alone? Strauss didn’t work alone.
- Data can be “descriptively dense by theoretically thin” (132)
- I have to make sure I conduct interviews to get theoretically rich content
- Glaser and Strauss kept distance from data to develop formal GT – this isn’t reflected in how GT is practice in post modern era
What Glaser and Strauss’ grounded formal theory looks like
Organizational Careers
- Substantive theories are for specific situations and formal is more to describe human phenomena
- Glaser’s attempt at theorizing was a “study of dynamics that cross social worlds” (134)
- I have to pay attention to all the social conditions of the subjects
- Glaser and Strauss’ formal theories were developed for:
- Organizational careers
- Status passage
- Negotiations
- Awareness contexts
- Continual permutations of action
How is grounded formal theory constructed?
- Glaser and Strauss never published a step by step process of developing formal grounded theory
- Theoretical sampling for GFT = collecting examples “in more disparate settings and conditions” (137) – not from live/raw source like substantive theory
- GF seems out of scope for me – seems like something to be aware about, but not as my primary goal
- There is a “recipe” in qualitative analysis that covers 8 steps – this can be a good guide but not to be followed clinically (139)
- All of Strauss and Glaser’s work in applying GT was done to analyze / theorize human behaviour, relationships (human phenomena); thus this is suitable to use for my research
- Topics studied for GT by Kearney:
- Women’s recovery from addiction (Kearney, 1998b)
- Serious illness and trauma (Kearney, 1999)
- Women’s experience of violent relationships (Kearney, 2000a)
- Why did GT develop through human-health related studies? How humans cope in health conditions and social environments?
- The goal was to develop procedures to shape with other healthcare practitioners; who will my audience be?
- Finding ways for others to use the theory = generalization
- Ex. to UX designers, UX managers, entrepreneurs, educators
- Example of GFT framework derived from multiple GT studies on suffering and comfort care by Morse and Johnson (1992)
- “Illness constellation model” stages:
- Uncertainty > Disruption > Striving to regain self > Regaining wellness
- Perhaps I can produce stages of a process as an outcome of my research too; stage-specific human responses of a social process
- But this seems static too…
Evolution of Grounded Formal Theorizing
- Most GFT is practiced for practical reasons serving health and illness care – results contribute to clinical practice
- In the context of UX designers, GFT can capture the social process of knowledge management of UX designers