Key texts and concepts in GT

A discussion of various authors' interpretations of Grounded Theory would be exhaustive and possibly a thesis in itself. However, a brief overview is useful. Broadly speaking there are two `schools' of Grounded Theory, with an acrimonious academic rivalry behind it. Glaser and Strauss (1967) coined the term, and then the two authors took it in very dierent directions after their landmark text.

The Discovery of Grounded Theory (1967)

This book was borne out of Glaser and Strauss' analysis of social contexts around dying in hospital. A core method used in this text is the constant comparative method. This has four parts.

1. comparing incidents applicable to each category, 2. integrating categories and their properties, 3. delimiting the theory,

4. writing the theory. (Glaser and Strauss, 1967, p105)

In this method, the key factor for discovery is comparison between incidents in the same category. Firstly, this consists of collating and comparing responses, in the process generating categories. In our context, this could mean (for example) comparing responses to the same sound source, investigating identical responses to dierent sound sources, or examining the range of listening strategies in certain social contexts. Next, categories are integrated how can these incident categories be grouped, or their properties generalised? Thirdly, the applicability is outlined where is this theory useful or relevant? and, if necessary, modied. Finally, when a comprehensive picture of the research space is described, theory is built, with connections between factors established where they emerge in the data.

Elements of Theory Type of Theory

Substantive Formal

Category Social loss of dying patients Social value of people

Properties of Category Calculating social loss on basis of learned and apparent characterist- ics of patient

Calculating social value of person on basis of learned and apparent characteristics

Hypotheses The higher the social loss of a

dying patient, (1) The better his care, (2) The more nurses develop loss rationales to explain away his death

The higher the social value of a person the less delay he exper- iences in recieving services from experts

Figure 3.1 Substantive vs. Formal Theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967, p42)

The idea is not to generalise, but to theoretically saturate every emergent category. Simply, theoretical saturation is the process of asking the same question until no signicant new responses emerge. When this happens, the researcher can aim to build theory which explains the reasons for these responses. During this process, the researcher may move between substantive and formal theory see Figure 3.1. This consists of moving from the specic to the general in Glaser and Strauss' case, from the literal, embedded eldwork about `social loss of dying patients' to the general, theoretical question of the `social value of people'.

The vague side of this theory comes in what is called `theoretical sensitivity'. The authors suggest that a GT researcher should be `theoretically sensitive', but do not outline how this should happen. This forms the crux of the eventual fallout between Glaser and Strauss.

Emergence vs Forcing

A critique of this methodology is that on one hand, it advocates researching with a clear mind, a `tabula rasa': while at the same time remaining grounded in qualitative research theory, and the process of coding. Clearly, tabula rasa is impossible, as all researchers use default epistemological and ontological lenses to make sense of the world around them.

The leap from particular to general is not without the danger of errors, of illusions, in a word, of ideology (Lefebvre, 1992, p5).

Strauss and Corbin (1998), acknowledging that any empirical investigation needs an explicit or implicit theoretical framework which helps to identify categories in the data and to relate them in meaningful ways, set out to develop a framework especially aimed at novice researchers an identity I happily wear. Strauss and Corbin present a set of analytical tools, including axial coding: the process of relating categories to their subcategories, termed `axial' because coding occurs around the axis of a category, linking categories at the level of properties and dimensions (Strauss and Corbin, 1998, p123), and coding for process where a process is a sequence of evolving action/interactions, changes in which can be traced to changes in structural conditions (Strauss and Corbin, 1998, p163).

Glaser however pejoratively saw this as forcing theory as opposed to having it `naturally' emerge, and that the `true' method of GT is entirely ad-hoc. At the same time, he suggests a slightly gargantuan 14 `coding families' around concepts such as terms, which relate to the degree of an amount or property [. . . ], to the relation between a whole and its elements [. . . ], [or] which refer to cultural phenomena (summarised by Kelle, 2005). Kelle (2005) continues:

Glaser's approach overall to theoretical sensitivity is therefore of limited help for novices in empirical research who will have serious diculties to handle the more or less unsystematic list of theoretical terms from various sociological and epistemological backgrounds oered by Glaser. And a researcher with a broad and extended theoretical background knowledge and a long standing experience in the application of theoretical terms, on the other hand, would certainly not need a list.

At the root of this is a debate about how the GT researcher goes about noticing emergent theory.

Creativity

To return to creativity, while all approaches to Grounded Theory can seem very formal and daunting, Strauss and Corbin (1998) stress that [the methodology] will never develop if researchers focus solely on the procedures presented in this text and apply them in a rote manner [. . . ] the importance of this methodology is that it provides a sense of vision, where it is that the analyst wants to go with the research (p8). This is key to my approach: developing a new method for soundscape research necessarily requires creativity, and it is a clean match with a methodology that requires it.

While GT has been instrumental in guiding my approach then, it is vital to note that it is not a road map to follow so much as a `guidebook to the wilderness'. As mentioned, an almost constant element of doing GT at Salford University has been an emphasis from supervisors and colleagues to simply get on with the process of gathering data, and to stop worrying about letting theoretical issues get in the way when the method is clearly and intuitively responsive to my needs. Theory alone cannot be a complete guide to exploring the unknown.

My approach

The more formal, novice-friendly approach of Strauss and Corbin's (1998) GT was highly appealing for my research. Just as members of the public generally speaking have a lack of experience describing sounds and sound environments, I was highly aware in many ways starting the process that I'm not sure what I'm listening for. Taking a highly structured and intense approach to interviews and interview analysis allowed me to see connections in data I may have missed due to my own preconceptions of what's important, or what I thought was being communicated in an interview.

Conducting an unstructured interview allowed my own techniques as an interviewer to improve. After most interviews, I learnt something about asking people about sounds I didn't know before. A more xed process would have seen me doomed to repeat mistakes

in the eldwork process. While the twenty interviews are presented as a whole within the data analysis, my memos, hypotheses and conceptual categories were advancing between the interviews. As will be shown in the next chapter, the process changed considerably over the course of the research.