Research Design and Methodology

In the Grounded Theory approach the researcher forms linkages between issues found to recur in the data, and categorises these recurring themes through a process known as coding. Coding is used to “manage and organise data,” and the idea is to conceptualise data into theory, to transcend from description to abstract concepts (182 and 266: Bryant and Charmaz, 2007). This is possible through constant comparison, where the researcher compares incidents or events in the data, so that they can “explain relationships between and across incidents” (20: Goulding, 2002).

6.2.2. Why Grounded Theory?

Grounded Theory was chosen due to a few key reasons. As the research features many different types of data, a method that can make use of different types of data was needed. The

31 methodology is also open-ended, which was deemed to be important (Goulding, 2002). In other words, the methodology allows the research to be based on empirical evidence and observation, and so it is based upon the themes that arise within the data, rather than a selected theoretical framework. Therefore, were other themes, besides youth livelihoods and conflict, have predominated in the data, then another theoretical framework would have been chosen as a frame of analysis. However, since my questions in the interviews revolved around the linkages between youth livelihoods and the conflict, the shift in themes in the research did not occur.

Nevertheless, it should go without saying that no researcher is ‘tabula rasa,’ and that they always bring their own subjectivity into the collection and analysis. Therefore, the researcher should try to be aware of their own “social locations as a raced, gendered, classed etc. research instrument” (247: Bryant and Charmaz, 2007). Furthermore, the researcher is also allowed to use scientific literature to aid themselves in the research process, as a literature review provides parameters of the academic discourse, which one hopes to join with the research (Bryant and Charmaz, 2007).

In this research methodology it is important to ground the research, which in effect means that you must describe the research process and explain the choices you have made in the research process (Bryant and Charmaz, 2007). Therefore, the researcher has attempted to be as transparent as possible when identifying recurring issues and creating concepts (Bringer, Johnston and Brackenridge, 2004). Of course, subjectivity can rarely be escaped even in scientific study. However, to allow readers of this research to see my subjectivity (and for myself to better acknowledge it), I will have to justify my choices and assumptions throughout my research, as this would help make any subjectivity apparent to myself and the reader.

Grounded Theory was also chosen, because it aims to understand the social processes underlying the data. Grounded Theory is able to:

“… offer a conceptually abstract explanation for a latent pattern of behaviour (an issue or concern) in the social setting under study. It must explain, not merely describe, what is happening in a social setting. [It] explains rather than describes behaviour that occurs conceptually and generally in many diverse groups with a common concern (Glaser, 2003).” (272: Bryant and Charmaz, 2007)

Therefore, the aim is not to merely describe social processes, but to explain them – to answer the ‘how’ as well as the ‘what,’ and through this also the ‘why.’ This is important, as then the methodology can assist in uncovering the relations between youth livelihoods and conflict present in the data.

32 6.2.3. Memos

Before the thesis outlines the research process, there should be some explanation of an important tool in Grounded Theory – memos. Using this methodology the researcher often also has to revisit the data a few times, and so the method of analysis can be time-consuming (Raj, Gomez and Silverman, 2014). Throughout the coding and analysis process the researcher also is constantly writing memos, which form the emergent theoretical and substantive codes found in the data.

Memos are notes based on the data, and they are used to draw conceptual relations between categories, to develop their properties and to gradually conceptualise the data into more abstract theorisation (Bryant and Charmaz, 2007). They are also used by the researcher to process their own thoughts about the data and the research process itself, such as when they need to collect more data, or when a certain category is sufficiently saturated (Bryant and Charmaz, 2007). When reading an excerpt from an interview about armed force recruitment of youth, the researcher asks questions of the data and tries to relate what has been said to other incidents of data to conceptualise relations between youth livelihoods and the conflict. For instance, both interviewees seemed to highlight economic necessity in youth joining armed groups in different parts of their interview, so it could be concluded that they both thought that a lack of proper livelihood played a major role in the decision for a youth to join an armed group.

Furthermore, memos are supposed to help the researcher to ask epistemological questions of the data, such as “what one knows, how such knowledge has been acquired, the

degree of certainty of such knowledge, and what further lines of inquiry are implied” (165:

Hammersley and Atkinson, 1983). Hence, memo writing is integral to research process in Grounded Theory, as not only does it form the analysis, but it helps to guide the researcher in the analysis process, as it helps them answer difficult questions related to the process itself.

In regards to the analysis, the idea of memos is to capture “emergent social patterns,” meaning that through memos the researcher begins to see what are the underlying social processes which are occurring within the data (245: Bryant and Charmaz, 2007). At first memos can be “messy and incomplete, with undigested theories and nascent opinions,” and they can be paralleled to the researcher conversing with themselves to process the social mechanisms and notions within the data (249: Bryant and Charmaz, 2007). This is necessary as the researcher needs to process the data, and much of this processing happens when reading

33 the memos themselves, or even subconsciously while the researcher is occupied with activities other than their research. The researcher should even write memos based on his earlier memos, as this will help to gradually lift the analysis to higher levels of abstraction. This is helpful, as writing memos themselves is relatively easy, but thinking beyond memos is more complex and requires more analytical effort (Bryant and Charmaz, 2007). Finally, when writing memos it is important to not “force closure on the data collection and analysis too soon,” and to engage the data and the memos to the point of theoretical saturation (249: Bryant and Charmaz, 2007). This will ensure that the analytical process is completed, and that as many of the categories relevant for the research are discovered as possible.

Now that the basic idea of Grounded Theory has been explained, the thesis will more specifically explain the Grounded Theory research process, as well as simultaneously outline the actual research process.