Joumal of Advanced Nurstng, 1992,17,1355-1360

Method slurring: the grounded theory/

phenomenology example
Cynthia Baker RN MN
Doctoral Shident, Untverstty of Texas at Aushn, and Assistant Professor,
Universite de Moncton, Moncton

Judith Wuest RN MN
Doctoral Student, Wayne State University, and Assistant Professor,
University of New Brunswick, Fredencton, New Brunswick, Canada

and Phyllis Noerager Stem DNSc RN FAAN

Professor, Indiana Untverstty, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA

Accepted for publication 3 March 1992

BAKER C, WUEST J & STERN P N (1992) Joumal of Advanced Nursmg 17,

1355-1360
Method slurring: the grounded theory/phenomenology example
Increasingly, qualitative research methods are being embraced by nurse
researchers because these approaches allow exploration of human experience
Failure to explicate qualitative methodologies is resulting in a body of nursing
research that is either mislabelled or is classified broadly as qualitative and
subject to charges that qualitative research lacks ngour In this paper, the authors
discuss the importance of specificity m methodology and distingiush between
phenomenology and grounded theory, two frequently misused terms m the
descnption of qualitative methodology

INTRODUCTION DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN GROUNDED

A growmg number of nurse researchers are usmg quabtative
methods to mveshgate phenomena of mterest to the disa-
plme Morse (1989), however, has drawn attention to a
tendency for nurses to blur distmctions between the vanous
qualitative approaches and to combme their methodological
prescnptions edectically Method slumng far too often
appearson the pages of joumals or at resesirch conferences
The authors' purpose m wnting this paper is to
distinguish between two commonly misrepresented
approaches, grounded theory and phenomenology, and to
assert the importance of a dear definition of quabtahve
research methodology To ensure ngour, they believe that
qualitahve data collection procedures should be explicit
and consistent with the underlymg assumptions of the
specific approach selected
„„ r I I. xr n i.roj,rr,
Correspondence CynthwBaker, PO Box 1623 Siidcvilk, NewBrunsmckEOAUD
Canada
THEORY AND PHENOMENOLOGY
Grounded theory and phenomenology appear to be par-
ticularly susceptible to the blumng trend observed by
Morse (1989) It is not uncommon for an investigator to
purport to use one or the other while in fact combinmg
elements of each The two approaches certamly share a
number of charactenstics Both focus on the nchness of
human expenence, seek to understand a situation from the
subject's own frame of reference, and use flexible data
collection procedures Nonetheless, they are based on
different intellectual assumptions and, flowing from
these, have dear differences m purpose and methodological
prescnptions
Grounded theory will be contrasted with phenomen-
ology, as a case m pomt, m order to highlight the separate-
ness of different quabtative approaches The intellectual
^ r , i • ni • i •
roots and distmct purpose of each method will be descnbed
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C Baker etal

first The methodological lmpbcations of these differences are lntentionabty, descnption, reduction and essence
will follow (Alexandersson 1981) Consaousness is intentional
because it is always consaousness of The subject is
directed to and expenences the extemal world The
Roots of phenomenology
object of inquiry is the descnption of the phenomenon as
Phenomenology has its intellectual roots in philosophy It expenenced by the mdividual
was conceived by the German philosopher, Husserl, at the This necessitates reduction Reduchon has two steps
beginning of the twentieth century to investigate con- First, preconceptions about a phenomenon bemg investi-
sciousness as expenenced by the subjed He was cntical of gated are 'bracketed' by bemg identified and put aside
the positivist focus on an observed extemal reality but was Secondly, the phenomenon is vaned imaginatively m order
unsatisfied as well with the mentalist view that there is no to identify its charactenstic attnbutes For instance, the
matenal reality (Spiegelberg 1975) He sought, therefore, reduction of the concept tnangle allows the researcher to
to develop a ngorous descnphve science of consciousness discover that it can be any colour but caimot have any
m which consaousness is always consaousness of number of sides (Alexandersson 1981) Reduction leads to
and developed a method of inquiry for this purpose the uncovenng of the essential structure, the essence of the
(Alexandersson 1981) phenomenon exf>enenced
Hesserl worked on his philosophy and method of
inquiry throughout his life, modifying some of his earlier
posihons He also influenced other German philosophers Purpose of phenomenology
who developed or reworked his ongmal formulations
Phenomenology is the study of phenomena, the appear-
Heidegger, initially attracted to Husserl's ideas, took them
ance of things (Cohen 1987) and the discovery of their
in a new direction and created hermeneutic analysis In
essence is the ultimate purpose of phenomenological phil-
France, the existenhal philosopher Merleau-Ponty's
osophy The goal of empincal phenomenological research
modification of Husserl's ideas provided the foundation
of the method as applied to empincal studies of human flows from this and is to descnbe the world-as-expenenced
beings (Spiegelberg 1975) Human behaviour, accordmg by the partiapants of the inquiry in order to discover the
to Merleau-Ponty, represents a dialedical relationship common meanings underlying empincal variations of a
between the subject and his or her world One can descnbe given phenomenon
neither the objective nor the subjective world but only the
world as expenenced by the subject (Merleau-Ponty 1964)
Roots of grounded theory
Spiegelberg has traced the dissemination of phenomeno-
logical ideas to other disapbnes and notes that it was soon Grounded theory was developed in the 1960s by the
felt in psychiatry through the work of Karl Jasper and was sociologists Anselm Strauss and Bamey Glaser in order to
introduced to psychology by Brenatano and Carl Stumpf study the exf)enence of dymg patients Their method
The German sociologist Alfred Shutz adapted phenomeno- combmed the exactness of statistical methods with the
logical concepts to the study of soaety A number of differ- loose theory-generating style of the Chicago school of
ent interpretations of the phenomenological method such as soaology (Glaser & Strauss 1967) Soon after developing
those of Van Kaam, Colaizzi, and Giorgi have evolved to their method, Glaser and Strauss jomed the faculty of a
study bfe expenences empmcally (Omery 1983) fledgling nursmg doctoral programme at the University of
It IS only m the last decade that nurses have used pheno- Cabfomia, San Francisco (Stem 1985) As a result,
menological methods Ray (1985) has linked its introduc- grounded theory was mfroduced to nursing by their
tion to a new humanism about the nature of the disaplme students who used it to study such nursmg phenomena as
Phenomenological concepts were mtroduced to nursing by the nurse and dying patient (Qumet 1967), the pobtics of
such authors as Paterson & Zderad (1976), Oiler (1982) and pam management (Fagerhaugh & Strauss 1977), afifiliation
Omery (1983) In 1985, Parse, Coyne and Smith developed in step-father famibes (Stem 1978) and the management of
a phenomenological methodology to study the bved chronic illness (Corbm & Strauss 1988)
expenence of health Watson (1985) has adapted Giorgi's Grounded theory is rooted in the symbobc interactionist
mteipretation of phenomenology, arguing that it is school of soaology Symbolic mteractiomsm focuses on
particularly well suited to a saence of carmg the meanmgs of events to people and the symbols they use
Four concepts developed by Husserl are fundamental to to convey that meanmg Basic to the development of
the different empincal applications of the method They mearung is the human abibty to have a self-concept and to

1356

communicate with self (Blumer 1969) Meanmgs are devel-
oped through expenence or interaction The meanmgs that
people assign to events determme their response (Stryker
1959) Blumer (1969) noted that human behaviour results
from 'a vast interpretive process m which people, smgly
and coUechvely, guide themselves by defining objects,
events and situahons they encounter'
To function in families «md groups, meanmgs must be
shared and this is accomplished by common language and
sociabzahon (Chenitz & Swanson 1986) These socially
denved meanings are continually being revised in social
interactions The sociological symbobc interactionist per-
spechve, therefore, conceives of reality as dynamic rather
than static It focuses on processes that exist withm the
mdividual or groups of individuals rather than on sociai
structure
Tenets of symbobc mteractiomsm guided Glaser and
Strauss's interpretation of what soaety is, how it works,
and what aspeds of it need to be mvestigated in order to
understand particular social situations Chenitz & Swanson
(1986) descnbe how pnnapals of symbobc mteractiomsm
guide grounded theory research 'The researcher needs to
understand behaviour as the participants understtmd it,
leam about their world, leam their interpretation of self in
the mteraction, and share their definitions' Behaviour,
then, IS studied from both the symbolic and lnterachonal
levels It must be observed m context because meanmgs are
denved from soaal mteradion
Purpose of grounded theory
Glaser argues that grounded theory allows us 'to discover
what IS going on' (Glaser 1978) Therefore, researchers'
purpose m usmg the grounded theory method is to explain
a given social situation by identifying the core and subsidi-
£iry processes operating in it The core process is the guid-
ing pnnaple underlying what is occumng m the situation
and dominates the analysis because it links most of the
other processes mvolved in an explanatory network Thus,
consistent with its intellectual underpinnings, the grounded
theory method generates inductively based theoretical
explanahons of sociai and psychosocial processes
DIFFERENCES IN RESEARCH STRATEGIES
Phenomenology comes from a philosophical tradihon and
IS designed to descnbe psychological realihes by uncover-
mg the essential meaning of lived expenence In contrast,
grounded theory, denved from a sociological perspective,
explains sociai or sociai psychological realities by idenhfy-
mg processes at work m the situahon bemg investigated
Qi4alitahve methodology
One seeks to describe psychological structures emd the
other to explam social processes The concrete differences
m data colledion and analysis strategies that result
from these distmct purposes and different underlying
assumptions are worthy of discussion
The role of previous knowledge
Although the bterature review is sparse pnor to the study
in both approaches, they differ in how they treat
researchers' preconceptions about the study situation The
phenomenological method is based on the notion that
essences can be discovered by reduction which involves
bracketing and imaginatively varying the descnption To
bracket, the researcher must ldenhfy and suspend what he
or she already knows about the expenence being studied
and must approach the data without preconceptions (Oiler
1982)
Grounded theonsts take the opposite position From the
grounded theory perspective, the researcher is a social
being who also creates and recreates sociai processes
Therefore, previous expenences are data No effort is made
to put aside ideas or assumphons about the situation being
studied On the contrary, the researcher uses these m order
to understand better the processes bemg observed
Sources of data
A second important dishnchon between the two methods
concems sources of data Phenomenological mquiry, bemg
concemed with the psychological phenomena of bved
expenence, has only one legitimate source of data inform-
ants who have lived the reality being mvestigated Their
verbal descnphons, wntten reports and artistic expression
of the phenomenon provide the researcher with access to it
(Ray 1985) Van Manen (1984) observes that the pomt of
phenomenological research is to bonow other people's
expenences m order to understand the deeper meanmg of
it in the context of the whole of human expenence Most
interpretations of the phenomenological method 'borrow'
this expenence by eliciting descnptions of it from inform-
ants in non-structured or semi-structured interviews (Ray
1985)
The dynamic psychosocial and soaal processes that are
the focus of the grounded theory method may be mferred
from observmg social interachons, they may be inferred
from bstenmg to what informants say about themselves
and others, they may be inferred from readmg what other
researchers have wntten, they may be inferred from thmk-
mg about one's past expenences In other words, every-
thmg to the grounded theonst is data (Stem et al 1982) and
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data are usually obtamed through a combination of such wiU be used to lUustrate how the data analysis steps m a
diverse data collechon methods as parhapant observahon, phenomenological study lead to the uncovenng of the
mterviews with informants, readmg the bterature on the essential structure of a given phenomenon (Giorgi 1975,
study question, and self-reflechon 1985) Transcnpts of mterviews are read to achieve a sense
of the whole, the franscnpts are reread and segments of
data that potentiaUy reveal some asped of the phenom-
Sampling enon are identified These segments are called meanmg
Representativeness m qualitative research concems the data units Each meaning umt is fransformed mto a statement
and not the sampling units (Sandelwoski 1986) and both that expresses its impbat or explicit meanmg These trans-
phenomenology and grounded theory use non-probability formed statements are synthesized into a statement of the
samplmg procedures Nonetheless, a third difference partiapant's total expenence, which Giorgi refers to as the
between the two methods is how the umts of data are situated level descnption Finally, the mdividual statements
selected Phenomenological studies are designed to are worked through in order to imcover the general
descnbe the essence of a given phenomenon and mform- descnphon of the phenomenon
ants are chosen because they have bved the expenence In grounded theory, data colledion and analysis occur
bemg lnveshgated Sampling is, therefore, purposive concurrently and are based on the constant comparative
In keeping with its aim of illuminating the nchness of mdi- method Early data are coded 'with words that descnbe the
vidual expenence, the sample size is kept debberately achon in the setting' (Hutchison 1986) As more infor-
small mahon comes in, codes are revised and the data recoded
The objed of a groimded theory study is to discover a Emergmg concepts determine what information will
conceptual framework that explains the scene being inves- be sought next and interview questions may change as
hgated Data analysis and data collection are camed out the ongomg analysis sharpens the focus of the study
simultaneously and samplmg is theoretical because the Categones develop from the clustenng of codes that seem
evolvmg analysis dnves the seledion of units of data The to fit together and are constantly 'compared with each
researcher initiates the samplmg process by partiapant other to ensure that they are mutuaUy exdusive and cover
observation and mterviews with sigmficant mdividuals the behavioral vanations' (Hutchison 1986) Categones are
The themes and categones that emerge durmg the analysis then linked to form a tentative conceptual framework
suggest the need for seledive sampbng of speafic data (Stem & Pyles 1986)
sources to discover the vanahons m the situahon This The developmg theory is expanded and densified by
seledive samplmg contmues until each concept is saturated reduction, selective samplmg of the literature, and further
and a conceptual framework developed and venfied by selechve sampbng of the data (Stem 1980) Addihonal
further data collechon The seleehon of parhapants and mterviews are conducted to verify the theory and further
other data sources is, therefore, a funchon of emergmg develop it Selective samplmg contmues until no new data
hypotheses and the sample size, a funchon of theorehcal are produced to explam the situation further
completeness The emergmg theory is delimited and integrated by
memo wntmg and theoretical codmg Theoretical codmg
refers to the process of exammmg data in a theoretical way
Data collection and analysis
rather than m descnphve terms Memos are used through-
Linked to the difference m samplmg techmque are differ- out to record the theory as it is developed step by step
ences m the data collection and analysis Phenomenology (Corbin 1986) They are sorted and form the basis of the
requires mtense refledion, 'loohng at the expenence with research report
wide open eyes, with knowledge, facts and theones held at
bay' (Oiler 1982) The data coUechon issue in phenomeno-
Validity
logical studies IS to ensure that it isfreefrompreconceived
notions, expectations and frameworks (Field & Morse A fmal difference between grounded theory and phenom-
1985) As a result, mterview questions are broad, open- enology concems validity The issue in any qualitative
ended and designed to avoid influenang the respondents' resarch is not whether another investigator would discover
answers m any way the same concepts to descnbe or mterpret the data but
A vanety of ways have been formalized for carrymg out whether thefindmgsof an mquiry are worth paymg atten-
a phenomenological study but 'all hold to the pnmacy of tion to (Lmcoln & Guba 1985) In a phenomenological
the subjedive expenence' (Riemen 1986) Giorgi's method study this depends on the extent that they truly refled the

1358

essence of a phenomenon as expenenced by the informants
of the study Colaizzi (1978) advocates that the phenom-
enological researcher retum to the informants to validate
that the findmgs reflect their perceptions of their
expenence
In the case of a grounded theory study, the important
question is the usefubiess of the theory that has been
generated 'To be credible, the core vanables, or theory,
must be well mtegrated, easy to understand, relevant to the
empincal world, and must explain the major vanation m
the process or phenomenon studied' (Stem & Pyles 1986)
The theory must fit, have grab, and work (Glaser & Sfrauss
1967) Fit means that 'the categones that are generated
must be indicated by the data and applied readily to the
data (Chenitz & Swanson 1986) To have grab, theory must
be relevant to the participant group and to the practice
group To work, 'a theory should be able to explam what
happened, predict what wiU happen and mterpret what is
happenmg' (Glaser 1978)
EXPLICATING RESEARCH
METHODOLOGY
Although phenomenology and grounded theory share a
qualitahve rather than quantitahve method of analysis m
which concepts are mdudively denved from coded data,
their assumptions and purposes differ As a result they have
distinct methodological prescnptions guidmg data collec-
hon and analysis which are based on and are consistent
with their intellectual foundation As Swanson-Kauffrnan
(1986) has asserted, however, 'many qualitative researchers
do what works under the guise of an official, recognized,
quabtahve method' The authors suggest that credibility
for existing quabtative methods will only be estabbshed if
nurse researchers expliatly descnbe their data collechon
and analysis procedures
The authors' argument for explicating research method-
ology IS not an argument against innovation in quabtative
methods Parse (1990) has pointed out that, although
borrowed methods are useful m the developmg of a young
science, umque research methods congruent with the
ontological bases of the discipline are required However,
frequently nurses who combme qualitative approaches to
develop a more suitable method descnbe their assumphons
and procedures inadequately (Downs 1983, Knafl &
Howard 1986) Swanson-Kauffrnan (1986) suggests that
one reason for this is the difficulty m descnbmg a matnx-
bke process in a linear format Nonetheless, Sandelwoski
(1986) emphasizes that ngour m qualitahve research wiU
only be achieved if research reports clearly descnbe and
justify what was done at each step in the study This is
Qfialitattve mdhodology
espeaally important when a researcher combines methods
Because of the existing confusion in the known qualitative
methods, it is especiaUy important that modifications to
them are dearly descnbed
CONCLUSION
Quabtative methodologies offer nurse researchers valuable
approaches to the understanding of human expenence It is
essential that the particular method chosen is consistent
with the research question bemg asked and that it is dearly
defmed m the research report Ultimately, failure to do
so wiU severely undermine the credibibty of quabtative
research
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