What is it about?
This paper is three things. First - it advocates for the increased consideration and use of Grounded Theory Methodology (a qualitative research method used to generate theory from collected data). Second - it deals with a number of misuses and misconceptions that many people have about the methodology. Common errors are highlighted. Third - it's a primer giving readers a brief intro to the methodology, it's history, and how to go about using it in a research project.
Featured Image
Photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Grounded Theory Methodology is much maligned and misunderstood, but holds a lot of promise for the field of HCI. If done properly and well, it can generate powerful novel theory and enables researches to make significant contributions to the field - especially if there is little existing work in that area already.
Perspectives
I got fed up with reviewers not knowing what they were talking about and giving inappropriate feedback to my paper submissions. Coupled with several private conversations, it became clear that there aren't many people who truly understand the method, it's history, its potential and what's needed to do it properly within HCI. So I wrote this paper!
Tom Cole
University of Greenwich
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: More than a bit of coding: (un-)Grounded (non-)Theory in HCI, April 2022, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3491101.3516392.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
