Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory

Nephrology Nursing Journal, April, 2000 by Nancy Hoffart

Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory Anselm Strauss and Juliet Corbin Second Edition, 1998 Sage Publications, Inc. 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, CA 91320 www.sagepub.com 312 pages, soft cover $29.95, hard cover $75

The purpose of Strauss and Corbin's revised text on grounded theory, a type of qualitative research, is "to provide the basic knowledge and procedures needed by persons who are about to embark on their first qualitative research projects and who want to build theory at the substantive level" (p. x). They divide the book into three parts. In Part I they review the philosophy of developing theory using qualitative methods, contrasting it with the quantitative approach to theory development, and provide suggestions on how to select a research topic and conduct a literature review. Part II is the most useful section, for the authors present many techniques for coding and analyzing qualitative data. Examples are used to illustrate techniques that help to assure comprehensive data analysis for generating the new theory. In Part III the authors cover research report-writing and evaluation criteria for grounded theory; additionally, they include commonly asked questions about grounded theory methodology and their answers.

The main contribution of this text is the detailed description of qualitative coding and analysis techniques. However, the authors frequently refer to material in previous or upcoming chapters, which requires the reader to flip back and forth among the pages. This implies that the content could have been organized more logically. Another weakness is that the content does not sufficiently cover the authors' purpose of presenting "basic knowledge and procedures" (p. x). The discussion on sampling was brief, and there was no discussion about data collection methods. Researchers who are unfamiliar with grounded theory, the intended audience, would have to consult other sources to learn these basics. In contrast, qualitative researchers who already are familiar with grounded theory and are interested in broadening their repertoire of analytic procedures will find this text a useful resource.

Nancy Hoffart, PhD, RN Associate Professor University of Kansas School of Nursing Kansas City, KS