ilog3 Corbin–Strauss Grounded Theory
Generate an integrated explanation of action and interaction from data through recursive comparison, conceptualization, sampling, memoing, and theoretical integration.
Orientation
- Treat grounded theory as a methodology for theory development, not merely a coding technique.
- Move repeatedly between data collection, analysis, questions, and theoretical sampling.
- Use procedures as thinking tools. The third-edition treatment favors flexible, memo-driven analysis over ritual compliance with fixed coding stages.
- Keep interpretation grounded through traceable incidents, comparisons, negative cases, and analytic records.
- Recognize that researchers bring experience and concepts to analysis; reflexively test them instead of claiming a blank mind.
End-to-end workflow
- Clarify the analytic aim. Define the phenomenon, actors, actions/interactions, and why a conceptual explanation is needed. Read chapters/ch01-foundations-and-design.md.
- Prepare diverse data. Use interviews, observations, documents, biographies, media, or existing data when they illuminate the question; document provenance and ethics.
- Begin microanalysis. Examine incidents closely, ask generative questions, compare within and across data, and write provisional concepts. Read chapters/ch02-analysis-and-concept-formation.md.
- Develop categories. Group related concepts, specify properties and dimensions, and distinguish conditions, action/interaction, and consequences.
- Memo and diagram continuously. Record hypotheses, comparisons, questions, category definitions, relations, uncertainty, and sampling needs from the first analysis session. Read chapters/ch03-memos-and-diagrams.md.
- Sample theoretically. Seek data that elaborate a category, vary a property, test a relation, fill a gap, or challenge an emerging explanation. Read chapters/ch04-theoretical-sampling.md.
- Analyze context and process. Connect action to layered conditions and trace change, sequence, adaptation, and patterned response over time. Read chapters/ch05-context-and-process.md.
- Integrate. Identify a central analytic storyline, relate major categories to it, test coherence against data, and fill weak links. Read chapters/ch06-integration-and-theory.md.
- Write from the analytic audit trail. Organize the report around the explanatory story and use data excerpts as evidence, not decoration. Read chapters/ch07-writing-and-quality.md.
Coding without ritualism
- Open coding names and develops concepts from incidents.
- Axial coding reconnects categories through conditions, actions/interactions, and consequences; it may occur inside comparative memos rather than as a separate phase.
- Selective coding integrates categories around a central explanatory scheme.
Use these labels when helpful, but do not mistake sequential labels for the analysis itself. Analysis may loop, overlap, split categories, abandon concepts, or return to data.
Core analytical moves
- Compare incident with incident, incident with concept, concept with concept, and new data with the emerging scheme.
- Ask who, what, when, where, how, with what consequences, under which conditions, and with what variation.
- Name concepts at an abstract enough level to travel across cases while retaining their empirical meaning.
- Describe each category through properties and dimensions rather than a pile of quotations.
- Treat a relation as provisional until variation and contrary evidence have been explored.
- Stop theoretical sampling only when relevant categories are sufficiently developed and further data add little analytic variation—not when a preset interview count is reached.
Expected deliverables
Provide:
- research question and methodological fit;
- data sources and iterative collection plan;
- concept/category codebook with properties and dimensions;
- dated analytic memos linked to source segments;
- diagrams of category relations;
- theoretical-sampling decisions and results;
- context and process account;
- central category or storyline and integrated propositions;
- negative cases, unresolved gaps, reflexive decisions, and limits;
- quality audit using patterns.md.
Guardrails
- Do not force data into a favorite theory, coding paradigm, or software hierarchy.
- Do not equate topical labels with analytic concepts.
- Do not call ordinary purposive sampling “theoretical sampling” unless emerging concepts guided the next collection decision.
- Do not declare saturation globally; state which category, property, or relation is saturated and what evidence supports that judgment.
- Do not let software substitute for comparison, memoing, interpretation, or theoretical decisions.
- Do not present a polished model without preserving the path from incidents through concepts to integration.
Chapter map
- Chs. 1–3: foundations, design, preparation, literature, ethics
- Chs. 4–5 and 8–9: analysis, questions, comparison, concepts, categories
- Ch. 6: memos and diagrams
- Ch. 7: theoretical sampling and saturation
- Chs. 5, 10–11: context, conditions, actions, consequences, and process
- Ch. 12: category integration and explanatory storyline
- Chs. 13–15: writing, reporting, quality, and practical questions
Use glossary.md, patterns.md, and cheatsheet.md for operational support.
This skill synthesizes the third edition of Corbin and Strauss's Basics of Qualitative Research. Distinguish this edition's flexible approach from both earlier procedural presentations and other grounded-theory traditions.