It was not until quite late in my research that I read that Barney Glaser, one of the founding fathers of Grounded Theory, states that you aren’t supposed to do any pre-research literature review. I guess I should have read that pre-research. But in all seriousness, I think that makes grounded theory nearly impossible to do. This post will briefly discuss why.
So I should first make clear that I am by no means an expert on grounded theory. I’m a historian by training and this type of research is all very new to me (to read up on my struggles, go to this post or this one or the ‘about‘ page). I first read about grounded theory in a book about research design by Piet Verschuren and Hans Doorewaard (great book, by the way). They describe the approach as having two defining characteristics: (1) “it tries to find out which views underlie the similarities and differences within the object(s) of research” and (2) “the researcher must constantly compare the various items he or she observes in reality with each other and with theoretical premises”.[1]
“Great!”, I thought, “that’s exactly what I usually end up doing”. I often try to follow some theoretical framework and fixed method that I’ve come up beforehand, but end up changing those over the course of my research because of new insights. And now here was this approach called grounded theory that not only told me that was OK, but that it was an integral part of the research process. Furthermore, this method required keeping track this process and constantly reflecting on it. In my mind, that made it an ideal approach to take when blogging my research.
Glaser, however, argues that pre-research reading on the subject should be avoided.[2] His reasoning is that having prior knowledge about your subject causes desensitisation, because researcher will tend to try to fit their observations in their theoretical frameworks, instead of formulating theory to fit their observations. I think this argument is naive and an oversimplification of reality, both with regard to the openness of the human mind before literature review, and with regard to its closedness afterwards. But most of all, this position makes research practically impossible. Most researchers pick subjects that are close to their expertise. Even if they don’t review literature on that specific subject, they are still bound to have preconceptions and prior knowledge.
Concepts lost/concepts found.
So I did do pre-research reading. Besides the many preconceptions I had about my subject based on a lifetime of observing my parents (of which 18 years of field research living with them), my academic education and specifically the course for which I was writing this blog, I read up on what I thought would be relevant literature for this research. Based on that literature, I formulated several sensitizing concepts. These concepts were meant to help me interpret and ‘code’ my observations. Because I came up with these concepts beforehand, not all of them survived. Some concepts turned out not to be so useful, while other new concepts arose over the course of the research. While I thought beforehand that a concept like Present Shock would play an important role, I’ve now found that it has barely been useful. On the other hand, new concepts like memory holes, analog and digital tradition, memory cues and transition are now central central to this blog. This proves to me that pre-research reading is fine, and doesn’t necessarily cause desensitisation. But it does require continuous reflection, and sometimes you will have to kill your darlings.
[1] Piet Verschuren, Hans Doorewaard, and M. J. Mellion. Designing a Research Project. Eleven International Pub, 2010. 159.
[2] Glaser, Barney G. Doing Grounded Theory: Issues and Discussions. Mill Valley, CA: Sociology Press, 1998.
Historage 