Year: 2016
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Grounded Theory (GT) has proved an extremely useful research\napproach in several fields including medical sociology, nursing,\neducation and management theory. However, GT is a complex\nmethod based on an inductive paradigm that is fundamentally\ndifferent from the traditional hypothetico-deductive research\nmodel. As there are at least three variants of GT, some ostensibly\nGT research suffers from method slurring, where researchers\nadopt an arbitrary subset of GT practices that are not recognizable\nas GT. In this paper, we describe the variants of GT and identify\nthe core set of GT practices. We then analyze the use of grounded\ntheory in software engineering. We carefully and systematically\nselected 98 articles that mention GT, of which 52 explicitly claim\nto use GT, with the other 46 using GT techniques only. Only 16\narticles provide detailed accounts of their research procedures. We\noffer guidelines to improve the quality of both conducting and\nreporting GT studies. The latter is an important extension since\ncurrent GT guidelines in software engineering do not cover the reporting\nprocess, despite good reporting being necessary for\nevaluating a study and informing subsequent research.
Authors: Stol, Klaas-Jan, Ralph, Paul, Fitzgerald, Brian
Institutions: University of Limerick, Lero, University of Auckland
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7000567336