Over and over again recently, I have continued to identify during review of papers, during conversations with researchers, and in other contexts examples of authors/researchers remarkably enduring preconceptions - or initial impressions from their data - and the difficulty some have in reverting to an open minded state, or to considering alternative views, even when ongoing analysis of data does not support the initial impressions. I bring up grounded theory in the title because of the recommendation, that has been discussed, debated and reinterpreted through the years, that researchers not conduct a (thorough) review of literature prior to data collection so that they might bring a genuine open mind to facilitate building, rather than testing theory. I think we all want to discover something new, especially researchers working in health who are passionate about issues that impact individuals' quality of life. Along with this people seem to increasingly be impatient and have little use for tedious and reflexive processes - especially when there is no guarantee if or when you are going to find a or the answer.
What this leads to/has led to, I suspect, is researchers too often approaching an issue with a theory, and trying to find ways to make the data fit that theory, while describing in the methods section that they conducted open coding and other iterative processes. Alternately, researchers enter an issue with a bit more curiosity, identify an early trend, and clamp onto it, using it as the presumptive theory for the remainder of the data. Either of these processes might result in data being force fit into categories or themes to support the a priori or developed theory, with some creative license taken by researchers to make (it appear that) excerpts fit. Quantitative researchers have this tendency as well - and sometimes think that if they can just somehow find the right model (and make the right adjustments to the data), the truth will be revealed. The alternative sometimes is that there is not a clear theory/trend, or there is one but it is not particularly novel, or there are trends that provide little or no guidance for development of surveys, programs or interventions, that are often the desired outcomes of exploratory efforts. Sometimes the answer is 'more research' although it might also be backing up a step and reconsidering everything you thought you knew. This leads me to think that one of the things lacking in research education is emphasis on the pleasure of working toward expertise in methods. If every study is viewed as a positive because of the practice opportunities it provides, then there might be disappointment but fewer things are seen as wasted efforts. Perhaps this shift toward a process rather than produce orientation might eventually diminish the emphasis on finding something/anything! I do not want to suggest wasteful, not justifiable research but I think we all need to be OK with ending up with ambiguous or ambivalent results now and then.
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AuthorI am Sheryl L. Chatfield, Ph.D, C.T.R.S. I am a member of the faculty in the College of Public Health at Kent State University. I also Co-coordinate the Graduate Certificate in Qualitative Research and I am a member of the Design Innovation Team at Kent State. Archives
February 2024
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