Grounded Theory Methodology: Key Principles

Grounded theory (GT) is a common qualitative methodology in health professions education research used to explore the “how”, “what”, and “why” of social processes. With GT researchers aim to understand how study participants interpret reality related to the process in question. However, they risk misapplying the term to studies that do not actually use GT methodology. We outline key features that characterize GT research, namely iterative data collection and analysis, constant comparison, and theoretical sampling. Constructivist GT is a particular form of GT that explicitly recognizes the researcher’s role in knowledge creation throughout the analytic process. Data may be collected through interviews, field observations, video analysis, document review, or a combination of these methods. The analytic process involves several flexible coding phases that move from concrete initial coding to higher level focused codes and finally to axial coding with the goal of a conceptual understanding that is situated in the study context.