Writing My Grounded Theory
MAIS 640 – ePortfolio Assignment Three
In this post you’ll discover:
An update on where I’m at in the GT process.
Some notes about Writing My Grounded Theory Report.
Where I'm Coming From
At the end of the last ePortfolio assignment, a nascent grounded theory had emerged, and I was looking forward to the prospect of writing it into a report that would help test and refine it.
As Charmaz (2014) argues, “the bottom-up approach gives grounded theory its strength, when the researcher asks analytic questions of the data. The researcher’s subjectivity provides a way of viewing, engaging, and interrogating data” (247). With that dictum in mind, the following theory is a postulate, based on my own understanding of the process of being homeless, that I will test against the data throughout the writing of my research report.
The Process Theory of Homeless Individual Change
The process of individuals existing in a homeless condition or exiting homelessness relies on three conceptual abilities, all of which must all be developed and engaged with in order to allow change: they must have the ability to objectify and assert what values should exist in their situation to make it better, they must have the ability to self-distance from their pasts and experiences to change their perspectives on them, and they must have the ability to incorporate these knowledges into their self-narrative to change their situation.
Frustrations
After reading through the course materials, it seemed like there were as many different ways of writing up the research report as there were research subjects themselves. Woods and Sikes, (2022), in their introduction to Successful Writing for Qualitative Researchers, discuss the ways in which creative writing genres like prose or poetry can be used in qualitative research writing, and encourage the writer to pursue writing that provides, “accuracy of, and depth of, understanding, and evocative ways of conveying that to others which keep faith with that accuracy and depth through new modes of inquiry” (9). At first glance, this seems to recommend writing styles that don’t maintain academic rigour and adherence to the data. In a progress report to the course professor, I admitted that I had some concerns about approaching it as a creative writing project, because in the past I had tended toward a discursive and narrative style of writing.
I also felt some trepidation about what seemed to be recommendations to take a more positivist and confirmatory approach to writing. In “Stage 3: Reworked plan” (49), Woods advises the writer to identify the productive and less-productive areas, and to “strengthen the less productive by re-examining or seeking new data” (ibid.). I understand the advice to re-examine weaker aspects of the analysis, but the advice to seek new data seems to run counter to the Grounded Theory dictum that analysis needs to flow from the data and seems to reflect a more scientific and objectivist approach to theorizing and finding data afterwards to support the theory. Later on the same page, he suggests that, “the Conclusion might be partly written as you go along” (ibid.). Again, from a surface reading, this suggests that the conclusion of a research paper might be pre-determined, and the danger that any data or any data analysis done throughout the paper might be tailored to fit a pre-determined conclusion instead of being the source of the conclusion.
Another aspect of Woods advice that seemed potentially problematic was something noted by another student in their analysis of Woods’ work, who noted in their online postings, “Rather than hiding uncertainty or messiness, Woods encourages researchers to write transparently about decisions, dilemmas, and interpretive moves.” At the time, prior to engaging in substantive drafting, this advice seemed counterintuitive. If the final research report was to accurately and transparently reflect all the ‘decisions, dilemmas, and interpretive moves’ experienced throughout the grounded theory process, there would be no room left for anything else.
Temptations
Part of the way into writing the report, an idea popped into my head about how to frame it with a metaphor. This approach seemed, at the time, consistent with Woods’ advice about using apt rhetorical devices to engage the audience. I thought about how the theme of the paper seemed to be developing along the lines of encounters – my encounters with marginalized individuals during the interview process, a secondary encounter with the meaning of their interviews during the coding and categorization of the interviews, and a third encounter between ‘them’ as homeless individuals and ‘us’ as individuals who thought ourselves distinctly different. Playing with this metaphor was engaging for a while, but as the grounded theory developed through writing out the report, it became limiting as well, so in the end it was discarded.
Fears and Illuminations
As noted in my final research report itself, part of the way through the process the dreaded question of “so what” came into my mind. Much of the development of theoretical concepts up to that point had led to the idea that self narrative was important for homeless individuals. The problem of relevance haunted me for several days and questions multiplied: Didn’t everyone experience the psychological processes associated with these categories and sub-categories? How were people experiencing homelessness any different that anybody else? If that was the case, what special relevance did these theoretical concepts have for homeless individuals? If there was no specific relevance to homeless individuals, how did these theoretical concepts help explain their experience and situation in particular? While these questions seemed daunting, at some point in the process of asking questions, I remembered something I had noticed many years ago that is of particular relevance to people experiencing homelessness: the foundational importance of self narrative to their identities.
This not only helped me justify the relevance and importance of the theoretical concepts being developed, but also helped me hone the theory itself. It became not just a theory, but also an analytical tool for looking at how the self narratives of people experiencing homelessness could be studied to determine where they were on a spectrum from being fully immersed in their situations, and therefore unlikely to be able to change them, to being able to objectify themselves and their experiences and therefore more capable of moving beyond them and reintegrating into society.
The Dreaded Literature Review
I really had no idea how to incorporate a literature review into an assignment that was already too long. It seemed from my previous reading and analysis of articles about homelessness that nothing had been similar to what I was attempting in this project. Nonetheless, it was critical to do some work in the direction of determining if other studies had found similar results. So I reviewed the abstracts of multiple articles.
Two articles that seemed close in subject matter were from Mabhala et al. (2017), and Rayburn, R. & Guittar, N. (2013).
In their 2013 qualitative research study of individuals in shelters in central Florida, “This Is Where You Are Supposed to Be: How Homeless Individuals Cope with Stigma,” Rayburn & Guittar conducted and analyzed a series of unstructured interviews to study the way homeless individuals dealt with the stigma of homelessness. Basing their work on Erving Goffman’s concept of stigma (1963), they found that subjects practiced distancing to distinguish themselves from their peers and surroundings, and that subjects objectified aspects of homelessness and claimed agency and autonomy relative to their situation. However, nowhere in their study do they recognize that the strategies used by the homeless subjects are universal, and applicable to the homed as well. This limits their study to a descriptive analysis of narratives, and not a theory that might provide strategies for change.
Moving on to an example closer in approach to this one, the constructivist grounded theory study of Mabhala et al. (2017), used a similar technique of interviewing people who were experiencing homelessness, coding and analyzing the transcripts, and developing categories, theoretical concepts, and a grounded theory. In their study, “Social conditions of becoming homeless: qualitative analysis of life stories of homeless peoples,” the goal was to study how peoples’ social conditions when growing up related to their current situation. They studied twenty-six participants and concluded that the respondents believed their childhoods did affect the “reduced life opportunities available to them” (15). Their grounded theory was descriptive, and generative perhaps for policy makers, but not for the individuals involved.
The studies above exemplify characteristics of many such studies I’ve reviewed in other courses. Rayburn & Guittar (2017) confirmed some of the theoretical concepts introduced by Goffman but offered very little new in the way of generative theory. Mabhala et al. (2017) confirmed the power of the structures homeless individuals grew up within, but, again, without offering anything new in the way of theorization about how homeless individuals might move out of their situation. Both studies contribute to the common misconception that there is a profound difference between the “homeless” and the “homed”, and that studying their pasts or their strategies for avoiding specific characteristics of their present provide a comprehensive understanding of their situation or their minds.
Other articles seemed to relate to themes and structures. I list them here only to demonstrate that point.
- Wise, C., & Phillips, K. (2013). Hearing the Silent Voices: Narratives of Health Care and Homelessness. Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 34(5), 359–367. https://doi.org/10.3109/01612840.2012.757402
An analysis of 11 interviews with homeless individuals engaged with the healthcare system. This analysis used Mental Health Nursing as a framework, and determined that “The health care experiences of the participants could be understood only when viewed within the context of homelessness. The four polar themes that emerged from the analysis—same/different, fair/unfair, freedom/barriers, and choice/no choice—” (abstract), and were therefore highly contextual and focused. - TORCK, D. (2001). Voices of Homeless People in Street Newspapers: A Cross-Cultural Exploration. Discourse & Society, 12(3), 371-392. This “is a discourse analysis of four street newspapers from Europe and the United States” (abstract). So an analysis of how street newspapers handed individual voices, not of the voices themselves outside of the framework of the newspapers.
- Walsh, C. A., Lorenzetti, L., St-Denis, N., Murwisi, P., & Lewis, T. (2016). Community voices: Insights on social and human services from people with lived experiences of homelessness. Review of Social Sciences, 1(2), 27-41. This “is a participatory action research study conducted in collaboration with people with lived experiences of homelessness in Calgary, Alberta to gather insights into service provision” (abstract). Very much focused and conceptualized around service provision, this did not seem like a grounded theory approach, and the focus groups used to gather transcripts were facilitated with the service provision focus.
- Schuster, M. L. (2022). Homeless voices: Stigma, space, and social media. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
A book that takes primarily a rhetorical analysis of books, blogs, and publications by individuals who are homeless to identify themes in the literature and develop ideas for advocacy - Glasser, N. (1999, August). Giving voice to homeless people in policy, practice and research. In Practical lessons: The 1998 national symposium on homelessness research(pp. 5-1). The Depts.
A book that takes a primarily analytical approach to studying literature and case studies about consumer (service user) led and driven programs in the homeless and mental health sector. - Massie, R., Machin, R., McCormack, F., & Kurth, J. (2018). Having a voice: A collaborative research project exploring the challenges and assets of people experiencing homelessness. Journal of Integrated Care, 26(4), 342-352.
“Peer researchers with lived experience of multiple and complex needs conducted semi-structured interviews/surveys with 18 participants (eight individuals experiencing homelessness and street activity and ten professional stakeholders). The authors of the paper conducted a thematic analysis of the data,” (abstract). - Williams, S., & Stickley, T. (2011). Stories from the streets: people’s experiences of homelessness. Journal of psychiatric and mental health nursing, 18(5), 432-439.
A study that interviewed eight homeless people, and “qualitative data were thematically analysed and the following themes are reported: identity, family breakdown, rejection and stigma, illicit substances and hope” (abstract). - Boydell KM, Goering P, Morrell-Bellai TL. Narratives of Identity: Re-presentation of Self in People Who Are Homeless. Qualitative Health Research. 2000;10(1):26-38. doi:1177/104973200129118228
Used a structured and semi-structured interview process, with qualitative coding done on interviews with 29 individuals to assess themes and common characteristics.
Concluding Concluding Thuoghts
Stebbins (2001) notes that the research report writer should take especial care to review their conclusion, because writers often forget its importance after labouring through the entire Grounded Theory process.
This conclusion, I’m afraid, is going to fall into that trap. After going through the entire process, and adding what I hope is an adequate conclusion to my research report, I don’t quite know how to do that with this ePortfolio.
I hope I’ve arrived at something of interest and use in the research report, which will be submitted for marking soon. This process was eye-opening and fulfilling for me, and I appreciated the engagement with other students.
Works Cited
Charmaz, Kathy. (2014). Constructing grounded theory (2nd ed.). Sage.
Mabhala et al. (2017) “Social conditions of becoming homelessness: qualitative analysis of life
stories of homeless peoples.” International Journal for Equity in Health. 16:150. DOI 10.1186/s12939-017-0646-3.
Rayburn, R. & Guittar, N. (2013) “This Is Where You Are Supposed to Be: How Homeless
Individuals Cope With Stigma.” Sociological Spectrum, Mid-South Sociological Association Volume 33, 2013 – Issue 2.