Constant Comparisons and

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to describe accomplishments and conundrums in a midcareer program of research with roots in the Strauss and Corbin seminars at UCSF in the early 1990s. My use of grounded theory methods in a succession of studies, all focused on family caregiving during cancer treatment, has generated theory on family caregiving skill, a phenomenon that was underconceptualized in the early 1990s. However, my successive grounded theory studies have raised a number of methodological conundrums pertaining to researcher perspective. I describe two here. First, how can a researcher develop grounded theory through successive studies without becoming so analytically enmeshed with previous study results that what gets noticed in new data is limited? Second, how strong a presence can a researcher's clinical perspective have in an analysis without violating the tenets of grounded theory? I argue that recent scholarship in grounded theory provides new ways of thinking about these conundrums.

Citation

Schumacher, K. (2008), "Constant Comparisons and", Denzin, N.K., Salvo, J. and Washington, M. (Ed.) Studies in Symbolic Interaction (Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 32), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 87-102. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0163-2396(08)32008-0