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12 THE LEGACY OF THE CHICAGO SCHOOL OF SOCIOLOGY
FOR FAMILY THEORY BUILDING
This paper is a chapter from a book of readings called Chicago School Traditions: Deductive
Qualitative Analysis and Family Theory Building, available on Amazon. The purpose of this
paper is to move thinking about qualitative methods and theory development beyond what
until now has been an either/or situation: Either researchers begin with a conceptual
framework or they do not. Both deductive qualitative analysis and grounded theory
originated within the Chicago School of Sociology and have much in common . In this paper, I
show how they work together so that students will have research projects that will satisfy
dissertation committees, researchers will have proposals that will be focused and fundable,
and researchers will have clear ideas about how to analyze data and write up findings.
Deductive qualitative analysis provides initial focus while also allowing for the identification
and development of new understandings. DQA is the best of both worlds.
The Legacy of the Chicago School of Sociology
for Family Theory Building
THE CHICAGO SCHOOL OF SOCIOLOGY has many enduring legacies. Among them are two
approaches to theory building: grounded theory and deductive qualitative analysis.
Grounded theory (GT) is a term Glaser and Strauss (1967) coined to describe research
whose purpose is the generation of theory. In GT, researchers go into the field as free of
prior assumptions as possible in order to “discover” hypotheses that “emerge” from data.
Researchers do not do literature reviews and construct conceptual frameworks before data
collection because, first, they do not know what the focus of their research will be, and,
second, a priori theories are thought to bias researchers and lead them to impose
“received” theory on data rather than to allow theory to emerge (Glaser, 1978; Glaser &
Strauss, 1967; Strauss, 1987; Strauss & Corbin, 1998).
Deductive qualitative analysis (DQA) is theory-‐guided research that typically involves
testing theories in order to construct more adequate theories (Gilgun, 2004, 2005a, 2007).
In DQA, researchers begin their studies with a literature review that becomes part of a
conceptual framework that researchers use to focus and guide research. Researchers often
develop hypotheses derived from the conceptual framework and test them as they do data
collection and analysis.
In using DQA, Researchers assume that initial theories are inadequate although likely
to be sensitizing (Blumer, 1954/1969), meaning theories help researchers to identify
aspects of phenomena they might otherwise not have noticed. The results of their research
add to existing theory and usually include suggestions for modifications of existing
theories. DQA can involve using theory as a focus and guide with or without hypothesis
testing. In this paper, I focus on hypothesis-‐testing DQA.
Entering the field with no clear focus and no hypotheses to test befuddles proposal
writing, problematizes data analysis and interpretation, and makes writing up of results
difficult. Few dissertation committees will agree to let students begin their research
without a literature review and a clear focus. Consistent with their training in logico-‐
deductive research, committee members also may want students to test hypotheses.
Furthermore, researchers seeking funding must be clear about what they intend to do and
how they will do it. Only rarely do funders sponsor projects where researchers want to
enter the field to find out what is going on.
GT poses other dilemmas. During data collection and analysis, its procedures plunge
researchers into what can become prolonged ambiguity, where they are in a state of
suspended decision-‐making, a state of not-‐knowing, and a state of not naming. In such a
state, they remain open to what is happening in research settings without coming to
conclusions. Some researchers find this liberating, others experience it as enervating, and
most, perhaps, experience it as both.
On a practical level, this state of suspension can gobble time, more time than most
students and more experienced researchers want to spend on research. Researchers who
are short of time may find DQA more compatible with their preferences. In addition,
researchers who prefer structure and clear direction may also find DQA compatible.
Because DQA begins with a literature review, a conceptual framework, and hypotheses to
test, it provides structure that is lacking in GT.
Writing up the results of GT research can be challenging. APA style of writing research
reports requires that literature reviews come before methods and findings. Yet in GT,
literature reviews are prepared after data are analyzed. Placing literature reviews at the
beginning of research reports is an inaccurate representation of how researchers
conducted their studies if they have done GT. Jiggering the write-‐up to fit APA style may
eat up time that once again researchers prefer to use in other ways.
Finally, there are many theories available to researchers that illuminate significant
human conditions and processes. I can see no reason why these theories should not be
used as starting points in research. For example, theories of gender identity can be
fruitfully applied to how men survivors of child sexual abuse construct their gender
identities over their life courses. This is an area where little is known but that a priori
theory can illuminate. In addition, such a study can contribute to further development of
theories of gender identity.
The purpose of this paper is to move thinking about qualitative approaches to theory
development beyond either/or dichotomies—either researchers begin with a conceptual
framework and test hypotheses or they do not. In this paper, I will show how these two
approaches work together, and, in fact, in practice may not be much different once the
research gets underway. Furthermore, I will show how DQA resolves many of the
dilemmas that GT poses for student research, for the work of more experienced
researchers, for researchers seeking funding, for analysis and interpretation, and for write-‐
up. Strauss (1987) took a step toward showing how GT can be used in proposal writing
when he advised researchers to do preliminary studies to identify a focus when they want
to write a proposal.
The Chicago School of Sociology
The Chicago School of Sociology originated in the last part of the nineteenth century at
the fledging University of Chicago and extended into the first third of the twentieth century.
The Chicago School brought together many trends. These include the primacy of faculty
research within universities, notions from nineteenth century German philosophy,
American pragmatism, symbolic interactionism, multi-‐method studies of communities ,
urban ethnographies, participant observation, life histories, quantitative sociology, the
sociology of work, and research on social organization and disorganization, on
communities, institutions, race relations, ethnicity, immigration, identity and adaptation,
families, and social deviance.
Faculty members and associates of the University from several disciplines contributed
to the intellectual milieu from which the Chicago School emerged (Bulmer, 1984; Fine,
1995; Gilgun, 1999d). Although there are qualities associated with the research practices
associated with the Chicago School in general, there were also many variations as
individual researchers carried out these practices.
While diversity is a given, it is possible to trace lines of inquiry and methodological
perspectives from their origins within the Chicago School until today. Thomas and
Znaniecki (1918-‐1920/1927) and Znaniecki (1934), for example, believed that the
foundation of social theory is empirical data and that theory must be linked to empirical
data. They criticized abstract theory that did not have these discernable links and theorists
who sought an “all-‐embracing synthesis,” but never tested the “truth” of their theories
(Znaniecki, 1934, p. 27). Their commitment to the notion of variation and standpoints—
they used that word—rule out grand synthesizing that assumes there is a single point of
view on any human phenomenon. They also expressed wariness of research that appeared
to have pasted a bit of theory after the fact on endeavors that were empirical, meaning they
have no explicit links to theory.
The roots of the Chicago School go back to nineteenth century German philosophy-‐-‐
Dilthey and Simmel with whom several of the faculty studied-‐-‐and to Booth's studies of the
London poor. In the US, the American pragmatism of William James and John Dewey joined
with these two European influences that shaped inspiring teachers such as Albion Small,
Robert Park, and Ernest Burgess and methodologists/researchers Florian Znaniecki, W. I.
Thomas, E. Franklin Frazier, John Dollard, and many others (Bulmer, 1984).
The applied research and social reform agendas of social workers Jane Addams,
Sophinisba Breckinridge, and Edith Abbott informed the thinking and practice of Chicago
researchers (Deegan, 1990). Early contributors to the Chicago School, including John
Dewey, W.I. Thomas, and Ernest Burgess, were regular participants in discussions and
seminars that took place at Hull House, which was a settlement house in the inner city of
Chicago that served primarily immigrant families and that was a hothouse of ideas,
research, advocacy, and social policy formulations intended to ameliorate social problems
and bring about social change.
The legacy of the Chicago School has been carried forward by what Fine (1995) has
dubbed the “second” Chicago School whose members include Herbert Blumer, Everett
Hughes, Louis Wirth, Blanche Geer, and Robert Redfield. If there is a second School, there is
also a third, fourth, and possibly fifth.
The third would be composed of researchers that members of the second School
taught, including Helena Znaniecka Lopata, Anselm Strauss, Gerald Handel, Erving Goffman,
Howard Becker, Norman Denzin, Robert Bodgan, Juliet Corbin, Kathy Charmaz, and many
others. Lopata is unique because Florian Znaniecki is her father and her teacher and part of
the first Chicago School. She also studied with Wirth, Blumer, and Hughes (Lopata, 1992),
members of the second.
The fourth and fifth Chicago Schools would be students and the students of the
students of this third generation of Chicago School researchers. Through these individuals,
the legacy of the Chicago School has extended beyond sociology to education, nursing,
social work, family studies, psychology, and communication and cultural studies, and other
fields, and is alive and well to this day. In fact, the Chicago School of Sociology may be a
misnomer because many contributors to the first and subsequent Schools were not only
sociologists, but philosophers, anthropologists, social psychologists, educators, and social
workers.
I have an intellectual and intuitive kinship with the Chicago School in that I share and
use many of its assumptions, methodologies, methods, substantive issues, and interests in
emancipatory research. I have a discipline-‐related kinship as well, based on the
contributions that social workers and family scholars made to the School. I have graduate
degrees and scholarly interests in both fields.
The Chicago School Roots
DQA and GT have their roots in the early writings of contributors to the Chicago School.
Often, as is the case with other practices associated with the Chicago School, researchers
did not name their approaches to theory development. They either consciously chose not
to label their approaches or they experienced them as so self-‐evident or taken-‐for-‐granted
that they did not do so. When they did name their approach to theory-‐building, the name
was analytic induction. The sampling procedure was called negative case analysis, which
appears to be a precursor of GT’s constant comparative method and theoretical sampling.
The research methods of the Chicago School were participant observation, interviews, and
various types of document analysis. Often, Chicago researchers also did surveys,
compilation of demographics, and social mapping (c.f, Bulmer, 1984; Gilgun, 1999d). In
addition, some studies associated with the Chicago School were descriptive and
phenomenological and were unconcerned with theory-‐building. Research methods and
descriptive studies are not part of this paper.
Znaniecki (1934)’s thinking about theory-‐building is particularly relevant to GT and
DQA. He argued that sociology “can be nothing but a strictly inductive science, meaning that
its foundation is “empirical data.” He reserved a major place for deduction as well: “no
science can live without deduction,” and he stated that “the method of phenomenological
analysis” is also part of sociology” (p. 218). He recognized the interplay between induction
and deduction. He noted that knowledge development is characterized by a “ceaseless
pulsation” that involves “movement from concrete reality to abstract concepts and from
abstract concepts back to concrete reality” (p. 25). He had no name that I know of for this
over-‐arching set of processes.
Znaniecki (1934) also gave a role to intuition. He said,
Scientific induction in its best form may be said to combine deduction and intuition
into a higher dynamic unity (pp. 220-‐221).
He may have discussed what he meant by intuition but I could not find it. By intuition,
he could have meant hunches, insights, and what researchers learn from their education
and from their professional and personal experiences, as well as the influences of personal
and professional values. Sometimes what practitioners know is so deeply embedded that
some forms of knowledge become intuitive, but this is an informed and educated intuition,
readily modifiable through experience. Intuition is a piece of how I and many other people
do research, just as intuition is part of what makes any practice possible (cf., Schön, 1983).
Znaniecki (1934) also advocated for the inclusion of variations and patterns in theory,
and the creation of theories that are bold, simple, and comprehensive and that classify,
organize, and systematize “a large mass of reliable empirical knowledge” (p. 257). To arrive
at classification, sociologists are to “abstract” defining or “essential” from each datum.
Znaniecki (1934) did not address what guides researchers in the processes of
abstraction. Logically, to be able to abstract concepts from “concrete instances” requires
some sort of prior conceptualization, which suggest that induction is not “pure,” but
requires prior knowledge. Perhaps this is the role that Znaniecki gave to intuition.
Znaniecki (1934) also said throughout the doing of science, hypotheses, or “relative
truths,” must be substituted for “absolute truths” (p. 221). This last statement established
the principle that theoretical formulations are not absolute but open to modifications.
In addition, Znaniecki (1934) distinguished between cause and antecedent conditions
that lead to consequences. He said that the determination of causation is impossible, and
even if we could, this knowledge would not add to knowledge of the activity being studied.
He appears to have been addressing the causal assumptions of behaviorism. In his own
words:
antecedent condition consequences without necessarily causing them to occur…
The application of the principle of causality to human life has usually been
regarded as conflicting with the ideas of spontaneity, creativeness and originality in
human activities….But we have eliminated problems of this kind as insoluble; we do
not ask whether the occurrence of a certain activity at a certain time and place is
causally determined or free, and if determined then how, because even if we did
answer (which we cannot do), this would add nothing to our knowledge of the activity
itself, which is entirely defined by the system it constructs, not matter ‘why’ it
constructs it. It is not that we ignore ‘stimuli,’ but that we find the influence of stimuli
altogether relative to pre-‐existing spontaneous tendencies (pp. 295-‐296).
Znaniecki (1934) recognized the significance of “contradictory instances” (p. 281) and
“exceptions” (p. 306) when researchers develop theory. Whenever such contradictory
instances occur, sociologists (presumably other scientists, too) then have two positive
conflicting theories to choose from and the choice can be decided only by introducing new
evidence—previously unknown or neglected elements, characters, connects or processes.
Thus, further research is made indispensable, and out of it emerge new hypotheses and
new problems (p. 282). These thoughts are similar to Popper’s (1969) definition of how
science proceeds: from conjectures, to refutations, to reformulations which become the
new conjectures, in an on-‐going process.
Chicago researchers gave a name to procedures that pay attention to and seek
“contradictory instances.” This is negative case analysis, which involves the search for data
that add additional dimensions or even contradict researchers’ emerging understandings
(Becker, 1953; Becker et al, 1961; Cressey, 1953; Gilgun, 1995, 2005a; Palmer, 1928,
Znaniecki, 1934). Palmer’s (1928) discussions of negative cases have authority because she
supervised much of the dissertation research students undertook at the University of
Chicago in the 1920s, and she also worked closely with Park and Burgess who gave overall
direction to the research of the first Chicago School (Bulmer, 1984).
Palmer described a comparative method of analysis whose outcome suggested the next
type of case to select. According to Palmer, once researchers complete a case, the findings
must be compared with another case. The next case might turn out to be similar to the case
or cases already analyzed, but it also could be a “negative case,” which she said is valuable
because it “usually results in a more accurate definition of a concept or a statement of some
scientific law” (p. 22). The term scientific law had a different meaning then than it does
now, especially within the Chicago School. Scientific laws are roughly equivalent to what
we would call theory today, and the theory was the kind that is always provisional, subject
to revision when evidence suggests a basis for revision, as mentioned previously.
Many of the ideas that Palmer discussed are present in other writings of the time and
are foundational for both DQA and GT. Strauss and colleagues (Glaser, 1974; Glaser &
Strauss, 1967; Strauss, 1987; Strauss & Corbin, 1998) who are the originators of GT, for
example, emphasize comparisons within and across cases in language that is similar to
Palmer’s and others who wrote at that time.
Commonalities
As products of the Chicago School, GT and DQA have many methodological principles in
common. They include
• theory development requires empirical research;
• an emphasis on understanding (verstehen) that comes about through researchers’
vicarious participation in the lived experiences (erlebnis) of research participants;
• persons can only be understood within their specific contexts;
• socio-‐historical contexts in which individuals live their lives influences individual
perspectives and actions;
• persons’ interpretations of their own actions and experience are a fruitful focus of
theoretical understandings;
• there are variations among individuals who are members of the same class of
persons living in the same historical era, even within the same institutions, such as families,
organizations, ethnic groups, and communities;
• theory enlightens significant social issues and is useful to bring about social change;
• the importance of integrating research findings with related research and theory;
and
• an emphasis on good writing that is accessible to the general public.
The everyday language that Park used to instruct his graduate students sums up many
of these principles. Park exhorted his students to get “the seat of your pants dirty"
(McKinney, 1966, p. 71), a phrase meaning researchers are to immerse themselves in the
worlds of the persons they want to understand. Park urged his graduate students to use
their imaginations to participate vicariously in the lives of persons researched (Faris,
1967). He suggested to Pauline Young (1932), one of his graduate students, to “think and
feel” like the residents of Russian Town, a community in Los Angeles that was home to
members of a Russian immigrant religious sect. Nels Anderson (1925) a Ph.D. graduate of
the sociology department, not only thought and felt like a homeless man, which was the
topic of his dissertation, but for a year he himself had lived “on the streets” as a participant
observer.
In more abstract language, Cooley (1930) expressed similar views when he said “our
knowledge of human beings is internally as well as externally derived” (p. 294). He viewed
“imagining what it would be like to be somebody else” a form of "the scientific method” (p.
295). Blumer’s (1969/1986) notion, based on Mead, of taking “each other's roles”
permeates Chicago School thinking and actions. These various views became part of what
eventually was known as symbolic interactionism.
Vivid writing was also part of the Chicago School tradition. Faculty encouraged
students to read novels and autobiographies. They conducted seminars on how to use
literary texts in research (Bulmer, 1984). Glaser (1978) followed this tradition when he
proposed “grab” as one of the characteristics of adequate grounded theory. Glaser and
Strauss (1967) advised researchers to write up results so that they are accessible to
“laymen.” I have written or co-‐written two books for the general public, available as e-‐
books at low prices (e.g., Gilgun, 2007; Gilgun & Sharma, 2007).
Consistent with Chicago School roots, the theories developed through DQA and GT are
meant to be applied; that is, they are used to inform and ameliorate social problems. Some
researchers consider the resulting theory to be middle-‐range theories (Merton, 1949), but
Strauss and colleagues believe that if similar processes are found across multiple settings
then this is an argument that the resulting theory is at a higher level of abstraction that
research generated through investigation of single settings. They call theory generated
within multiple settings formal theory. Single-‐setting theory is substantive theory (Glaser,
1978; Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss, 1987; Strauss & Corbin, 1998).
Relevant Methodologies
In addition, DQA as I am formulating it, acknowledges that language and social customs
mediate direct experiences and the interpretation persons make of direct experience, a
principle I associate with the Chicago School and that I have not identified in the writings of
Strauss and colleagues. These are constructivist and post-‐structuralist viewpoints that are
connected in some respects to symbolic interactionism, such as the idea that I.W. Thomas
articulated so well, namely, how individuals define situations shapes their experiences,
actions, and, over time, their entire lives. A well-‐known statement, sometimes called the
Thomas Theorem is, “If men [sic] define situations as real, they are real in their
consequences” (Thomas & Thomas, 1928, p. 572). Language is an important reciprocal
mediator between experience and meaning.
Znaniecki (1934) held views about language that are close to semiotics (Barthes, 1970;
deSaussure, 1976; Nöth, 1995) and also the concept-‐indicator model that is an important
part of the methodology of GT. For Znaniecki, words are forms of “social communication”
that indicate social “objects.” He preferred this open-‐ended sense of words as indicators
over the idea of encapsulating words in “conceptual meaning,” (p. 239), a stance consistent
with the notion of words and other texts as signs with multiple signifiers and with the idea
of open and closed texts found in semiotics and post-‐structuralism. The concept-‐indicator
model, along with the notions of first and second order concepts and also the notions of
concrete instances and abstract concepts are important ideas in GT and DQA.
I also link DQA with another Chicago School principle and that is the reciprocal
interactions between cultures and individuals, such as represented in the writings of
Cooley (1902), Thomas and Znaniecki (1918-‐20/1927), and Znaniecki (1934). This means
that cultural themes and practices shape individuals, but individuals also create culture and
local practices. These ideas have blossomed in life course theory (Bengston & Allen, 1993;
Giele & Elder, 1998). In my own research on violence, I am periodically astonished at the
interpretations and actions that some people derive from customs and beliefs that many
share, such as the principle of the repair of relationships when there are breakdowns. A
man told me that after he beat his eight year-‐old daughter, he felt so bad he made up with
her through sex. His unique interpretation of relationship repair has profound implications
for his daughter and his family, with ripple effects that create a variation of a widely help
practice.
GT and Theory-‐Building
Strauss, who received his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in sociology and who
sometimes called himself a social psychologist, was clear about the influence of pragmatism
and symbolic interactionism on his research perspectives, though, he gave little detail.
Glaser, too, acknowledged the influence of his graduate studies in sociology at Columbia
University and the thought of Paul Lazarfield and Robert Merton (Glaser & Strauss, 1967;
Strauss & Corbin, 1978).
Strauss and Glaser had in common the conviction that theory generation requires
empirical research and must distance itself from non-‐empirical grand theorizing and
impressionistic use of theory in research. Both were concerned about the “embarrassing
gap between theory and empirical research” (Glaser & Strauss, 1967, p. vii). “Furthermore,
they wanted to counter what they saw as an over-‐emphasis on theory verification and a
neglect of theory generation. In their own words
Currently, students are trained to master great-‐man theories and to test them in small
ways, but hardly to question the theory as a whole in terms of its position or manner of
generation. As a result many potentially creative students have limited themselves to
puzzling out small problems bequeathed to them in big theories (p. 10).
Their views fit with those of other sociologists of their time, such as Merton and
Lazarsfeld and consistent with the views of Znaniecki (1934) and Thomas and Znaniecki
(1918-‐1920/1927).
Lazarsfeld’s (1958, 1959) elaboration analysis is foundational to GT. Glaser studied
with Lazarsfeld at Columbia. Glaser and Strauss (1967) believed that elaboration analysis is
an essential step in theory development. This approach involves the specification of
contextual variables, sometimes called conditions, the specification of “the causes and
consequences” of associations between variables, the checking of spurious relationships,
and the “discovery” of intervening variables (p. 205). Causes were sometimes called
antecedents. The conditional matrix (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) is an updated version of
elaboration analysis. Elaboration analysis, too, is consistent with the thinking of many
contributors to the Chicago School, such as Znaniecki’s (1934) discussion of antecedents,
consequences, and conditions, as discussed.
Theoretical sampling in GT appears to be equivalent to negative case analysis, although
Glaser and Strauss (1967) say this is not so. Yet, the “basic question” involved in
theoretical sampling is similar to questions I ask when I do negative case analysis. These
are the basic questions in GT (emphasis in original):
what groups or subgroups does one turn to next in data collection? And for what
theoretical purposes? In short, how does the sociologist select multiple comparison
groups? The possibilities of multiple comparisons are infinite, and so groups must be
chosen according to theoretical criteria (p. 47).
Glaser and Strauss’s (1967) critique of negative case analysis is murky, but they appear
to say that the procedures of how researchers chose and examine negative cases are
inadequate because researchers specify their unit of analysis early in the research process
and do not do adequate comparisons. They hold up theoretical sampling as superior
because it is linked to constant comparison.
I may be missing something, but Znaniecki (1934) and Palmer (1928) talked at length
about the importance of negative cases, comparisons, and the importance of further
research to investigate contradictory evidence whose existence arises because researchers
do comparisons. In my research, my search for negative cases is systematic and based
upon reasoning connected to my desire to deepen or perhaps broaden the scope of the
theory that I am nursing along.
The argument of the superiority of theoretical sampling makes little sense from
another point of view, namely, that Strauss himself must have engaged in negative case
analysis when he worked with Becker (Becker, Geer, Hughes, & Strauss, 1961) on Boys in
White, a participant observation of a medical school. The chapter on design in Becker et al
highlighted negative cases as a basis for the development of theory. For example, here is
one statement:
We thought extensive coverage of both students and situations important. If we were
to carry on our analysis by successive refinements of our theoretical models necessitated
by the discovery of negative cases, we wanted to work in a way that would maximize our
changes of discovering those new and unexpected phenomena whose assimilation into
such models would enrich them and make them more faithful to the reality we had
observed (p. 24).
Strauss and colleagues used similar ideas to explain and justify theoretical sampling,
but they did not point out similarities. Theoretical sampling is a catchy term, especially to
researchers who want to develop theory, while negative case analysis sounds more
mundane. If Strauss and colleagues had thought they had to abandon the term negative
case for one that is more fitting, they might have linked the new term with the old. Instead
they mounted a confusing argument about how the two approaches to sampling differ,
which I think is not the case.
Finally, the notions of core concepts and selective coding (cf. Strauss, 1987; Strauss &
Corbin, 1998) guide researchers to do establish their focus and to elaborate it. In the doing
of GT, researchers identify what they hope is a core concept; that is, a concept that can
order many other concepts and result in an organized theory. To test whether a concept is
core, researchers do selective coding, meaning researchers re-‐code their data looking for
specific instances that provide evidence that the concept is indeed core.
Strauss and colleagues call this procedure dimensionalizing, and they suggest that
researchers use concepts from elaboration analysis to do so; e.g., conditions, antecedents,
consequences that they development in the conditional matrix. In my experience, selective
coding goes hand-‐in-‐hand with the conscious search for exceptions and for evidence that
undermines the possibility that the concept is core. To me, this is the search for negative
cases or instances.
Confusions
I find the writings of Strauss and colleagues about the roles of prior theory confusing
and even contradictory. On the one hand, researchers are supposed to “discover” concepts
and categories in the data and to eschew a priori assumptions and theory. On the other
hand, researchers are not tabula rasa, and they cannot therefore leave behind everything
they know or, presumably, intuit. Furthermore, they must be theoretically sensitive if they
are to “discover” what is in the data. It is anathema, however, to begin research with
logico-‐deductive theory, which they seem to define as theory that is developed
independently of the empirical world.
There appears to be no place in their thinking for logico-‐deductive research that begins
with theory, tests it, elaborates it, and even rejects it and formulates a new working theory,
based on analysis of interviews, observations, and documents. But, then again, this might
not be so. What, after all, are researchers supposed to do with all the grounded theory and
formal theory that has been generated in the last 40 years or so? After reading their
writings for more than 20 years, I realized that they see a place for a priori theory, as long
as it is grounded in the empirical world. They said
When the vital job of testing a newly generated theory begins, the evidence from which
it was generated is quite likely to be forgotten or ignored. Now, the focus is on the new
evidence that will be used for verifying only part of the theory. Furthermore, sociologists
will find it worthwhile to risk a period in their careers in order to test grounded theories,
since these theories are certain to be highly applicable to areas under study (pp. 28-‐29).
Elsewhere they said
Substantive theory in turn helps to generate new grounded formal theories and to
reformulate previously established ones (p. 34).
Glaser and Strauss (1967) believed that only theory that is “highly applicable to areas
under study” should be used to start new studies. In fact, Glaser and Strauss actually
believe that researchers can begin GT studies with a conceptual framework as long as it is
linked to a proposed field of study. Interestingly, Glaser and Strauss cite an early study that
Strauss and other colleagues completed (Strauss et al, 1964) and noted that this study
began with “a framework of idea known as ‘the sociology of work’ and ‘symbolic
interactionism’ (p. 157). In other parts of the book, too, Glaser and Strauss mention studies
that begin with “great-‐man theories.”
Glaser and Strauss (1967) believed that the procedures they proposed for the
generation of theory were generic and could be used in many types of research, including
positivistic quantitative studies. Glaser (1978) stated that GT is not part of any school of
thought, nor is it “wedded to Sociology or Social Science” (p. 164). Instead, he stated that
“Grounded theory is a general methodology for generating theory” (p. 164), which perhaps
it is. Yet, so much of what they said assumed symbolic interactionism, such as their
emphasis on process, interactions, social context, and the perspectives of informants. Their
ideas about theoretical sampling, their coding scheme, their notion of theoretical
saturation, and their suggestions that researches identify core concepts and build theory
around them probably can be used in many types of research.
More difficult to shear of their methodological assumptions are notions of immersion,
of identifying a focus after entering the field, of understanding persons and processes in
context, of viewing human beings as participating in on-‐going interactions” and the
conditional matrix, however, are infused with methodological precepts and assumptions.
On the other hand, it is possible that some of the elements of GT could be shorn of its
methodological perspectives and adapted to other types of research.
As mentioned earlier, general principles characterize the Chicago School of Sociology,
but how individual researchers use these principals may vary. This, too, is the case for GT.
As Strauss and Corbin (1997) noted, even researchers who well understand the many
aspects of GT may tap into only some of its aspects when they do their work.
DQA and Theory-‐Building
I coined the term deductive qualitative analysis, after trying out many others. My
experience had led me to conclude that logico-‐deductive qualitative research is an
important way to do research, and I was convinced that this approach required a name if it
were to be taken up by others. By deductive qualitative analysis, I mean that researchers
begin their studies with a conceptual framework that guides their research and from which
they often, but not always, derive hypotheses that they test and modify as they conduct
their research. When researchers use DQA for theory-‐building, they begin with hypotheses
that the test and modify (Gilgun, 2004, 2005a, 2007).
By conceptual framework, I mean prior notions and assumptions that are the
beginning points of research. Conceptual frameworks can be quite structured and
elaborate, as required by funders, dissertation committees, and the tenets of logico-‐
deductive research. Structured conceptual frameworks consist of an introduction, a
literature review, a statement of purpose, a statement of significance, a summary of main
points, a specification of hypotheses to be tested, and preliminary definitions of the
concepts that compose the hypotheses.
I strongly advocate for an elaborate reflexivity statement that comes after the
literature review where researchers discuss how their experiences and perspectives come
to bear on the proposed research. The reflexivity statement contributes to the summary
statement which distills main points and also contributes to the specification of the
hypotheses to be tested. The person of the researcher—values, perspectives, personal and
professional experiences—is central to how I do research and how I guide my students to
do research. This is consistent not only with some contemporary thought including
evidence-‐based practice as practice (Gilgun, 2005b), but also historically within the
Chicago School, as discussed previously.
In DQA, like analytic induction, conceptual frameworks can also be structured and
formal or unstructured and informal. In the latter case, the preliminary framework can be
composed of loosely formulated and even vague hunches based on personal or professional
experience or from general understandings of research and theory, or any combinations.
Whether the hypotheses are derived through structured or informal processes, researchers
assume these initial ideas are inadequate. The purpose of the research is to elaborate the
theory through testing them on cases and to change the theory when they have evidence to
do so.
By cases, I mean two general things. A case can be a unit of one, such as a new person to
interview or a new setting to observe. Cases are similar when they have qualities in
common. Cases are dissimilar when they have more than one quality that other cases do
not have. The term case in the context of negative case analysis can also refer to variations
within individual cases. An example is individuals who espouse respect for the rules and
laws. This is a general statement about themselves that subsequent discussion shows may
have many variations. In the course of being interviewed, these individuals describe
instances of law violations. These individuals often redefine their own behaviors as not
fitting the laws or rules. Some may even express disgust at persons who break the very
laws that they themselves do not respect. Incest perpetrators are a good example of this
type of variation (Gilgun, 1995; Gilgun & Sharma, 2007). Also note that this example
illustrates the “Thomas Theorem:” if persons define situations as “real, they are real in their
consequences.” Within-‐case variations in negative case analysis, then, can refer to negative
instances of a general observation within a particular case.
Like other qualitative researchers, researchers who do DQA for theory-‐development
use participant observation, interviews, and document analysis. They test their theories
continually and change them whenever they have evidence to do so. For example, early in
life history interview research on violence, I hypothesized that peer relationships are
protective against the development of violent behaviors. One case changed my thinking.
Cyril, in prison for attempted murder and sexual assault of his wife, had many friends when
he was an adolescent-‐-‐his high school football team. Other students and parents thought he
was a great guy and a great athlete. Cyril was an out-‐going, witty man. Yet, he and some
members of the team had a “Cherry Club,” where they got girls drunk, drugged them, and
then “had sex” with the incapacitated young women. The name of the group tells a lot
about their values regarding women and rape. Cyril carried that legacy forward to his
adult life and marriage. From this one story, I refined my theory of peer group membership
as protective. The question became, what kinds of values and behaviors do peer groups
espouse?
Pre-‐established concepts in DQA serve sensitizing purposes. This is both their strength
and weakness, strength precisely because they enlighten and thus serve as lenses with
which to view the world. The sensitizing purposes of concepts also represent weakness
because they may blind researchers to other significant aspects of phenomena (Blumer,
1954/1969) or they may attempt to “force” evidence into pre-‐existing categories (c.f.,
Glaser & Strauss, 1967). It takes skill for researchers to seek evidence that challenges
concepts with which they are familiar and flexibility to change what could be “pet” theories.
Researchers avoid finding what they intend to find through the conscious search for
evidence that contradicts their emerging findings. This, of course, is negative case analysis,
previously discussed.
Another way to think of sampling in deductive qualitative analysis is the idea of
maximum variability, where researchers attempt to sample a wide variety of cases in order
to arrive at a comprehensive theory. The sampling is purposeful and intentional. The
intention is based on researchers’ judgments about what kinds of cases might facilitate the
elaboration of the working theory. The result is a set of cases that is representative of many
variations. I prefer to select similar cases until I am satisfied that I have evidence that
supports my working hypotheses and then I select a series of cases that I believe will
provide negative instances. I continue this process until I am quite confident in my
working hypotheses, which I may have changed many times. Only toward the end of a
study do I start what I would call “haphazard sampling,” where I solicit a variety of cases
that may or may not be similar to cases that I have already studied. At that point, I am
looking for heterogeneity as a test of the adequacy of my understandings.
In any study, it is likely that other variations exist and are unaccounted for in the
sample and analysis. Researchers may have overlooked the variations that actually are in
the accounts of informants or they may not have sampled cases that show variations. If
they reanalyze their data they may identify variations they missed during previous
analyses. Thus, any theory based on DQA is flexible, intended to be modifiable when new
evidence becomes salient.
The Origins of DQA
Deductive qualitative analysis is an updating of analytic induction. I also subsumed
ideas that Strauss and colleagues put forth, especially in regard to coding. My first
exposure to analytic induction was Cressey’s (1953) description of how he developed his
theory of embezzlement, or the violation of financial trust. I was fascinated and delighted.
He showed how he continually changed his theory to include new dimensions of how
embezzlers account for their theft over the course of interviewing hundreds of them.
Inspired by Cressey (1953) and the potential I saw in analytic induction, I did my own
study using the procedures of analytic induction, where I tested and modified hypotheses
about the moral discourse of incest perpetrators (Gilgun, 1995).
The source of my hypotheses was moral philosophy, some of whose terms were
unfamiliar, such as “special regard for themselves.” I used that term because I found it in
moral philosophy, where my preferred term would have been self-‐centeredness, a term I
had used in an earlier study (Gilgun, 1988b). Use of an unfamiliar term led to a sense of
awkwardness or lack of fit with my own points of view. The concepts that composed the
hypotheses did, however, sensitize me and they guided my study. Not only had I done the
interviews that were the basis of the study, but I had also read the transcripts many times.
Only after I familiarized myself with the various possible meanings of justice and care was I
able to identify and categorize the concrete indicators of these concepts that were there all
the time. I simply was not sensitized to see them. I did not have theoretical sensitivity (cf.,
Glaser, 1978).
What I was able to see in the transcripts gave me evidence that led to the modification
of the existing hypotheses. In short, analytic induction worked. It helped me understand
phenomena better, and it also helped me test and modify theory. I realized analytic
induction could be helpful to researchers struggling with how they thought they were
supposed to do qualitative research.
Within a short time, however, I began to see problems with the term analytic induction.
First of all, analytic induction is as much deduction as induction, which, as the previous
discussion shows, is not news. Unfortunately, these terms have many different meanings, a
discussion of which is beyond the scope of this paper. Briefly, however, induction in a pure
sense may be impossible because, as Glaser and Strauss (1967) and many others have
pointed out, researchers perceptions are not tabula rasa but have many preconceptions,
only some of which are in awareness. Perhaps this is what Znaniecki (1934) meant when
he referred to intuition as having a role in induction and deduction.
A more loose definition of induction, however, fits some of the processes of analytic
induction. This loose definition would encompass the idea that researchers try to the
extent possible to put aside their own points of view and listen and hear and notice what
informants’ words and actions could mean within their own contexts. From my own
experience and from working with other researchers, however, researcher intuition and
assumptions influence what researchers notice and overlook. Attempting to connect to
others “imaginatively,” partially pulls researchers out of their own perspectives and opens
up the possibility of understanding how other people construct and experience their lives.
Researchers, then, approximate induction.
The term deduction as Glaser and Strauss (1967) and contributors to the first Chicago
School define it does not fit the procedures of analytic induction. These definitions
presuppose a rigidity of deductive processes that involves syllogisms: A general statement,
an observation that a particular case fits within the scope of the general statement, and the
conclusion that the particular case has the characteristics of the general case.
This understanding is different from the kind of deduction that builds upon the idea
that concepts and hypotheses not only are useful guides but they also are modifiable. This,
of course, is the kind of deduction that underlies analytic induction, DQA, and GT.
I had another reason for wanting another term besides analytic induction to name
what I think is an approach that begins deductively. Analytic induction has gone through a
long period of disrepute because some of its practitioners said or implied that the theory
that analytic induction produces is universal and causal (Gilgun, 2001), a view rejected by
many other who did not do analytic induction (cf., See Goldenberg, 1993; Manning, 1982;
Robinson, 1951; Vidich & Lyman, 2000).
Glaser and Strauss (1967) rejected analytic induction as a viable way of generating
theory not only because of its emphasis on “pre-‐existing conceptualizations” (p. 15) but
also because of its alleged claims about causality and universality. Whatever the
multiplicity of views that practitioners held of causality and universality, the term analytic
induction appears to have a spoiled identity (Gilgun, 2001).
For these reasons, I coined the term deductive qualitative analysis to indicate a form of
qualitative research that begins with a structure and provides a structure to research
processes, data collection, analysis, interpretation, and the writing up of results. This
clarity of structure is different from how practitioners had presented analytic induction in
the past. Also, DQA does not have baggage related to the terms causality and universality.
Instead, I link it to the idea of tentativeness and the social construction of human
understanding, points of view that are both consistent with some contemporary view
points and that also connect to the earlier writings of contributors to the Chicago School.
DQA as an Approach of Choice
DQA solves many of the problems that the writings of Strauss and colleagues have
raised. Imposing theory or “forcing” “empirical data” into preconceived categories are
serious issues. Negative case analysis guards against this by guiding researchers to seek
evidence that disconfirms their emerging understandings as well as to notice evidence that
supports their understandings. Therefore, in DQA researchers may abandon initial
hypotheses completely and construct new ones if they do not fit cases under investigation,
or they can continually modify working hypotheses to fit their interpretations of findings.
Other procedures besides negative case analysis help guard against imposition and
forcing. These include having more than one person conceptualize the research, do data
collection and analysis, and write up findings. In other words, bring multiple perspectives
to bear on the entire research enterprise so that those involve can challenge each other as
well as come to agreement when there is evidence to do so. Team analysis of qualitative
data is traditional in the Chicago style of research, including GT, and in most other kinds of
research as well. Graduate students routinely meet regularly to mutually aid each other in
the analysis of qualitative data. There are many ways to guard against the dangers that
concerned Glaser and Strauss (1967) and other methodologists of their time concerned
with theory development.
Having more than one person to analyze and interpret findings also challenges
researchers’ “intuitive” understandings and predispositions. It is unlikely that individual
researchers duplicate each others’ intuitions and perspectives. They have, as Thomas and
Znaniecki (1918-‐1920/1928) stated, their own standpoints that shape what they notice
and how they interpret what they notice. This helps to create theory that takes multiple
perspectives into account, including the perspectives of researchers and informants.
Another dilemma that GT poses and that DQA addresses is the desire of dissertation
committee members to have evidence that Ph.D. students have mastered a substantive area
that also will be the focus of their research. This often includes suggestions that faculty
members have for student researchers about existing research and theory that will assist
them in conceptualizing their research project. It is unreasonable to expect faculty
members to hold back on this. Since the days of the “master-‐theorists,” social scientists
have developed many middle range theories and research that substantiate these theories.
For many faculty, it is self-‐evident to expect students to base their research on
“preconceived” theories and research.
In addition, the procedures of DQA are familiar to them. With DQA, researchers follow
similar procedures to those associated with logico-‐deductive researcher and that is to
derive hypotheses from theory and research. The next step is to test them qualitatively, or
use the theory to guide the general focus of the research. Theory as guide aids in the
development of interview questions, observational guidelines, and guidelines for document
analysis. In addition, as mentioned, theory and prior research serves sensitizing functions,
an idea that is familiar to researchers from many different traditions.
To stay within a Chicago School tradition, however, researchers would also
conceptualize their research within the traditional Chicago School’s methodological
principles. This may be the bigger challenge for researchers familiar with logico-‐deductive
procedures, which typically are not associated with these principles but with much more
distance between researchers and their informants. They typically do not seek in-‐depth
information about human experience and individuals’ definitions of situations. They also
are unaccustomed to the flexibility inherent in continually modifying hypotheses over the
course of data collection and analysis.
In short, faculty members want to know what students are going to do, they want
assurances that students understand the situations they wish to research, and that
students have the expertise to carry out what they want to do.
These concerns are similar to concerns of funders who reject proposals whose
conceptualizations are fuzzy and whose procedures lack detail. Funders may not have
concerns about imposing theory or forcing data, but because they have many other
requirements that force researchers into a logico-‐deductive mode. They hold the purse
strings qualitative researchers have little choice in terms of how they present their
proposals (Gilgun, 2002).
Using the structured approach that DQA offers is part of a possible solution to the
problem of how qualitative researchers can get funding. Twenty years ago or more, Strauss
(1987) recognized the necessity of structure in proposal writing. He wrote, “No proposal
should be written without preliminary data collection and analysis” (p. 286). Therefore,
the open-‐endedness of GT procedures could serve as preliminary research. Strauss (1987)
also recommended that researchers identify the codes that will be the basis of their
analysis. Doing so clarifies the focus of the research. This suggests that practical
considerations gave way to Strauss’s commitment to entering the field with an openness as
to what researchers might find. He was well aware of funders’ demands for clarity of focus
and procedures and researchers’ competence to do the research. In fact, what Strauss
(1987) recommended is similar to what DQA offers researchers who seek funding.
Strauss’s views here suggest that he could consider a study to be GT even when it begins
with a conceptual framework and tentative hypotheses.
I often suggest to Ph.D. students that they do informational interviewing and
preliminary studies in order to find a focus for their research, which is a kind of
preliminary research. Then they are positioned to do a literature review, write reflexivity
statements, develop hypotheses, and define concepts provisionally. They then have a set of
preliminary codes and some feasible ideas about how to organize findings. These will be
refined and elaborated upon in the course of doing the study, but they work continually
within a flexible framework that allows them to be focused and also to use their time
efficiently.
There are other advantages to having literature reviews in preparation for theory-‐
guided/theory-‐testing qualitative research. They are a source of sensitizing concepts,
which also serve as part of the coding scheme. Having a priori codes guides researchers to
look for particular aspects of phenomena. For example, in a study using DQA that I just
completed on unkind deeds and cover-‐ups in everyday life (Gilgun, 2007), concepts from a
literature review on lying enhanced and made more efficient my own theory testing and
theory elaboration. Without the literature review, I might have missed important aspects
of both unkind deeds and cover-‐ups, and it would have taken me far longer to identity
those aspects that are important to my theory as I conceptualized it initially and as I
developed it over the course of testing it.
In addition, the use of a priori codes may also decrease the time researchers require to
do a qualitative study. With a focus from the beginning, researchers do not have to
immerse themselves in the field to find their focus. They already have one. They will,
however, immerse themselves in order to refine and elaborate their focus, or even to find
one that is more suitable.
In some ways, having prior codes increases researchers’ theoretical sensitivity, while
negative case analysis and the help of others in data collection, analysis, and interpretation
can assure some degree of fit between conceptualizations and the material on which the
conceptualizations are based. Such procedures also ensure that researchers challenge their
a priori codes, find unanticipated dimensions of these codes, reject some, and formulate
new ones.
Literature reviews and pre-‐established codes also provide the structure that some
researchers want and may even require to keep them focused. Some researchers more than
other thrive on structure. There is still some ambiguity in doing DQA, but far less than in
doing GT, where the possibilities for focus could be endless and hard to pin down. Prior
codes provide an early focus, while also guiding theory testing.
Finally, DQA enhances report writing. APA style is an outgrowth of logico-‐deductive
research. The structure of an APA style report fits with the sequence of events in which
researchers engage in the course of doing the research. The report can be a more or less
faithful account of what researchers did in the order in which they did it.
Similarities and Differences
As I reflect upon my experiences as a researcher, I realize that in every study, even
when I thought I was doing GT, I had some sort of conceptual framework. For example,
when I began my research on violence more than 25 years ago, my conceptual framework
was gender role socialization and theories of homogamy. I chose this framework for a
couple of reasons. First, I wanted to understand the life histories of men who had
perpetrated child sexual abuse. I chose men because they are much more likely than
women to perpetrate.
Second, I wanted a comparison group that was similar to the men but that was
composed of persons who had not perpetrated child sexual abuse. Research told me that
most women married to men who perpetrate child sexual abuse divorce. I reasoned that if
wives stayed with husbands who perpetrated they must have something in common with
their husbands. Thus, I interviewed perpetrators and their wives who had stayed with
them after the disclosure of child sexual abuse. As part of my conceptual framework, I
chose the theory of homogamy, which in many marriages persons marry because they
share personal qualities and experiences.
Therefore, I had a conceptual framework with which I began a decades-‐long research
project that I thought was a grounded theory study. I have read and advised many other
qualitative studies that begin with conceptual frameworks that state they are doing
grounded theory. Some of them did not test theory but instead used theory to guide their
research. Did these researchers do an end run around the precepts of grounded theory?
Did I? Did they do a form of deductive analysis? Did I?
Both appear to be the case. We did deductive research in the loose sense, and we also
did grounded theory as Strauss and colleagues conceptualize it. As I have only realized in
the writing of this paper, Glaser and Strauss (1967) have two different points of view about
prior frameworks. They do a poor job of linking their polemics (their word) about “great-‐
man theories” to how researchers actually can test grounded theories, theories linked to
the empirical world, and even “great-‐man theories.” They have no difficulty with the use of
a priori theory that is not grounded theory to generate theory when the theory is linked to
findings. They wrote that researchers can apply “categories”—meaning concepts—to
findings only if they see that they concepts are linked to the emerging theory.
Putting aside their now outmoded thinking that theory somehow emerges rather than
is construction and interpretation, the defining feature of GT appears to be the injunction
that theory fit findings and that finding theory that fits requires going into the field and
seeing what emerges. As discussed already, what “emerges” is a construction and what is
constructed already is linked to a priori intuition, subliminal theoretical sensitivity, or
other mysterious sources of what researchers notice and overlook.
It seems much simpler to do preliminary studies, find a focus, do a literature review,
compose the reflexivity statement, etc, and then do the research. After all the years I have
done this kind of research, these procedures are logical to me and even self-‐evident.
Strauss and colleagues may have viewed their own writings and how they did research in
similar ways, but I find their work to be full of terrific ideas and also contradictory,
confusing, and sometimes ignorant of the shoulders on which they have stood.
Figuring Out What is Going on
Finally, in the spirit of full disclosure, there is little I like better than figuring out what
is going on in a research setting, but such projects can take years. Thus, I do not
recommend these kinds of projects to graduate students for dissertation projects. I do not
recommend them to other researchers who have academic positions unless they have the
time and the inclination.
I currently have a project that involves figuring out what is going on. I am developing a
theory of change for a program called All Children Excel (ACE), whose goal is early
intervention to keep children with serious conduct issues from entering the juvenile justice
system and going on to life-‐long criminal careers. My charge from stakeholders was to
figure out how the program works. A program is a complex organism, and ACE is
composed of many interacting and mutually influencing elements: the children and the
children’s interactions with their families and with persons in the myriad ecologies in
which the children and their families live their lives. Not only is my task to describe the
interactions of persons in these multiple, interacting ecologies, but I also am to show how
the interventions that the ACE case managers implement are associated with various
outcomes for children and families.
In addition, I am to identify and document the research and theory base of the
program, the professional expertise of program staff, the personal and professional
experiences and values of program staff, and how program staff interact with the various
collaborators. I am leaving a few things out, but this is the general idea. I have been
working on this project for more than two years and may have some products to share in
another two years.
I have another project that is more than 20 years old and that also involves figuring out
what is going on. This is research on interpersonal violence. I have written many articles
from this research because I quite easily found a focus for each of them in the form of core
concepts, and I built my articles around the concepts (cf., Gilgun, 1986, 1988a, 1988b,
1988c, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1994, 1996a, 1999a, 1999c, 2005a; Gilgun & Connor, 1989;
Gilgun & Reiser, 1990; Gilgun & Abrams, 2005; Gilgun & Sharma, 2007). On the other hand,
I still do not have a theory that organizes a comprehensive theory of interpersonal violence,
although I have moved in that direction for many years (e.g., Gilgun, 1996b, 1999b, 2000). I
was astonished this summer, however, when I wrote a 180-‐page book on child sexual
abuse in collaboration with a Ph.D. student (Gilgun & Sharma, 2007). I think I was so
saturated and immersed in the material that when I put myself in a position of wanting to
write up something that could be of help to survivors and their families, I was able to pull
out core concepts fairly easily, with the brainstorming help of Mr. Sharma, who is
knowledgeable about child sexual abuse and effective in prevention efforts in India.
My final modifiable thought regarding prior conceptions is that Strauss and colleagues
used them themselves, railed against them at times, and suggested that researchers use
them when they want funding. My other final modifiable thought is that there is a place in
research to enter the field and to find out what is going on. Researchers can identify many
unanticipated social processes. My final modifiable question is, what is the difference
between GT and DQA? My final preliminary answer is I hope that the procedures of DQA
are more clear than those of GT.
Discussion
The Chicago School of Sociology has a far-‐reaching legacy that can inform and enhance
theory-‐building on families and other systems of interacting elements. Contemporary
versions of the Chicago approach to theory-‐building are deductive qualitative analysis
(DQA) and grounded theory (GT). Strauss and colleagues, who originated GT, wanted
researchers to discover new theory and not simply test “great-‐man” theories that they
believed were disconnected from the concrete instances of phenomena as they exist in the
empirical world. They wanted to promote the discovery of theory that was grounded in the
empirical world. In this quest, the originators of GT were well within the traditions of the
Chicago School.
Ironically, analytic induction with its procedure for developing theory called negative
case analysis was already established in the Chicago School. Without acknowledging,
perhaps because they did not know, the places of analytic induction and negative case
analysis, Strauss and Glaser created what appeared to be a new way to do theory
generation. Like many other methodologists of their time, they rejected negative case
analysis and analytic induction without understanding it.
This would have been all right, though not indicative of rigorous scholarship. Strauss
and colleagues kept many of the older traditions alive and introduced many creative and
important ideas. The downside of the work of Strauss and colleagues is the wide-‐spread
belief and actual practice that researchers cannot begin their studies with conceptual
frameworks and initial theories and hypotheses. Strauss and colleagues appeared to have
qualified this principle, but the overall impression is they forthrightly discouraged the use
of initial conceptual frameworks. What they meant is difficult to ferret out because their
statements about the role of prior theory are confusing, disconnected, and contradictory.
Their polemics (their word) against testing received theory has been the dominant
interpretation of what grounded theory is.
This common understanding of the GT approach to theory-‐building is problematic for
PhD students who have to have the approval of dissertation committees to procedure, for
researchers who seek funding for qualitative research, and for the time needed to do the
research, not to mention that state of ambiguity that can last for quite a while until
researchers find their focus and then begin to elaborate and dimensionalize their core
concepts.
I coined the term deductive qualitative analysis, not to introduce more confusion into
theory-‐building in the Chicago tradition, but to respond to issues that grounded theory
raised and to do an end run around the spoiled identity that has invalidated analytic
induction. DQA structures and focuses research, builds upon many of the assumptions that
are part of GT, and is consistent with the GT approach to data analysis and interpretation,
particularly the coding scheme and the emphasis on the identification and
dimensionalization of core concepts.
Theory-‐building is of high importance in any field. The Chicago School offers a
treasure trove of ideas for theory-‐building and also provides a tradition of research
methods and methodologies that places theory-‐building on a solid conceptual foundation.
These ideas are simultaneously generative and flexible, adaptable enough to be changed
when there is evidence to do so and generative enough to stimulate new, creative thinking.
In the final analysis, I do not care what researchers call studies that begin with
conceptual frameworks and whose research goals are to use frameworks as sensitizing
concepts and/or test hypotheses derived from the frameworks so as to elaborate upon—or
trim—theories. What I do value is that researchers have access to clear descriptions about
how to do this kind of work. The term deductive qualitative analysis works for me. I have,
however, read the writings of Strauss and colleagues long enough to finally realize that
they do not really say do not do this. They roared so hard against the way some people use
prior theory, however, that the term grounded theory may never have meanings that
suggest beginning studies with conceptual frameworks.
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