R ESEARCH DESIGN

Within these relations existing among social research, substantive theory and formal theory is a design for the cumulative nature of knowledge and theory. The design involves a progressive building up to facts, through substantive to to grounded formal theory. To generate substantive theory we need many facts for the necessary comparative analysis; ethnographic studies, as well as direct gathering of data, are immensely useful for this purpose. Ethnographic studies, substantive theories and direct data collection are all, in turn, necessary for building up by comparative analysis to formal theory. This design, then locates the place of each level of work within the cumulation of knowledge and theory, and therefore suggests a division of labor in sociological work.

(Glaser & Strauss 1967, 35.)

The objective of this research is to present a substantive grounded theory that describes and explains how UAS bachelor degree students experience the planning stage of their thesis in the specific context of a mandatory thesis planning course in an international bachelor of business program in the metropolitan region in Finland. The focus is on studying data that shows the ways students verbalize their experience. The philosophical position taken is akin to the focus on the research subject’s lived experience as highlighted in phenomenological research (Smith, Flower &

Larkin 2009) and heuristic research (Moustakas 1990). As a consequence, epistemologically the

“truth” is a highy subjective concept. Truth is what the respondents perceive, feel, think, say and what their behavior implies. The methodological approach follows the qualitative interpretive paradigm, which aims to “understand the subjective world of human experience” (Cohen, Manion

& Morrison 2011, 17). Interactionism and pragmatism form an important foundation for the GT methodology. Interactionism stresses that individuals interpret and give meanings to each other’s actions before reacting to them – thus, an individual never responds to the other person’s act per se. (Corbin & Strauss 2008, 2.) Pragmatism highlights that knowledge is created through the action and interaction of self-reflective beings, typically, in a problematic situation demanding a new kind

of solution. Knowledge and truth are temporal and contingent in nature as they always depend on the process experienced, the operative perspectives of the knower, and the cultural context and collective the knower knows in. (Corbin & Strauss 2008, 2–5.) The interactionistic and pragmatist nature of the reactions and the knowledge of the stakeholders to the thesis planning process studied here become clearly visible in the substantive grounded theory presented in chapter 3.

Typical levels of analysis in sociological research are the individual level, the interactive level of groups, and the collective level of organizations, societies or cultures (Cohen, Mannion &

Morrison 2011, 196). This piece of educational research focuses on the experiences of an individual within the varied processes of bachelor thesis planning.

Qualitative methods are well suited to studying individual and social human experiences in the field of educational research. This fit arises from the characteristics of qualitative research: it is naturalistic, context-oriented, inductive, descriptive, and concerned with processes and meanings (Bogdan & Knopp Biklen 1998, 4–7, 39.) Glaser (1992, 12) recommends the use of qualitative methods “to uncover the nature of people’s actions and experiences and perspectives which are as yet little known in the world of research products”. GT, specifically, is suited to study phenomena deficient in prior study and theoretical knowledge, especially, when such knowledge is needed to facilitate professional decision-making (Koskennurmi-Sivonen 2007). This study aims to describe and explain the variety of experiences students have while writing their thesis plans. This information can help professional decision making in educational design. Understanding students’

successes and difficulties can lead to improved pedagogic interventions to support and scaffold the student’s process before, during and after the thesis planning stage.

In their seminar work, “The discovery of grounded theory: strategies for qualitative research” (Glaser & Strauss 1967, 1–6), the creators of the GT method suggest that the usefulness of a theory is dependent on how it was generated, and that, specifically, inductively developed theories from social research are likely to be better in terms of how they fit with and work (explain and predict) the phenomenon studied. Similarly the adequacy, usefulness, logical consistency, clarity, parsimony, density, scope and integration of a grounded theory are likely better. The emergence of GT was premised on two opposites. The first was contrast between traditional logico-deductive theories based on a priori assumptions as opposed to inductive GT method based on the emergence of a theory and its components from data. The second opposition dealt with the objectives of research, on whether the focus is on the traditional verification of theories as “the chief mandate for excellent research” as opposed to the the generation of theories without the traditional testing and verification processes. GT relies on inductive and abductive processes to

generate theory, and establishes reliability through criteria, such as, fit and working rather than testing and validation.

The study was conducted, as much as possible, in the spirit of original GT as presented by Glaser and Strauss (1967), and later on refined by Glaser (1978, 1992) in order to ensure that the substantive theory truly “emerged from the data” in Glaser’s meaning of the term. Firstly, an essential requirement for GT as a qualitative approach is that the emerging theory goes beyond description to “explain, account for and interpret the variation in behavior in substantive area under study” (Glaser 1992, 19). This is a key difference between GT and other qualitative data analysis (QDA) techniques: GT aims at constructing theories at the conceptual level and integrates hypotheses about the relationships between the concepts, where as QDA produces a description which may also contain a conceptual description (Glaser 2001, 1–2). Even though description is not the sole goal in GT, it should be noted that thick description (Geertz 1973, 312 referencing concept by Ryle 1971) is a typical goal in qualitative research and also GT as a qualitative research method. A thick description achieves richness of detail combined with parsimony (Geertz 1973, 312 referencing concept by Ryle 1971). Another related term is rich data, which ”get beneath the surface of social and subjective life” (Charmaz 2006, 13). Thick and rich data facilitate the emergence of a grounded theory that fits and works.

Secondly, Glaser (1992) vehemently opposes to forcing data by utilizing existing concepts, models or theories before or during the data analysis process to guide the data collection or the coding of data. Ideally – and impossibly – the researcher should be a kind of tabula rasa on the topic researched or have read only “a modicum of literature” in the same field. The substantive area of study should not be reviewed before the study, because this may contaminate, constrain, inhibit, stifle or otherwise impede the researcher’s effort to create categories, their properties and theoretical codes that fit, work and are relevant (paraphrasing Glaser 1992, 31). However, when the grounded theory is emerging in the saturation, densifying and sorting process, existing, clearly relevant, theory can be integrated into the process (Glaser 1992, 33) – but without any intention of verification as GT never aims to verify (Glaser & Strauss 1967, 2). While Glaser’s (e.g. 1992) rancorous critique against Strauss and Corbin’s (e.g. 1990) elaboration of the GT method may be ungentlemanly, his crucial point about the analytical processes of emergence versus forcing of data is a worthwhile one in research that truly aims to establish something about the lived experience of those studied. Birks and Mills (2011, 3) agree that GT as a highly interpretive research approach attains best results by interpreting the data initially without preconceived conceptual frameworks such as Strauss and Corbin (1990; 2008) present. Birks and Mills (2011, 3) also suggest that later on in the theory integration stage preconceived conceptual frameworks may prove quite useful.

Thus, while the research design relies on Glaserian thinking, the ideas of later GT theorists (Birks & Mills 2011; Charmaz 2006; Urquhart 2007) have also been incorporated. Useful concepts from Corbin and Strauss (2008, 151) are integrated into the design, such as, the conditional/consequential matrix used above, which, in my opinion, can be used advisedly without forcing the data to build awareness of one important starting point in the research design. The literature review focusing on prior studies on student experiences of research education and dissertations was written after the substantive theory had emerged at an advanced level of integration. Preconceived frameworks were brought to bear only in the later stages, when integrating and scaling up the substantive theory, at which point certain concepts, theories and models from education and psychology emerged as relevant.

The objective of GT is to use the flexible general principles and heuristic devices of GT to present an original conceptual analysis of the data (Charmaz 2006, 2). As the study at hand is one of the few GT studies into this specific phenomenon, and the first one in the context of Finnish UAS bachelor theses, the objective is to construct a substantive theory “grounded in research on one particular substantive area” (Glazer & Strauss 1967, 79) rather than a formal theory

“developed for a formal or conceptual area of sociological theory” (Glazer 1978, 144). Later studies can build on this initial substantive theory, and eventually accumulate enough knowledge to formulate a formal theory that applies to a more general set of contexts and situations (Glaser &

Strauss 1967, 35).

Figure 4 below illustrates the overall research design with the data collection, memoing, analysis and integration processes. The design is expounded upon in the following subchapters.

FIGURE 4. The research design following the precepts of GT.