A common theme regarding ethnography is the fact that it is a time-consuming process. However, grounded theory is also supposed to be a time-consuming process in which data are collected and analyzed in various stages as the researcher works toward building a theory. Researchers may differ in the exact coding methods for analyzing their data, but they all try to analyze data at each stage in a way that will lead to better data collection in the subsequent stage. So why do we call it “grounded” theory? What is the theory grounded to? [250 words, 2 references, 2 in text citations. Original writing only. No ESL]
