Grounded Theory and Its Applications

Abstract

Grounded Theory is a qualitative research method. Its main purpose is to establish a theory based on empirical data, emphasizing the understanding of social interaction, social processes and social changes from the perspective of actors. Generally, there is no theoretical hypothesis before the start of the research. It starts from actual observation, summarizes experience from the original data, and then rises to the system theory. This is a method of establishing a substantive theory from the bottom up. On the basis of systematically collecting data, it seeks the core concepts that reflect the essence of things, and then constructs relevant social theories through the links between these concepts. Based on the literature analysis method and referring to the previous research results, this paper constructs the overall framework of Grounded Theory, and explains the steps of theoretical sampling, open coding, axial coding, selective coding and theoretical saturation test, which lays a foundation for the application of Grounded Theory in practice.