Abstract
The search for a good method to analyse sermon content (and the content of interview documents) has been prevailing since the past decades to evaluate current practice so as to construct better theories for practice. I think that we have found it in the methodology of inductive, qualitative research of the Grounded Theory methodology. In this article, I am going to use the Grounded Theory approach to describe the phases of qualitative empirical research, namely, literature study, sampling, open coding of the data, selective coding of additional new data and theoretical coding to be able to construct an emerging theory of praxis using the concepts developed for this specific action in our discipline. There are critical comments for this methodology. I will try to address these critical views and argue that the Grounded Theory is in line with the science of research.
Highlights
In the social sciences, the Grounded Theory methodology for conducting the scientific analysis of the content of documents such as sermons and interviews is being used worldwide as a qualitative, inductive research method in contrast to the quantitative theory-testing empirical approach. Glaser (1978) used this well-grounded approach for research in the social sciences for the first time
Charmaz (2006) strengthened the methodology by adding constructivist methods, and practical theologians started making use of this method to conduct research in a specific context and a specific problematic situation by means of the three stages of inductive qualitative empirical research to develop an emerging praxis theory derived from practice in that specific problematic situation
Practical theology deals with the study of contemporary contexts where we conduct research on the communication of the gospel in preaching, liturgy, pastoral care and youth work
Summary
The Grounded Theory methodology for conducting the scientific analysis of the content of documents such as sermons and interviews is being used worldwide as a qualitative, inductive research method in contrast to the quantitative theory-testing empirical approach. Glaser (1978) used this well-grounded approach for research in the social sciences for the first time. After the collection of the sermons followed three cycles of content analysis using the Grounded Theory method involving open coding, selective coding and theoretical coding (Boonstra 2016; Charmaz 2006; Pieterse 2010; Pleizier 2010; Verweij 2014). Charmaz (2006:10) proposed a constructivist approach to Grounded Theory’s content analysis which means that the concept of emerging is used instead of discovering a theory in the data. In such a case, the real contents of the sermons have a better chance to emerge from the data. We must always remember that the results of a Grounded Theory research of the contents of sermon and interview documents are always very specific cases and in specific contexts – the results are relevant for the time being and should be tested again in new contexts using new data in the future
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