IMO grounded theory is the last gasp of incrementalism. Many small papers but few if any breakthroughs. How would the structure of DNA been found in grounded theory? That current theory was unlike the double helix. Would we have relativity with grounded theory? Some grounded theory is ok but we need other approaches as well.. One more example the war on cancer in the 1970s, Started with the virus theory. Not many such viruses were found bu In the1990s oncogenes were discovered. Could such things be found without the expensive incrementalism. Thus perhaps both approaches are needed. Think it over. D. Booth

Many of the same guidelines apply to grounded theory as to other methods (like experiments). For example, pre-registration can be useful if you are worried about your bias. We discuss this in our chapter Psychology as a science, What is Science in https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/research-methods-in-psychology/book257083. The authors do not hold the copyright on this (so don't ask), but Sage have it reasonably priced.

One practical step would be to collaborate in a team. Bias can be avoided or at least detected and rigour increased if you discuss your coding and interpretations critically with colleagues. Issues of dispute should be documented and reported.

Overall, detailled documentation / reporting of all of your steps of analysis ensures better quality because other researchers can check and challenge your results and conclusions. Go for the open science approach whenever possible (but protect your participants' rights and privacy).

A good answer to your question will require some more information about how you intend to use grounded theory. What is your research question and which grounded theory traditions will you draw from (i.e., Glaser and Strauss; Strauss and Corbin; Charmaz or others?). The earlier approaches embrace post-positivism while the later ones, like Kathy Charmaz's approach, draw on social constructivism.

How you understand what "bias" means will differ somewhat based on which of these research paradigms your embrace. I can provide some citations and a summary if you can describe which grounded theory approach you would like to use. There are some ideas about rigour and bias that all grounded theory approaches arguably share. For instance, all approaches are interested in this idea that the theory you generate using grounded theory is relevant/useful. A question that can help you demonstrate relevance/usefulness is: does your analysis offer interpretations that people can use in their everyday worlds (Charmaz, 2014, pg. 338)?

If you are not sure about your answer to the question of which grounded theory approach you intend to use, a good first place to start is by reading an article or book chapter that summarizes and compares these approaches well. The introductory chapters of Charmaz's (2014) book Constructing Grounded Theory will be useful here. If you are interested in taking grounded theory seriously, I can provide some more resources.

Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing grounded theory. sage.

DISCLAIMER: I am a quantitative (mostly frequentist) analyst with no training in qualitative methods.

Nicola Döring, while I do agree that it is better to have two or more people carry out the various tasks (identifying themes, coding, etc.) independently of each other, I fear that this may not be quite as effective at detecting bias as people believe. Why? Because if one believes Tversky & Kahneman, all of us are subject to the same heuristic biases. In other words, 2 (or more) independent raters could have perfect agreement, but both of them could still be wrong, assuming both were subject to the same heuristic bias(es).

As noted above, qualitative analysis is not my thing, so I don't know how much qualitative analysts think about this issue, or if they even know about and read articles like those of Tversky & Kahneman. (Maybe some of the qualitative folks reading this thread can comment on that.) T&K published many articles. Their 1974 Science article is a good place to start, for anyone who is interested:

Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. science, 185(4157), 1124-1131.

Cheers,

Bruce

In qualitative research, rigor is required but not objectivity, at least not to the extent of quantitative approach. Qualitative research approach not only acknowledges your beliefs, cultural background, knowledge, ideology etc. but also accept them as part of what constitute the knowledge you produce. I think Braun et al. (2019) will be relevant and of tremendous help on this issue.

Article Reflecting on reflexive thematic analysis

I am not sure that Grounded Theory is the best approach for doing action research. In particular, action research is usually very goal oriented, with the intention of changing something. In contrast, GT is typically very exploratory, and as the name implies, aimed at theory development rather than social change.

So, you should think about whether your primary orientation is toward action (change) or theory (exploration).

Action research is participatory and action-oriented. It is frequently depicted as an interaction cycle between a researcher and their participants. On the other hand, grounded theory research, done solely by the researcher, is for generating a theory to explain a phenomenon of interest. That being said, rigor in qualitative research could be achieved through multi-modality of interaction with data. You might refer to the article by Maher et al. (2018) for relevant inputs.

Maher, C., Hadfield, M., Hutchings, M., & de Eyto, A. (2018). Ensuring rigor in qualitative data analysis: A design research approach to coding combining NVivo with traditional material methods. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 17(1), 160940691878636. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406918786362

Article Ensuring Rigor in Qualitative Data Analysis: A Design Resear...

Good luck,

Coincidently this article was published last week. It has applicability to many interview genres as well as those used in GMT.

Cairns-Lee H, Lawley J, Tosey P. Enhancing Researcher Reflexivity About the Influence of Leading Questions in Interviews. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science. August 2021.

Article Enhancing Researcher Reflexivity About the Influence of Lead...

David Eugene Booth When Glaser and Strauss wrote Discovery of Grounded Theory back in the 1960s, one of their main goals was to create an alternative to the emphasis on grand theory that was so prominent in sociology at the time. In particular, they opposed the claim that grand theory should be the basis for "middle range theory," which could then be converted into testable hypotheses. Instead, they proposed building middle range theories from encounters with the data itself -- hence the emphasis on grounded theory.

Complaining that grounded theory only operates "incrementally" amounts to demanding that it do something it was never intended to do.

Further, I doubt whether you could find any "grounding" for your example of the theory of relativity, since Einstein never did a piece of experimental physics in his life. As for Watson and Crick's discovery of the double helix, it produced the following conclusion, "It has not escaped our attention that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for genetic material.” That is hardly a grand theory, and it is only the efforts of subsequent research which demonstrated the profound implications of Watson and Crick's work.

If you want to find an example of immersion in data leading to grand theory, I would nominate Darwin and evolution. But even then, you have to contend with Alfred Wallace's co-discovery of evolution through a "fever dream" -- which is hardly a recommended method for the discovery of grand theory. In fact, I am not aware of any "method" for the discovery of grand theory, so it makes little sense to denigrate ground theory this grounds.

So, from my point of view, your criticisms are unfair, both because grounded theory was always intended to produce incremental theory, and because it is no worse than any other method at producing grand theory.

Questions like this often are more for discussion and hearing different perspectives, but I think we can agree with David L Morgan that the fever dream method has limitations and is not recommended!

btw. Methods folks tend not to talk much about how to create theory. https://www.amazon.com/Theory-Construction-Model-Building-Skills-Second/dp/1462542433 is an exception and is great.