I have experience using phenomenological methods and the way you described what you are looking at seems to lean more toward phenomenology. If you took that route, first you would explore and establish, for this group of people whose life stories you have read, what the essence of trauma was for them. The traumatic event may have been different for each individual, but you will need to be able to describe what was common across most traumatic experiences, (i.e., feelings of helplessness or loss of control, fear, pain - both physical or emotional due to loss, etc.). Your job will be easier if the traumas were of the same category, such as assault or injury, because then there will be more characteristics in common.

Once you have a grasp of and can describe what it means to experience trauma, then you can go back and look for the characteristics of love (which may be as unique to each life story as the person who told it). You will find these characteristics when the storyteller speaks of the actions and/or words of "others" they interacted with within the context of their traumatic experience or it's aftermath. The love may also come from within the trauma victim expressed as compassion for others or a sudden awakening of more deeply felt emotion for another person etc. And this is where the heart of your research will be realized as you allow the common characteristics of love to emerge, so you can describe the essence of love as a phenomena within the experience of trauma. I would also recommend hand coding as opposed to machine coding with computer software, because the researcher as instrument will be better able to detect the subtleties of the phenomena of love in each life story account.

If you mainly want to be able to describe love within the experience of trauma - then I would recommend pure phenomenological methods. But if you want or need to explain consequences of the existence or lack of love, etc., then you will have to consider one of the other replies above. But even if you do, I believe it will still be advantageous to establish and understand the essence of "love" and "trauma" you encounter in the life stories you read, because to do less means you must rely on "dictionary descriptions" of these terms, the definitions of which may carry less meaning than what you would be able to discover yourself. When you complete your work, please let us know where you post your findings, I think it would be very interesting to read.

Hi, I'm not experienced at phenomenology but am using grounded theory for at least 8 or 9 years. I prefer to adopt the orientation of Strauss and Corbin. If I can explain what I understood from your words (using grounded theory, of course) ... trauma is your arena; what you are trying to categorise is love on those conditions [and consequences]. In advanced grounded theory, you don't mind with the order of conditions and consequences. You don't have to mind which of them comes first. Conditions and consequences are what the authors call structure. You have to relate structure with process, which is to be analysed as actions and interactions. I understand trauma as structure and love as process (This is not fixed and may change). The authors suggest a tool called the matrix which is very useful to analyse this particular situation. Consider, to begin, both, the conditions and consequences of trauma, and "cross" it with actions and interactions of love. With this is mind, read your material. Remember that grounded theory deals with evolving theory. You will finish with a theory and will not start with one. The best research question will be that one (the last one) you discover at the end of your research; when your resources and time are finished. When reading, write memos. They will be very useful. I use two tools to register my experiences in research: an open and a closed wiki. At the closed wiki I do my research. At the open wiki I conduct open social relevance tests. I hope this would be useful for you. Success!

Like Gregorio, I have not done research using phenomenology. I agree that grounded theory could be a useful approach, unless you already have a theory that you are testing. In the case of a planned test, then I would recommend doing your test! But if you are exploring a not-yet-understood area, then grounded theory could be useful. I will take a somewhat different approach from Gregorio to explain how I would approach the domain.

I would begin by reading through and sampling a small set of clinicians' records, with some sense of commonality among them. This is to get an initial starting point, so the initial sample could be as small as 3-4 records. I would look for repeating patterns in the data, and I would develop codes (descriptions) of each of those patterns. Do some of the codes occur together? Do some of the descriptions suggest additional cases or circumstances in which you expect the same events or characteristics to occur? This becomes the first throw-away theory.

The next step is to work on a second small sample, strategically chosen to test the initial throw-away theory. Do you find the same patterns? Did you expect to find those patterns in the second sample? If you expected to find those patterns, and you did find them, then your theory is stronger. Likewise, if you thought that the second sample should not show those patterns, and the patterns did not occur in that sample, then your theory is stronger. But if you are surprised -- then you've learned something important about the limitations of your first throw-away theory, and you can revise it and make it stronger.

This principle of "abductive" testing -- make a hypothesis and try to disprove it by obtaining more data -- is a core part of the thoughtful exploration of a new domain via grounded theory method. You want to be suprrised, because the surprise signals that you've learned something new. When you stop being surprised -- when you can't find new data that do not fit your theory -- then you have a pretty strong theory, and it's time to think about what do do next with that theory.

Grounded theory methods people call this set of practices "theoretical sampling," in which your data helps you to iterate on your theory, and your theory helps you to decide which data to examine next. One of the core strategies is to determine the *weakest* point in your evolving theory, and then collect data to test that weakest point. If your theory survives, that's great. If you theory doesn't survive, then you are surprised, and you've learned more, and you can build a stronger theory with that new information.

Love it imiportant! Good luck with your exploration.

Go for Grounded Theory. By applying Inducto Deductive Approach you can develope and fomulate patterns which help and lead towards development of new theory. Everything depends on your way of analysis and subjective interpretation. All the Best.

Dipika - Surat.

Thank you one and all. Your replies were very detailed and useful. Though I am strongly inclined to use GT methods, there is still the question: why not penomenological research methods? This question none of you have answered, I assume because you have not, as you said, conducted such research. Never the less, the question stands. Moreover, I have a problem going upon "theoretical sampling" since my participants are given, the interviews done (not by me) as mentioned.

Cobi, can you send us your research question? may be it help to decide which method is better...

Cobi- also think about the 'quality' of the data in terms of your decisions. Is it first person detailed data? rich in metaphor? Rhetoric? Concerned with negotiating meanings? Sense-making? At what kind of level? What was shaping the data that was collected? The social context of the data collection ? The degrees of structure imposed by the interaction. All this should shape your decisions too. In as much as it may constrain what you can do with the data- or offer you new ways of approaching analysis

The answer lies in what it is you want to find out. If it is the structure and essence of the experience of love and trauma then go for phenomenology. If however, the question in itself remain sort of a "mystery" to you but you are merely following an intuitive attraction to the topic, then I would suggest the classical grounded theory of Barney Glaser. I reckon it would also show you a phenomenological perspective of love and trauma but it can also lead you to a unique social process which will only unfold itself after the research journey.

I have experience using phenomenological methods and the way you described what you are looking at seems to lean more toward phenomenology. If you took that route, first you would explore and establish, for this group of people whose life stories you have read, what the essence of trauma was for them. The traumatic event may have been different for each individual, but you will need to be able to describe what was common across most traumatic experiences, (i.e., feelings of helplessness or loss of control, fear, pain - both physical or emotional due to loss, etc.). Your job will be easier if the traumas were of the same category, such as assault or injury, because then there will be more characteristics in common.

Once you have a grasp of and can describe what it means to experience trauma, then you can go back and look for the characteristics of love (which may be as unique to each life story as the person who told it). You will find these characteristics when the storyteller speaks of the actions and/or words of "others" they interacted with within the context of their traumatic experience or it's aftermath. The love may also come from within the trauma victim expressed as compassion for others or a sudden awakening of more deeply felt emotion for another person etc. And this is where the heart of your research will be realized as you allow the common characteristics of love to emerge, so you can describe the essence of love as a phenomena within the experience of trauma. I would also recommend hand coding as opposed to machine coding with computer software, because the researcher as instrument will be better able to detect the subtleties of the phenomena of love in each life story account.

If you mainly want to be able to describe love within the experience of trauma - then I would recommend pure phenomenological methods. But if you want or need to explain consequences of the existence or lack of love, etc., then you will have to consider one of the other replies above. But even if you do, I believe it will still be advantageous to establish and understand the essence of "love" and "trauma" you encounter in the life stories you read, because to do less means you must rely on "dictionary descriptions" of these terms, the definitions of which may carry less meaning than what you would be able to discover yourself. When you complete your work, please let us know where you post your findings, I think it would be very interesting to read.

Cobi, congratulations for your post. It generated really interesting debate. Let me add something about theoretical sampling. This is the heart of grounded theory. It is not directly related, in my opinion, only with actual data; but with the research process. During the grounded theory research process (open coding, axial coding, selective coding - finding the central category ...) you will find or propose new terms and expressions, new ways of communicating your findings. That's when you have to check whether those new terms and expressions are correlated and relevant with your research arena. I do this initially looking at Google Academic or Mendeley or with other specialised search engines (that's what I call open social relevance tests and why wiki's are so useful here - wiki's help to register [and recover in an orderly fashion] your findings and workings). When using grounded theory we re-learn to communicate, using more appropriate and focused terms and expressions. That's what the authors call theory's explanatory power and depth. Strauss and Corbin definition of theoretical sampling is: "Data gathering driven by concepts derived from the evolving theory and based on the concept of "making comparisons," whose purpose is to go to places, people, or events that will maximise opportunities to discover variations among concepts and to densify categories in terms of their properties and dimensions". I understand this can be done with your reports when you discover new terms and expressions and when you make comparisons using those new terms and expressions with terms and expressions of other relevant research streams (it is very important to adopt rigorous epistemological consistency here). You will find rich data in your reports when you develop your focus at the central category region. Please, let us know of your advancements. Best regards.

I think the phenomenology may not fit with the data you have since it collected by others not yourself, as you mentioned clinicians I think you means several clinicians. This kind of data collection make it difficult when you do the bracketing.

Cobi, It looks like you've had such a lot of very good ideas. If your are looking to explore 'experience' then I would suggest Phenomenology over Grounded Theory. Participnats would be able to describe their 'lived' experience and the meaning such experiences had for them. However, I feel that GT is much more about describing and understanding the concerns, actions and behaviours of a group or indeviduals within a group and also to explore those social processes and interactions in the social setting. After all it all depends on how you frame your research question.. Good luck with it

Wow! Once again thank you all for your very insightful suggestions. It seems that there really is no "one" answer to my question, and that the best way to go upon analyzing my data is a combination of two disciplines. Since my data collection is restricted, as I have mentioned earlier, I can not apply neither methodology completely. Morse, the collection of my data does not fit EITHER of the discussed approaches (as mentioned by Dusadee). That is also the weakest part of my research design. Therefore, I was thinking of applying GT rigor (Charmaz, 2005) while trying to infer phenomenological conclusions. In a way, I am trying to create a theory of a phenomenological nature. More specifically, I think that understanding my research question as an inquiry regarding love (need of love, search of love, absence of love etc.) being part of the phenomenology of trauma, makes it easier to frame the question as a phenomenological one. That said, my question seems to be a "reversed phenomenological question" as it does not inquire as to the components of a phenomena, but rather attempts to find whether a specific component is part of a given phenomena. Hence, to my understanding, what I am trying to do is create a theory (GT) as to the role of love (and it's components) in the process of trauma. What do you think?

Hi Cobi. I think it will be difficult to marry both ie GT and pheno as the philosophical assumptions of both approach is different. One has to decide the approach based on research objectives or questions - I would suggest going back to the drawing board and focusing on what you actually wants to explore and from there deciding which one approach best answer your questions whether it is to understand a phenomena or it is to understand social process. Good luck

Hi Cobi, I read your latest post and had a surprise understanding you are probably considering the possibility of trauma as a process. Strauss and Corbin dedicated one specific chapter of their book to the possibility of the central category being a process. When thinking about processes, these authors suggest beginning questions with the word How? Also they understand process are related to actions and interactions. Considering this, we should propose questions that start with How and analyse actions and interactions on trauma!

I thought two possibilities then: 1) organising for trauma and 2) loving for trauma. At first both seem strange but thinking better we imagine both are feasible. Considering this and the possibility of adopting an alternative theory of organisation (Bruno Maggi, University of Bologna, Italy) I did a test to confirm feasibility.

I present here the most strict test but you can use softer ones which will bring more varied alternatives. Take a look at the following query and its arguments. It has 16 references that should be analysed.

http://scholar.google.com.br/scholar?q=loving+organisationally+acting+%22for+trauma%22+phenomenology+%22grounded+theory%22&btnG=&hl=pt-BR&as_sdt=0

I prefer using the term loving considering the possibility of process in trauma.

I decided to use organisationally acting instead of organising considering the theory proposed by Bruno Maggi.

I can foresee that starting your "theoretical sampling" on loving for trauma would take you to good results. Best regards.