I've conducted interviews for a thesis and am combining this with grounded theory - but how would you go about using symbolic interactionism? are there any specific techniques or analysis techniques I should use? after looking on the internet for a while I still can't figure this out. any help?
I believe you have already asked an almost identical question, and as I said last time, symbolic interactionism is a theory not a method. This is why you are not finding anything about "specific techniques or analysis techniques."
First of all, you need to understand that the epistemology of symbolic interactionism entails the principal of meaning as a key component of your participants behavior. The methodological implication of this to your study is the emic approach so that as the researcher, your view should be from the perspective of those you are studying. This approach will be amenable to certain methodologies (use its tenets to justify/explain every section of your study) e.g. your non-probability sampling procedure, your methods and instruments of data collection and subsequent analysis (e.g. thematic analysis, Mishler's model of narrative analysis, content analysis) of your data that will be able to situate your research in time and place. So in a nut shell, symbolic interactionism can be used as a theoretical framework and not as a methodology
As my predecessors have pointed out, Symbolic Interactionism is an interpretive framework, not an analysing method. In Germany, we know sequence analysis as an evaluation method in different variants, which might be helpful here. Perhaps the following article could be helpful for a first orientation.
http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/21/46
Sorry for late response to your question. SI is a theory and not a research method. SI can only work as model structured for analysis
Use it as an interpretive lens so that your analysis can be interpreted in terms of the meanings that the subjects evidence instead of your interpretations of their data.
As said one, symbolic interactionism is a theory not a method. But for me the method inspired by symbolic interactionism is bottom-up : from interviews of concerned (and unconcerned) people to build a whole shape synthetising the picked up data.
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