Aleksandra - Many argue that the differences between content analysis (itself a varied concept) and grounded theory are minimal. The basic difference that most point out is that grounded theory analysis is conducted using an existing theory as a basis for the analysis. For example, a researcher examining stigma among certain vulnerable populations might use Erving Goffman's work "Stigma" as a starting point for their analysis. This article might help you see the differences between qualitative approaches - http://qhr.sagepub.com/content/17/10/1372.full.pdf+html

As I mentioned, content analysis has varied approaches within itself. This article may help to show some of the types - http://www.hu.liu.se/larc/utbildning-information/scientific-methodology/course-literature-and-links/1.253567/Qualitative20Content20Analysis_1.pdf

I have two published essays that address this issue and speak to how content analysis and grounded theory can be used together, if desired.  Both essays are available for download here at ResearchGate.  I have listed the essays below. I hope you find them helpful. Good luck with your project.   

Webb, L. M., & Wang, Y. X. (2013). Techniques for analyzing blogs and micro-blogs. In N. Sappleton, Ed., Advancing research methods with new technologies (p. 183-204). Hershey, PA: IGI Global Publishers [ISBN13: 9781466639188, ISBN10: 1466639180].

Gibson, D. M., & Webb, L. M. (2012). Grounded-theory approaches to research on virtual work: A brief primer. In S. D. Long (Ed.), Virtual work and human interaction research: Qualitative and quantitative approaches (p. 160-175). Hershey, PA: IGI Global Publishers. [ISBN10:146660963]

I did not read Lynne's articles, but they sound very interesting!

I'd put it a bit differently than Thomas says. GT is about building theory (partly making use of theoretical sensitivity and knowledge you already have, the stigma example is a nice one). Regarding qualitative content analysis, it will very much depend on your research field. In political and some strands of media science this is actually a pretty "quantitative" approach to coding.

One obvious difference is that GT is founded in a pragmatist epistemology - and hence mainly interested in social practices. Content analysis is interested in (manifest or subtle) contents.

Differences? Indeed, not all content analysis builds grounded theory and one can build a grounded theory using multiple methods that do not include content analysis. The analogy is this:  You can use bricks to build a house but you can use bricks to build things other than houses, such as schools and office buildings, and you can use materials other than bricks to build a house, such as stone or wood.  Because a researcher uses one to build the other, I am not seeing an obvious confusion.  

I see the point and am very much in favour of not building epistemological walls around single methods. But at the same time I think that such an eclectic approach comes at a price. Bricks may be just better suited to build houses than to build a boat. If you are trying to build a grounded theory the rather inflexible guidelines usually attached to content analytical coding may not be the most efficient way to do it (in turn, they are a strong point if you want to link quan an qual analyses) . That's what I was trying to say. But as I said, I am not arguing for any sort of methodical puritanism or so.

The question of what is or is not grounded theory is a difficult one, because you can't call just anything grounded theory, but it is also problematic to draw a tight boundary around a single definition. I would thus suggest that there is a strong "family resemblance" among the major forms of grounded theory, of which the three best known versions, the ones associated with Strauss & Corbin, Glaser, and Charmaz. (I personally think that Charmaz's Book, Constructing Grounded Theory, is the most useful introduction to the method.)

One element in all three is that you should not begin with strong prior theoretical assumptions, and that you should instead build the theory from your ongoing observations.

In contrast, content analysis may or may not involve a prior theory, and it may or may not involve counting (which you would never find in grounded theory). This reflects a differences between the more quantitative approaches to content analysis and what is called "qualitative content analysis."

A good source of information about qualitative approaches to content analysis is Mayring's recent online textbook:

http://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/handle/document/39517

I personally think that qualitative content analysis tends to blend in with thematic analysis as two highly related approaches to analyzing qualitative data, and the best known citation there is:

Braun, V., & Clarke, V. Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology 2006; 3: 77!/101

Grounded theory differs from either qualitative content analysis or thematic analysis because it has its own distinctive set of procedures, including theoretical sampling and open coding. In contrast, the procedures in the other two are not specified at the same level of detail.

I would like to emphasiz David's point about one important difference: grounded theory is a complex approach for constructing theory with qualitative empirical research, while qualitative content analysis is a specific method for (qualitatively) analysing texts. To me, it seems that the appropriate comparison would be one between qualitative content analysis and coding (the prevalent method for text analysis in grounded theory). Unfortunately, this comparison is tricky, too. Some authors treat qualitative content analysis as 'quantiative content analysis softened up' by inductively constructing categories and then deductively applying them, i.e. by just counting. Many of Mayrings proposals go in that direction. Others suggest versions of content analysis that are indistinguashable from coding. Defining qualitative content analysis as a distinct procedure that has specific advantages and limits compared to coding is difficult, but we tried:

Gläser, Jochen and Grit Laudel (2013). "Life With and Without Coding: Two Methods for Early-Stage Data Analysis in Qualitative Research Aiming at Causal Explanations [96 paragraphs]. ." Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research 14(2, Art. 5). http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs130254

To me, the major advantage of qualitative content analysis is that it forces the researchers to make their theoretical and other prior assumptions and the ways in which they influence the investigations explicit by using them in the construction of categories. If you don't do this, they just operate subconsciously. Unfortunately, grounded theory sometimes still suggests this is possible.

Having said that, I would like to add that qualitative research varis a lot in the extent to which our theoretical assumptions are precise and have already been applied to the field under study by others. The more explorative a study is, the greater the advantage of coding compared to qualitative content analysis.

I want to emphasize and elaborate on David Morgan's points.  First, grounded theory was developed specifically to oppose the view that qualitative research should simply use existing theory, and to show that theory could be developed inductively from data. Content analysis, in contrast, is simply a strategy for coding qualitative data, and often employs existing theory to create the coding categories. See the entries on these two topics in the SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods (Lisa Given, Ed., 2008).

Second, the later stages of Strauss's grounded theory approach to analysis (axial coding, selective coding) are confusingly presented, and aren't really "coding" in the usual sense at all. For an attempt to clarify this, see the attached paper.

Qualitative Analyses can be of many types depending upon the kind of research questions that your research aims to answer - content analysis, discourse analysis, phenomenological analysis. Likewise grounded theory is one of the kinds of data analysis aimed at building an indegenous theory. Most of the times GT includes thematic analysis but it does not stop there and goes on to make one theme as central theme around which other themes revolve and interact to build a theory..

Here's a short summary of Glaser and Strauss (1967). Would be of help.

http://www.slideshare.net/pavan7soni/the-discovery-of-grounded-theory-glaser-and-strauss-1967

article:

Reducing Confusion about Grounded Theory and Qualitative Content Analysis: Similarities and Differences 

I know this is an old question, but I faced the same one recently. I find the following article in AMJ to be most helpful:

Suddaby (2006) – From the Editors: What Grounded Theory Is Not

“A key component of the constant comparative method is such critical evaluation of emerging constructs against ongoing observations. Similarly, although grounded theory is not to be confused with content analysis or word counting, both techniques can form part of grounded theory studies. The important difference is that grounded theory describes an overall method for systematically gathering and analyzing data, but content analysis describes a specific context within which a distinct type of data can be gathered and analyzed. Typically, in a grounded theory study, content analysis is only one of multiple contexts for acquiring data. Word counting, which is a subset of content analysis, is somewhat more problematic in that it bears positivist assumptions about the relationship between word frequency and meaning, most of which violate the interpretivist assumptions of grounded theory (Krippendorff, 2003)”.

Hope this helps.

This file can helpe you about Reducing Confusion about Grounded Theory and Qualitative Content Analysis: Similarities and Differences

Grounded theory seems to haunt the researcher with the statement of saturation of data or ideas. It is always a subjective question to answer to the examiner if he/she disagrees that enough work has been done. How to answer this issue?

The concept of "saturation" is extremely slippery, and there are no general rules or formulas for how much data is necessary for saturation to occur; see the attached editorial by Jan Morse. The only rule is that you need to collect enough data for you, and your readers, to be reasonably confident that, if you collected more data, you would not find anything that would seriously challenge your conclusion. However, there is always the possibility that additional data could invalidate your conclusion; as in most decisions in life, the standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt," and for different individuals what is needed to establish this will vary.

What about politics $ economics?

To get a really strong, well developed answer to this question, attend this doctoral-postdoctoral course (and follow this project)...

[Contact Romeo V. Turcan for more details]

https://www.researchgate.net/project/TBRP-Theory-Building-Research-Programme

https://www.tbrp.aau.dk/phd-course/

Thanks Joseph. Sounds pretty reasonable, practical and logical. But does it hold valid in research world? Guess the researcher needs to be confident as you say beyond reasonable doubt.

Thanks, Rehan. I would add one more point: some researchers seem to believe that statistical significance tests (e.g., p values) are a good indicator of the stability or reliability of their coding. (I recently reviewed a qualitative paper in which this claim was made.) This is not true. Hayes and Krippendorff (2007) state that "Investigators often ask whether observed agreement is sufficiently above 'chance.' However, this null-hypothesis is irrelevant where data reliability is considered. For data to be trustworthy, their reliability must not significantly deviate from perfect reliability, which calls for a rather different test. The question is whether observed unreliabilities are still tolerable for data to be relied on in subsequent analyses" (p. 86). 

In this situation, the best that can be done is to provide the actual differences or variability that you found; this will allow readers to judge for themselves if these are adequate for them to trust your results.

Hayes, A. F., & Krippendorff, K. (2007). Answering the Call for a Standard Reliability Measure for Coding Data. Communication Methods and Measures 1(1), 77–89.

I have recently run across the idea of reaching "saturation plus one." In other words, you feel that you have reached saturation because you last interview did not add anything, but you go ahead and collect one more to add to your sense of confidence that you have reached saturation. Of course, as others have said, that is still no guarantee...

Ricardo, I agree with your post, but I want to elaborate on a point that I made 4 years ago on this post. "Content analysis" is simply a broad term for sorting data (typically qualitative data) into categories; there are many different strategies for doing this. "Grounded theory" has also evolved into somewhat different approaches, but as presented by Anselm Strauss (A. Strauss & J. Corbin, Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1990), inductively developing categories and sorting the data, which they called "open coding," is only the FIRST step in the process. The second step, which Strauss called "axial coding," involves "specifying a category (phenomenon) in terms of the conditions that give rise to it; the context … in which it is embedded; the action/interactional strategies by which it is handled, managed, carried out; and the consequences of these strategies" (Strauss & Corbin, 1990, p. 97). Essentially, this involves using the categories to develop a theory about the phenomena studied. For more detail, see my previously uploaded paper on this thread, "“Categorizing and connecting strategies in qualitative data analysis.”

I am still having confusion with these two..need some specific differences point wise. regards

One of the main differences is that content analysis is almost entirely about the analysis portion of the research process, and thus is almost always applied after all the data has been collected. In contrast, when done correctly, GT alternates data collection and data analysis right from the start. In particular, if you are doing interviewing, you would code your first interview as soon as possible after completing it, and so on with each subsequent interview. In this system, you would certainly expect your coding system to evolve, and it is highly likely that the content of your interview questions would also develop in response to your coding.

Let me give u a simple answer...

The biggest difference should be the fact that content analysis is a data analysis tool/or technique. It should be compared to other data analysis approaches like Thematic Analysis and IPA, focus is on how to make sense of the data collected.

GT is not a data analysis method, but a research methodology... (it is bigger than that) and should not be reduced to just a method, because then we gonna miss out, big time. So GT is a research methodology, a research strategy that give us guidance on Philosophical position, Literature review, Data collection, and Data Analysis...So, GT should not compared to other methodologies (not methods) like Phenomenology which will then use IPA as a tool.

So basically you can use Content Analysis even if your research is located in one for the genres of GT (Classical, Straussian or Constructivist - Barney G Glaser, Anselm L Strauss or Kethleen M Charmaz)...

Is it possible for research to use some of the tools of grounded theory, but be cognizant that they have not gone through the exhaustive iterative process? Or if its called Grounded theory it has to be one of the main types such as traditional or constructivist?

It is certainly possible for "research to use some of the tools of grounded theory," such as theoretical sampling for example. But I think you would not want to call a project grounded theory unless you followed the whole process. In particular, scholars who pursue grounded theory can be quite protective of their territory, which could cause you problems in the review process.

if someone needs some read about it , check this very ilustrative article: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1028&context=tqr

https://theschoolofme.wordpress.com/2015/05/11/grounded-theory-vs-content-analysis-or-the-day-i-stopped-worrying-and-learned-to-love-the-datasel/

I found this link very helpful.

I have another question though. Why do American authors never mention Laurence Bardin? She is well-known in qualitative content analysis

I think one of another difference is method of reasoning: in thematic analysis is method of reasoning induction but in grounded theory is abduction