I hope everyone had a great spring break! Bbbut back to reality we goo! I got a puppy! My German shepherd now has a baby beagle little brother! Anyways, this week we read “Reducing Confusion about Grounded Theory and Qualitative Content Analysis: Similarities and Differences” by Cho and Lee. I can gladly say that this week’s reading made me feel better about belonging in Grad school! Today we’re going to focus on Grounded Theory, but mostly the common misconception that researchers make between grounded theory and qualitative content analysis. I think just from the first page it was clear that Grounded theory is a research methodology and Qualitative content analysis is a strategy. The similarities between those two research methods are valid, however Grounded theory consists of many systems of research, with various procedures. As well as being very flexible because researchers can interpret and analyze their data through many different viewpoints. Now, Qualitative content analysis to me feels like physical data. It’ a method that analyses written and oral materials and puts them in categories for easier interpretation. I think what made me chuckle was that Qualitative content analysis was made fun of due to its oversimplification? However, isn’t that we are literally supposed to do with our data to understand better?

Cho and Lee brought a very crucial point, especially for a future researcher. The significance with grounded theory is that when data is being collected, researchers will start analyzing the data immediately. So, then the future data they’ll collect, will be derived from the data they have already collected. This will make all of the data consistent because you know what you’re looking for. I’ve noticed that if analyze inconsistent data, it will make the research much longer and more confusing. The last thing we would want is to pour our heart and soul into research and end up with data that does not correlate with each other. Another point of Grounded theory that caught my eye is that this method analyzes phenomena of theories that have never been thought of. It’s as if grounded theory creates a whole new theory from data collected. Whereas Qualitative content analysis describes each and everything they have collected. Explanations vs. Theories.

The key components of Qualitative content analysis are explanations from the questions researchers are asking using their “Who”, “What”, “Why” and “How”. And then when the data is collected, researchers will categorize and start establishing common themes to make the data understanding more convenient. Creating categories makes the huge chunks of data divided and sort of compresses everything. At least if research is categorized you know what to look for when getting to a conclusion. Honestly, I am glad the writers of this paper Differentiated the common Misconception researchers may have when dealing with qualitative content analysis and grounded theory. Many researchers may get confused when dealing with these two methods as they have many similarities but are also very very different.