This chapter provides an overview of the suite of traditional grounded theory research methods. First, the ideas of research and research methods is introduced. This is followed by presenting the origin of grounded theory from sociology including its overviews and evolution into three versions: Glaserian GT, Strauss-Corbinian GT, and Constructivist GT. Next, the key reasons propelling the use of traditional grounded theory methods in Software Engineering are presented including when it makes most sense to apply traditional GT methods. Next, a set of common challenges of practising traditional GT methods in software engineering contexts are described as patterns. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how to address these common challenges, motivating the need for an updated and contextualised set of guidelines in the form of a new version called socio-technical grounded theory (STGT) for conducting, presenting, and evaluating qualitative research in today’s modern digital world.
In the cultural imaginary of death and dying, the felt contours of grief are still often taken for granted. Grief is predominantly understood as sadness at loss; as melancholia at the finitude of relationships. Grief is conceived as a temporally-bound affective period in which one processes the pain of loss – that is, gets used to absence and works toward ‘moving on’. In this article, we centre the accounts of people caring for the dying, or recently having experienced the death of a loved one to cancer, to advance a sociological analysis of grief that untethers it from this normative environ. In the lives of those living with death, we argue, grief evades social conventions and temporal limits. It is a spectral presence that shows little concern for expected affective crescendos (being at death’s door/just departed). In its unruliness, grief reveals and resists the normative scene of death and dying, as collective pressure – for closure, for forgetting, for moving on – amplifies rather than ameliorates its felt experience. Centring the experiences of carers, we thus argue for an enlivened sociology of grief that illuminates its disruptive temporality, its haunting spectrality, and its propensity to instigate both affective refusals and (attempted) moments of collective catharsis.
Objectives
We aimed to identify, appraise, and synthesise the qualitative literature to develop theory on heroism and paramedic practice.
Hypothesis/research question
What does published literature tell us about heroism and paramedic practice?
Setting
Paramedics and other healthcare workers (HCWs) faced an outpouring of public support for them early in the COVID-19 pandemic which brought into focus the relationship between them and society, where they are portrayed as heroes.
Participants
We conducted a metasynthesis using Evolved Grounded Theory and procedural guidelines of Noblit and Hare to guide analysis. Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis Protocols (PRISMA-P) guidelines were also applied.
Results
151 papers were retrieved and eleven included in the final sample. Studies were moderate to very low quality, involving a wide range of methodologies and settings; none specifically explored heroism and paramedic practice. The following interrelated themes were constructed on heroism and paramedic practice: (a) Myth, Folk law, and storytelling in heroism and paramedic practice (b) The epic journey of heroism and paramedic practice (c) Heroes and Zeroes: The fluctuating Societal Value in heroism and paramedic practice (d) Politicisation, and objectification in Heroism and Paramedic practice.
Conclusion
Paramedics have long been characterised as heroes, but this may not reflect their everyday experiences. Heroism in paramedic practice can provide scripts for prosocial action, inspiring others, and leading to more social heroic actions. Paramedics may however be ambivalent to such heroism narratives, due to politicisation, and objectification in the media and society. This metasynthesis is only one of many possible constructions of heroism and paramedic practice and is the first point in making sense of and developing theory on heroism and paramedic practice.
Study registration
PROSPERO: CRD42021234851.
For the wellness industry, email communication, albeit mundane, remains an essential practice even as wellness entrepreneurs embrace newer digital technologies. Drawing on ongoing insights from a larger Australian digital ethnographic project, I explore how these ‘wellness emails’ – electronic mail communication (outside of social media) that typically circulate wellness-related content through automated email list subscriptions – promise an always-ready, abundant space for transforming bodies and optimising health. These emails teach alternative bodily temporalities, distinct from the inhospitable biomedical time of mainstream healthcare, yet also employ time-critical marketing tactics and stories to drive attention, where recipients are encouraged both to not miss out on opportunities but also to respect their own ‘divine timing’. Such temporal flexibility of wellness culture, and its promise of abundance, contributes to its global expansion, where email offers personal and marketised engagement and, critically, a potential escape from social media censorship and public health scrutiny.
Grounded Theory (GT), a sociological research method designed to study social phenomena, is increasingly being used to investigate the human and social aspects of software engineering (SE). However, being written by and for sociologists, GT is often challenging for a majority of SE researchers to understand and apply. Additionally, SE researchers attempting ad hoc adaptations of traditional GT guidelines for modern socio-technical (ST) contexts often struggle in the absence of clear and relevant guidelines to do so, resulting in poor quality studies. To overcome these research community challenges and leverage modern research opportunities, this paper presents
Socio-Technical Grounded Theory
(STGT) designed to ease application and achieve quality outcomes. It defines what exactly is meant by an ST research context and presents the STGT guidelines that expand GT's philosophical foundations, provide increased clarity and flexibility in its methodological steps and procedures, define possible scope and contexts of application, encourage frequent reporting of a variety of interim, preliminary, and mature outcomes, and introduce nuanced evaluation guidelines for different outcomes. It is hoped that the SE research community and related ST disciplines such as computer science, data science, artificial intelligence, information systems, human computer/robot/AI interaction, human-centered emerging technologies (and increasingly other disciplines being transformed by rapid digitalisation and AI-based augmentation), will benefit from applying STGT to conduct quality research studies and systematically produce rich findings and mature theories with confidence.
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