Grounded Theory - Science topic

I don't think you need any particular "approach," and it is a perennial problem that books such as Creswell and Poth which emphasize such approaches fail to cover the most common way of doing qualitative research: semi-structured interviews followed by some form of thematic analysis.

In in this case, more important questions might be who you want to interview and whether you want to use individual or focus group interviews.

Oh, I see. Thanks for your prompt responses. Much appreciated. David L Morgan

Any piece of qualitative research that is exploratory will avoid seeing pre-conceived themes. Grounded theory is one specific approach to exploratory research, but it requires a number of careful procedures, starting with a continuing analysis of the data throughout the data collection. So, if you waited until you had finished your data collection before you started your data analysis, you did not do grounded theory.

Thank you very much @Angé Inesia and @David L Morgan, i changed the whole methodology, i will use phenomenology instead.

I agree with those above. Choose one of the more established versions of GT:

• Glaserian GT (Glaser has written a lot of books, but I would recommend the one from 1978 [Theoretical sensitivity] together with the one from 1998 [Doing grounded theory], and – if you would like to understand theoretical coding better – the one from 2005 [Grounded theory perspective III]).

• Straussian GT (read one of the editions of Strauss & Corbin's textbook: the second one, if you want to base your study on the last one that Strauss wrote together with Corbin before he passed away, or the latest edition if you want to base your study on Corbin's most current additional development).

• constructivist GT (read Charmaz' 2nd edition of her textbook from 2014 [Constructing grounded theory]).

Both Straussian and constructivist versions of GT are open to do literature review prior to, during and at the end of the research process (while Glaserian GT has the dictum of delaying the literature review to the end to avoid "forcing") as long as you adopt an open mind (rather than an empty head) and are sensitive to data. You might check my writings on informed GT (which is not another version of GT but more about how to deal with your knowledge about the field under study and to be informed without ending up in crude deduction, or what Glaser would call "forcing"):

Good luck with your work!

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.

grounded theory is an approach that is used in qualitative research such as ethnographies, and related studies. It enables expansion of ideas, using a suitable paradigm.

GT is seldom paired with phenomenology because the two represent distinctly different research traditions. One key point is that phenomenological research approaches closely follow or another of several related philosophic traditions, while GT is neutral with regard to higher order theories. In additional, most phenomenological research proceeds by collecting data (usually a small number of intensive interviews) and then analyzing them, while GT combines analysis and data collection as a single process that alternates back and forth.

I am confused by all your postings that want to combine various alternative approaches with Grounded Theory. GT by itself is hard enough, so why you want to make connections with other approaches that don't really fit with GT is not clear to me.

Can you give us some more information on why GT alone is not sufficient for what you are trying to accomplish?

Symbolic Interactionism as a theory, not a method. The original source for SI is George Herbert Mead's book, "Mind, Self, and Society."

Anselm Strauss, one of the founders of Grounded Theory, was a Symbolic Interactionist, so many researchers who use GT also follow SI as their theoretical orientation. But as the name implies, SI is primarily about the effects of interaction between individuals, along with how inter-personal relationships affect issues such as identity.

Grounded theory requires that you code your interviews while you are collecting them, so that both your coding process and your interview process evolve together throughout the research. So, if you have already done your interviews, that would not fit. But if you are just getting started, then I would highly recommend Kathy Charmaz's text book on Constructivist Grounded Theory (2014).

As for phenomenological approaches, these are usually deeply personal, so I doubt they would match a study of feelings about multi-national corporations.

Congrats on your idea. Keep going. Very interesting topic.

Nabil Ya Without further information, It is difficult to establish the journal's philosophical perspective. A journal may contain articles representing a wide range of philosophical perspectives and research methodologies, and the philosophical position of a particular article within the magazine may or may not be reflected in the publication's title.

To determine a given article's philosophical viewpoint, read the abstract, introduction, and methodology sections to gain a feel of the research issues being addressed, the techniques being employed, and the general goals and objectives of the study. You should also speak with your instructor or a tutor.

The most popular textbooks for the two basic versions of GT both include chapters on writing up the results: Constructing GT (Charmaz, 2014), and Classic GT (Holton & Walsh, 2016).

Beyond that, I would suggest finding examples in your own field by searching Google Scholar.

Start from the beginning.

Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research

By Barney Glaser, Anselm Strauss

In grounded theory, interpretation (in the form of analysis) occurs throughout the data collection process. Initially "open coding" keeps the analysis at a more descriptive level, but as patterns are repeated in further data collection, then you begin to create theoretical categories. From there, it is important to keep comparing your categories to each other as you collect new data. Once the theoretical categories stabilize and are not affected by further data collection, then you have reached saturation.

Of course, you could claim to reach saturation too early (under- interpretation), or you could keep collecting data when there were only minor differences (over-interpretation). But in general, theoretical saturation is the main influence on reaching a reasonable level of interpretation.

In terms of approaches to analysis other than grounded theory, there is a similar "lumper versus splitter" distinction. In other words, some analysts prefer to have fewer and broader categories for their conclusions, even if that ignores some small inconsistencies (these are lumpers). In contrast, other analysts prefer to create more and narrower categories for their results, even if some of those differences are small (these are splitters). Whether this individual tendency amounts to either under- or over-interpretation of the data will depend on personal preferences.

One of the key features of Grounded Theory is that you begin your analysis at the same time as your data collection and then pursue the two simultaneously throughout your research process. This often involves modifying the questions you are asking in your interview, based on what you have already learned. In contrast, Thematic Analysis, begins by collecting the full data set and then conducting the analysis after that.

A good source on GT is Charmaz (2014), Constructing Grounded Theory, while a good source on TA is Braun and Clarke (2022), Thematic Analysis: A Practical Guide.

It this is helpful at all, the German research literature actually uses "Grounded Theory" as a loan word. It is however adapted to German by using capital letters (which is always done with nouns) and a more German-sounding phonology.

Phenomenology typically involves a very intense analysis of a relatively small number of cases, which lends itself to the study of highly meaningful aspects of lived experience. Both it and grounded theory tend to be highly exploratory, so if you have already done research in this area and have specific topics that you want to pursue, either of them could be inefficient for that purpose.

Instead, I think you should consider a simpler approach that begins with open-ended interviews and then uses thematic analysis. Is there some reason why you are limiting yourself to either phenomenology or grounded theory?

The design in any piece of research consists of statements about how the methods (sample, data collection, data analysis, etc.) are linked to the research questions and goals. In contrast, things like grounded theory, phenomenology, etc. are research "approaches" or "traditions." Many qualitative studies do not use one of these approaches, and this particularly likely for studies that rely on semi-structured interviews, followed by thematic analysis.

As for saturation, it is own separate concept related to when further data collection becomes redundant, and thus is seldom related to triangulation.

Also, this is a small "industry" involved in producing lists of criteria for evaluating qualitative research. such as the COREQ and SRQR checklists.

If you think of a model as specifying relationships among concepts, then yes GT can certainly be used to generate a model.

Seyyed Jafar Nejat Grounded theory frequently employs the following data gathering methods: open-ended interviews with participants. Fieldwork with participants and/or focus groups Artifacts and texts are studied.

I suggest reading this article:

Do you mind to explain more on transcendental possession disorder?

I think you can justify with another existing theory in case of qualitative research if your data (thematic analysis) let you derive another theory

Agree with dear colleagues ......... Follow for more valuable responses !!

I have attached an article where I discussed some of the previous work on GT and literature reviews. In general, the field has relaxed quite a bit about when you can do a literature review.

As for theoretical sampling, the preferred method would be to begin with a given set of participants, do a preliminary analysis, and then select a theoretically relevant second set of participants for comparison. After that you, repeat the process until new sub-groups do not yield new insights. By segmenting your sample from the beginning, you have short-circuited this process.

This reliance on a priori assumptions about what is relevant to your theory seems to be a general problem with your approach, because this does not fit with any of the major versions of GT.

Have you done your coding throughout the data collection process, and did your data collection evolve in line with those preliminary analyses? If not, and you have instead postponed your coding until after data collection, then I suggest you switch to a method that encourages that format, such as Braun & Clarke's Thematic Analysis.

The guidance and views as per the following papers may further help:

Piotr Chomczyński As far as I know, only Glaser requires a core category. I believe it is optional in other approaches, although you should take a look at Charmaz (2014) to be sure.

Content analysis (CA) is a qualitative research method for interpreting meaning from text. CA has three approaches: Conventional, directed, and summative (see Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). As pointed out by David L Morgan, CA, directed by existing theory or literature, as in your case, is a deductive approach to qualitative analysis where you start with a theoretical framework and use data to either validate or extend that framework conceptually. You could find Mayring’s (2022) guide, referenced below, relevantly useful.

Hsieh, H.-F., & Shannon, S. E. (2005). Three approaches to qualitative content analysis. Qualitative Health Research, 15(9), 1277–1288. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732305276687

Mayring, P. (2022). Qualitative content analysis: A step-by-step guide. https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/qualitative-content-analysis/book269922

Good luck,

Are you building your original codes into categories? One thing you need to avoid in GT is simply continuing the the initial or open coding throughout, and then moving on to create categories. Instead, your later coding should build on your earlier work. (I believe Saldana refers to this process as coding "cycles" -- but in GT you do not have to complete a full initial cycle on all of the data before your codes begin to consolidate and evolve.)

Also, what indicates to you that you have not reached saturation?

Hello, please take a look at this research. These statistical coefficients are used for determining the conformity or reliability of experts' evaluations, and the Kendall coefficient with a value greater than or equal to 0.7 was considered as the stopping index for the procedure of the Delphi method.

Zahra Shaygan

I don't think I could add to the above help apart from adding some further discussions on RG that might help. You could always try contacting the RG member who might have mentioned something relevant:

Although there is only one mention of thematic analysis:

I hope all goes well with your dissertation.

I am not familiar with theoretical representativeness, but Firestone (1993) introduced the concept of "generalization to a theory" (rather than to a population) in an article titled, "Alternative Arguments for Generalizing From

Data as Applied to Qualitative Research."

My own preference is for the Lincoln and Guba's argument in favor of transferability rather than generalization from samples to populations in qualitative research. For a useful recent overview of this issue, see Maxwell (2021), "Why Qualitative Methods Are Necessary for Generalization."

Besides, you could avail yourself of the assessment approaches and modalities tabulated by Tay et al. (2020), fully cited below, since your investigation applies to medical sciences.

Tay, K. T., Ng, S., Hee, J. M., Chia, E. W. Y., Vythilingam, D., Ong, Y. T., Chiam, M., Chin, A. M. C., Fong, W., Wijaya, L., Toh, Y. P., Mason, S., & Krishna, L. K. R. (2020). Assessing professionalism in medicine – a scoping review of assessment tools from 1990 to 2018. Journal of Medical Education and Curricular Development, 7, 2382120520955159. https://doi.org/10.1177/2382120520955159

Good luck,

Nicolò Zarotti The book you recommended is for Thematic Analysis not Grounded Theory, and these are two very different approaches to qualitative research.

Beyond that, I think the best way to study the reporting of GT is to read articles that used that method. One way to locate such articles is to use Google Scholar with a search that contains both the phrase "grounded theory" and key words related to your own research topic.

I agree with Béatrice Marianne Ewalds-Kvist that IPA and GT typically emphasize different goals, so you should start by clarifying your research questions and purposes. Right now, it sounds like you want to work with prior theory, which would not be a good fit to GT.

In addition, the two methods differ with regard to how they handle coding, so you should also consider what combination of data collection and coding works best for you.

Most of what qualitative researchers have been taught to call induction is actually abduction. More specifically, generating hypotheses from observations requires a speculative "leap" that is the defining feature of abduction. Classical inductive reasoning attempts to generate predictions about what can be observed from what has been observed, without any intervening assumptions (the classic example is "every swan I have ever observed is white, hence all swans are white").

David L Morgan Great call! Many thanks.

The answer Wiener's team apparently came to was 'invent your own method, and ignore the Grounded Theory rules'. It clearly helps if you have a methodologist and founder of GT on your team! :-) Though clearly memoing and coding during the discussions is important.

But looking through citing papers as you suggested found this recent paper . And that one's spot on.

Yousif Gilo

Grounded theory is a systematic approach used mostly, but not solely, in qualitative research undertaken by social scientists. The process entails the development of hypotheses and theories through data collection and analysis.

Grounded theory methodology is a research technique with the primary goal of studying participant experiences in order to construct a theory based on the data received from participants. In order to create a grounded theory, the qualitative analysis relies heavily on interview data from a large number of individuals.

Based theory (GT) is a research approach concerned with the development of theory1 that is 'grounded' in evidence that has been collected and analyzed consistently. 2 It is used to discover social links and collective behaviors, which are referred to as social processes.

True about distinctiveness, only they also reported it was used as embedded method under IPA methodology successfully because it is a flexible method, i.e. the IPA philosophy informed the analytic procedures of RTA of choice:

e.g.: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is-Interpretative-Phenomenological-Analysis-or-Thematic-Analysis-the-most-appropriate-research-method-for-this-qualitative-study

Technically speaking, factor analysis is a way to establish reliability rather than validity. For construct validity, you need to test a predicted pattern of correlations, including other items where you expect positive correlations (convergent validity) and negative correlations (divergent validity).

With regard to factor analysis as a way to determine how many dimensions your items measure, I agree that a sample of 100 is not likely to be enough if you have a large number of items.

It depends on the version of GT you are using, there are about 5 versions. Which version are you using? In the case of coding, it is very important that it is not a linear process, GT is a continuous process between the subject literature, theoretical sampling and coding, especially in the Strauss and Corbin version.

Dear Patricia Paulina Rafols Romarate

Grounded theory is a well-known approach that is used in a wide range of research activities. In a grounded theory research, both qualitative and quantitative data generating approaches might be employed.

Although many people refer to Grounded Theory as a qualitative approach, it is not. It is an approach that may be used in a variety of situations. It is the methodical development of theory based on systematic study. It is a series of rigorous research techniques that result in the creation of conceptual categories.

A smart strategy is to use grounded theory to analyze your data and produce a theory. Your survey questions can then be based on what you've discovered in the literature as well as your own queries.

Best Regards

All of the major qualitative data analysis programs do essentially the same things, with somewhat different interfaces. So, ATLAS.ti, Dedoose, MAXQDA or NVivo would all be equally useful.

Having said that, however, there are clear doubts about how well suited these programs are for Grounded Theory. In particular, the kinds of "codes" that GT generates are typically different from the kind of "tagging" that is the bes fit for this kind of software. I suggest you look at the examples of coding that Charmaz provides in Constructing Grounded Theory and then assess how well you could pursue that kind of coding strategy with qualitative software.

I agree with Jochen Glaser, I have some (rather negative) experience with chopping an extensive analysis into papers. You probably invest a large amount of time and often reviewers/ readers can hardly follow your argument, plus you lose the integrative understanding and meaning of your study- it either flattens out or its becomes too abstract without the empirically argued ground. One solution can be to publish a book followed by commentary essays drawing on the study for journal representation and a larger audience or to continue your research based on and refering to the large study and by that integrating it in the journal discourses. I still try t figure out, if it is possibel to add the comprehenive analysis as additional material (which was not rejected yet), in that case you could trick your comprehensive analysis into a paper, but I am not sure if anyone will read it then- as we all know papers often are merely skimmed..then your beautiful analysis is burried as an appendix for good...

Dear Juanid,

you are quite right in your understanding that "the in-depth interview is different from FGD in the sense that in the former the intent is to understand the issue to a deeper level; whereas, in the latter the intent is to see how meaning in a context is negotiated and shared between the participants of varying power, standpoints, genders and age etc., - so called inter-subjectivity."

As for scholarly sources where you can find some answers if not more questions, one would be my article on "constructivist-grounded theory in elite interviews" sharing theoretical background as well as my practical experiences with the methodology.

Schara, T., & Common, R. (2016). Leadership and elite interviews. International Journal of Public Leadership, 12(1), 32–51. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPL-03-2016-0007

All the best,

Tomaž Schara

I am not sure why you do not accept the goal of producing middle range theory. Doing exploratory research on poorly understood phenomena is quite hard, and grounded theory is an excellent way to accomplish this.

Many of the same guidelines apply to grounded theory as to other methods (like experiments). For example, pre-registration can be useful if you are worried about your bias. We discuss this in our chapter Psychology as a science, What is Science in https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/research-methods-in-psychology/book257083. The authors do not hold the copyright on this (so don't ask), but Sage have it reasonably priced.

I agree with several of the others that Grounded Theory alone should be adequate for your work. In addition, using a single focus groups is problematic, because you have no idea whether the things you hear are merely unique to that one group.

You might, however, consider a focus group among your previous participants as a form of "member checking" (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).

Grounded theory alongside action research!

The first data analytic phase of GT begins with the coding of the data. This is undertaken to conceptualize the data by discovering categories into which they fit. The coding process has three phases: open coding, axial coding, and selective coding. In open coding, researchers describe the data by looking at it line-by-line. This strategy of focusing on small units of data, and their interpretation, encourages the development of a theoretical sensitivity to new ideas with regard to the data, and helps prevent the forcing of data into existing categories. Most researchers maintain that when a full array of categories have been identified, one should undertake axial coding – whereby one puts the data back together again in new ways by making connections between the numerous categories. Following that, a selective coding step is implemented in which the researcher looks to systematically identify those categories that relate closely to the core category. The core category lies at the heart of the emerging theory and is central to its integration. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/grounded-theory

Your research does not seem to require a methodology like grounded theory. We use it only for problems that cannot be researched with available theories, obliging the researchers to build up theorization from the data itself. I have only supervised 2 Ph.D. students that did use grounded theory for very unusual subjects. EFL motivation or demotivation has countless theories, books, papers, questionnaires. It is not a research problem for applying grounded theory. Regarding your online interview problems, you can try to sort out a strategy through open interviews without previous questions or you can try to organize a focus group if the interviewers concur. In this case, you can return to the group to develop some suggestions, ideas, reinterpretations.

I haven't studied customary land conflicts myself either, but I would agree with David's comment that these two can be rightfully combined, or rather be nested within one another. I'd also add that this really depends (or it should) on your research question.

1. If you are trying to investigate and understand the process, as in how conflicts arise between the given tribes, then grounded theory methodology would be more suitable, and you can use ethnographic methods (interviews, observations etc.) solely to collect data. But then again, this would need a proper justification since there is already numerious explanations of how inter-group, inter-ethnic conflicts emerge.

2. If you are concerned with the conflict ethos in those cultures, and are trying to provide "thick description" (Geertz) of meanings, symbols, cultural constructs, and how local people make sense of those, then ethnographic approach would suit this best. And GT here can specifically be useful in the phase of analysis, in terms of how you code and analize your data.

Hope this helps.

Hi, Personally, I love grounded theory as the most scientific qualitative method. If you aims to deepen understanding correlations and try to articulate the theoretical pattern, grounded theory is a good approach. But I don't think grounded theory and IPA are contradict. Maybe you can adopt the methodological advantages to assist your research if possible.

I am confused by your question. Grounded theory is a research methodology to build up a theory or conceptualization from data unable to cope with available theoretical approaches. It is not a theory and normally it treats "literature" as data not as in a normal literature review. The method can only be used for research questions or problematic lacking any previous theoretical analysis and interpretation. It does not seem the subject of "military intervention in Bangladesh in 2007" which is likely a very straightforward subject of international relations, political sciences, or similar fields. Building new theories or interpretations has nothing to do with grounded theory that we reserve for much more "micro" and singular "fields" of research. The last Ph.D. thesis that I have supervised using grounded theory was on the impacts of PISA in teachers' vocabulary for learning a foreign language in Macao, and involved more than 300 interviews, field observation, and the treatment of OCDE PISA countless reports as data.

Muhammad,

are you thinking that it isn't?

I think that there is still a lot of unnecessary mystique generated around GT; it will either be suitable for your research, or it won't.

The main issue you will have to deal with is integrating the findings from different samples that use different methods. The more you think about this in advance, the better your overall results will be.

Prof. Shakiba Kazemian, there is some interesting material on microblogging in Open Learn weblink at Open University. I used it several times for learning and teaching.

Best Regards.

My feeling is that the kinds of maps used in Situational Analysis have very little to do with the kinds of mapping tools used in quantitative data analysis. Since Clarke views her works as a merger of Glaser and Strauss's GT and Foucauldian discourse analysis, I doubt that she would see adding quantitative components as an "advancement."

There are specific analysis techniques for both Grounded Theory (e.g., Charmaz on Constructivist Grounded Theory) and IPA (e.g., the text book by Smith, Flowers, and Larkin. The same is true for other phenomenological methods (for an overview, see the book by Beck, Introduction to Phenomenology: Focus on Methodology).

In contrast, Thematic Analysis is primarily used for semi-structured interviews.

I would recommend you to see the works of Martha Feldman and Andrew Van de Ven. Might be you find any way to integrate their work with diagnostic model.

Grounded Theory combines the data collection and analysis phases of the research, so that you continually analyze data as you collect it, and then modify your additional data collection to further your additional analysis. That would be a rare design in working with social media, so I recommend content analysis.

If you are emphasizing latent content, the most common approach to content analysis would be to develop your own codes, inductively.

There is no need to do statistical testing with GT.

If you wish to go in a new direction by statistically evaluating the themes ("categories") you find, then that would move you out of purely qualitative research and into mixed methods research. This use of GT is currently receiving attention in the field of mixed methods research, but that is not a reason to pursue statistical analysis unless you are genuinely interested in doing so.

Grounded theory in the social sciences is a systematic methodology for building a theory based on data analysis. Sometimes translated into Russian as "grounded theory" or "ascent to theory"

The main features of grounded theory are that theories are developed on the basis of qualitative data (and not selected in advance and checked or refined on empirical material), and data collection and analysis is carried out in parallel. The main procedures used are careful and detailed coding of data, comparison of data and analytical concepts, writing work notes to develop categories.

Grounded theory data collection and analysis is carried out in parallel. Data analysis includes the following main steps:

1) Coding - the extraction of primary analytical concepts (codes) directly from the interview text or other data source. At the initial stage of the analysis, open or primary coding is carried out. Grounded theory methodologists recommend line-by-line coding by parsing text line by line and assigning to each line a short notation of “what's going on” on that line. In some cases, word-by-word coding is recommended. With further data collection and comparison, some of the primary codes are discarded, while others acquire analytical significance.

2) Writing notes (memoing) about each of the formed analytical concepts or categories. Writing notes is an intermediate step between coding and the first draft of the final analysis. Writing notes begins by highlighting the first analytical concept and continues through the process of analyzing new data and building theories.

3) Integration, refinement and formulation of theories. As categories are formed from codes, they are combined into a theoretical model, which is built around one central category. In this process, the method of constant comparison plays an important role, as well as the analysis of negative cases that do not confirm the model. In essence, the researcher creates a model explaining the phenomenon under study from the very beginning of data collection, and verifies its adequacy in the process of further data collection and analysis.

Regards, Sergey

Sara Hamidi: This depends on who is the audience.

I do not meet the guidelines as I am currently completing a quantitative study.

Thank you for the invite.

Terra

I agree with the above but if you want to understand the concepts better, I also recommend reading the following article which describes these processes in use including diagrams to show how and where they have used laddering to extract and make more data meaningful in their categorizations.

Pankratz, Oleg and Loebbecke, Claudia, "PROJECT MANAGERS' PERCEPTION OF IS PROJECT SUCCESS FACTORS – A REPERTORY GRID INVESTIGATION" (2011). ECIS 2011 Proceedings. 170. https://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2011/170

Some of my Ph.D. students used grounded theory, but only in very particular conditions able to study populations, settings, and data that were not yet coping with any previous theory or research problematic. The condition to opt for a grounded theory methodological approach must come from exhausting any other previous theories since it is a methodology that we convoke to build up a theory directly from data. Thus, it is not possible to decide a priori that one is going to use grounded theory. It is an aftermath that comes from the limits of our research question and available academic literature around it. Don't forget that one of the most interesting, but difficult, demands of grounded theory is that you need to treat academic literature as data.

Amber - it really depends what type of outcome you wish for. IPA is hermenuetical and based on experience and worldview of your participants. Adopting a Grounded Theory approach would depend to what extent your topic is already theoretically developed (grounded) or not. It could be that both are appropriate - but I am guessing that perinatal mental health and personal resiliance is already well defined and developed. Either approach are equally valid in terms of potential publications. Perhaps the attached chapter may assist.

Part of the answer depends on your source data. If you choose to use interviews, for example, you could use simple theme analysis. Here is a process I have used. It refers to "text" analysis, but it is relevant to interview data.

It depends totally on your research questions. I would suggest you to read on both of these methods to know which one is more suitable for your research.

I think there's a general point that is somehow missing previous answers and may be useful here. Grounded theory and thematic analysis are instruments with very different conceptual nature. Grounded theory is a general epistemological approach, thematic analysis is a methodology, if not a specific method. The first defines how you approach a research (in short, you do not test hypotheses, but search for theories emerging from your data). The second is an instrument to analyse data, and can be done both through a grounded perspective or with pre-coded instruments guided by hypotheses. So I would argue that they cannot be "integrated", as if you were integrating qualitative and quantitative metohds. You can certainly use thematic analysis in a grounded theory approach, by letting themes emerge from the reading.

I presume that your assumption that there are five approaches to qualitative research comes from Creswell and Poth's book on five traditions. I do not believe that their book was meant to be exclusive, i.e., that there are precisely five and only five ways to do qualitative research.

Instead, I think that a combination of semi-structured interviews with thematic analysis is probably the single most common approach to qualitative research, even if does not have a precise label.

Yes, grounded theory is a great one. Go for it.