Curiosity, Creativity, and Surprise as Analytic Tools: Grounded Theory Method

Grounded theory method (GTM) is increasingly used in HCI and CSCW research (Fig. 1 ). GTM offers a rigorous way to explore a domain, with an emphasis on discovering new insights, testing those insights, and building partial understandings into a broader theory of the domain. The strength of the method—as a full method— is the ability to make sense of diverse phenomena, to construct an account of those phenomena that is strongly based in the data (“grounded” in the data), to develop that account through an iterative and principled series of challenges and modifi cations, and to communicate the end result to others in a way that is convincing and valuable to their own research and understanding. GTM is particularly appropriate for making sense of a domain without a dominant theory. It is not concerned with testing existing theories. Rather, GTM is concerned with the creation of theory, and with the rigorous and even ruthless examination of that new theory. Grounded Theory Method is exactly that—a method , or rather, a family of methods (Babchuk, 2010 )—for the development of theory. GTM makes explicit use of the capabilities that nearly all human share, to be curious about the world, to understand the world, and to communicate that understanding to others. GTM adds to these lay human capabilities a rigorous, scientifi c set of ways of inquiring, ways of thinking, and ways of knowing that can add power and explanatory strength to HCI and CSCW research. Curiosity, Creativity, and Surprise as Analytic Tools: Grounded Theory Method