Exploring the use of entity-relationship diagramming as a technique to support grounded theory inquiry

Purpose This research compares fundamental concepts from the grounded theory approach to social science research and concepts from entity-relationship diagramming, a technique used to model data from the field of systems analysis, and proposes that entity-relationship diagramming can be a useful tool for grounded theory researchers. The deductive nature of entity-relationship diagramming may be particularly helpful to researchers during the process of ‘constant comparison’ of data. Design/Methodology/Approach The paper compares and contrasts concepts from the two different fields and demonstrates the construction of an entity-relationship diagram from data drawn from an existing grounded theory research project and demonstrates the correspondence between the data model constructs and the grounded theory constructs.