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308 CHAPTER 11 Analyzing qualitative data

FIGURE 11.2
Example open and axial codes from a grounded theory analysis of issues relating to
palliative care pain management. Note that the axial codes both abstract multiple open
codes into more general categories and also (in the case of the arrow labelled “helps
identify”) describe relationships between the codes.
Adapted from Kuziemsky, C.E., et al., 2007. A grounded theory guided approach to palliative care systems
design. International Journal of Medical Informatics 76, S141–S148.

finding and the data, the number of instances in the data that support the specific concept,
and the familiarity of the researcher with the related topic. Lastly, the findings of the
grounded theory approach may be influenced by the researchers' preconceived opinions
and, therefore, may be subject to biases. In order to avoid these issues from happening,
researchers should always keep in mind the key of this approach: being creative and open
minded; listening to the data. When there is a gap between the concept and the data, ad-
ditional data need to be collected to fill in the gap and tighten the linkage between the
concept and the data. Due to these limitations, some researchers prefer to use grounded
theory just as a coding technique, not as a theory generation method. For a detailed ex-
ploration of these and many other issues relating to the use of grounded theory in qualita-
tive analysis, see “The SAGE Handbook of Grounded Theory” (Bryant and Charmaz,
2007) and Corbin and Strauss’ classic text Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques
and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory (Corbin and Strauss, 2014).