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GLASER's “coding families“: it can be a highly demanding task esp. for novices
to select the theoretical concept most suited for a certain research domain
among a choice of numerous theoretical schools and approaches.
An important task of qualitative methodology would be to show a middle
path between the “Scylla“ of forcing the data with preconceived notions and
theories not suited for the domain under study and the “Charybdis“ of an
indiscriminate and eclectic use of concepts from various theoretical traditions.
The following methodological strategies can help researchers to avoid
either danger:
• The development of empirically grounded categories and hypotheses
benefits from theoretical pluralism. A pluralistic use of heuristic
frameworks requires that researchers have a variety of different concepts
with diverging theoretical background at their disposal and obtain
a flexible choice among them after having examined their appropriateness
for the investigated phenomena. Experts with longstanding
experience may be able to choose the right heuristic concept intuitively
thereby drawing on rich theoretical background knowledge. In contrast
to that novices may benefit from an explicit style of theory building
in which different “grand theories“ are utilised in order to understand,
explain and describe phenomena under study. A systematic
comparison of the results from the use of different heuristic concepts is
by all means preferable to an “emergence talk“ which masks the use of
the researcher's pet concepts.
• A strategy already suggested by proponents of “Analytic Induction“,
the systematic search for counter evidence, can reveal whether a given
heuristic concept has high or low empirical content. If negative instances
are easily found the applied categories obviously have a high
degree of falsifiability or empirical content and may be not suited as
heuristic concepts which are used in an initial attempt to structure empirical
data.
• The same holds true for an extensive search for empirical phenomena
to which the used categories do not apply. If a variety of phenomena
can be identified which cannot be covered by heuristic concepts used
so far it is obviously necessary to look for alternative concepts which
are suited better to capture the investigated phenomena.
4.3 The necessity of corroboration of empirically grounded categories and hypotheses
Contrary to an inductivist understanding a model of the research process
based on “hypothetical“ or “abductive inference“ is consistently fallibilistic,
that means that it does not claim that the validity of propositions developed
on the basis of empirical data can be simply ascertained by the fact that the
researcher has freed the mind from any preconceptions whatsoever before
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