ABSTRACT
The idea that understanding, explaining and theorising should be well grounded in the processes and products of empirical enquiry is well established within social, psychological, health and clinical research. The term ‘grounded theory’ was first introduced by two collaborating sociologists, Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss, within sociology in the 1960s to signify a general methodological approach to primarily (though not exclusively) qualitative data gathering and analysis, along with an associated set of formalised methods for putting those principles into practice.
