ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the use of secondary qualitative analysis for theory development and deals with early examples of secondary analysis of qualitative datasets for theory development. Back in 1988 S. Thorne and C. A. Robinson highlighted the use of secondary analysis of multiple qualitative datasets for theory development. Their secondary analysis yielded a conceptualization of health-care relationships that provided direction for theory development. Secondary analysis of qualitative datasets can be one approach for concept analysis. Describing the components and characteristics of the concept of hope was the purpose of Volume and K. B. Farris’s secondary qualitative analysis. Based on their secondary analysis, B. J. Lutz and B. J. Bowers called for a person-centered model that captures persons’ integration of their disability into daily life. Synthesizing multiple studies in a program of research through secondary analysis provides what J. M. Morse called incremental evidence.
