Grounded Theory, Analytic Induction, & Social Work Research

This is an updated version of an article on the similarities between the procedures of grounded theory research and the direct practice of social work that I wrote in 1994. I kept an emphasis on grounded theory but added what I had learned over the years through my research experience about the importance of doing theory-guided qualitative research, which I call deductive qualitative analysis.

I based this type of research on analytic induction, which precedes grounded theory by decades and which, in fact, is the unacknowledged foundation of grounded theory. This article shows that deductive qualitative analysis reaches into history and thus is a form of "back to the future."