Product Description
Kathy Charmaz is one of the world's leading theorists and exponents of grounded theory. In this important and essential new textbook, she introduces the reader to the craft of using grounded theory in social research, and provides a clear, step-by-step guide for those new to the field. Using worked examples throughout, this book also maps out an alternative vision of grounded theory put forward by its founding thinkers, Glaser and Strauss. To Charmaz, grounded theory must move on from its positivist origins and must incorporate many of the methods and questions posed by constructivists over the past twenty years to become a more nuanced and reflexive practice. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Excellent service - prompt response
Excellent service. Book was in great condition and arrived in time for writing my dissertation proposal. Thanks!

A Genuinely Practical Guide to Grounded Theory
This is a particularly well-written guide book for doing Grounded Theory. Grounded theory is one of the qualitative research methodlogies in which there are deep philosophical divides (i.e., Strauss, Corbin, Glasser).Charmaz manages to strike a middle ground between prescriptive, post-posivist approaches and some of the highly interpretative approaches emerging in qualitative research.

I would strongly recommend this as a "how to" book for those desiring to employ the disciplined and rigourous approach to grounded theory, without giving up on the creative process.

My only negative on this book is the quality of the binding.For $40+, I am disappointed that the pages are starting to fall out.However, that is probably because I am using it a lot:)

MUST HAVE
This book is a must have for anyone doing grounded theory research or dissertations. Kathy Charmaz helps the fans of qualitative methodology into the 21st century with this wonderfully written guide through grounded theory. The book promises to be of value to students or experts in the field, then delivers as promised!

Can't wait for her next book for my collection!!!

A 'how to guide' and much more!
As the title suggests, Kathy Charmaz's 'Constructing Grounded Theory' is a practical and thoughtful guide to the intricacies of undertaking qualitative research. Each chapter focuses on a specific aspect with numerous 'hints' and examples from her own work. Charmaz is an excellent teacher, unafraid to challenge the work of Glaser & Strauss with humility and commonsense. Highly recommeded to all aspiring qualitative researchers.

Wow!
This is by far the best and most detailed introduction to Qualitative Analysis I have seen. Charmaz is thorough, clear, to the point, and the book is well-written so that even beginner analysts could follow her points. Excellent find. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume is directed toward closing the gap between theory and empirical research and improving social scientists' capacities for generating theory that is relevant and useful to their research. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

quick delivery, well protected book...liked it
it's a well structured book, clearly guide readers go through the procedures of qualatitive data coding...and memo writitng...And it gives me tips of how to sort out my qualatitive data...enjoyed reading it!

Theory Development any1 can understand
If you are a social science student doing research and would like to do something different (from theory verification) this is the book for you. Grounded Theory as explained by Glaser and Strauss is useable, even to the novice. Soon you too will be on your way to theory development!

Grounded Theory
This is an excellent reference for those doing research that uses grounded theory to build theories.

Seminal Work in Grounded Theory
This book is a must for anyone looking to write theory, or for researchers looking to do qualitative analysis.

Grounded Theory Rocks
Glaser and Strauss's book is easy to read and offers a qualitative theory building strategy that is well structured. They provide a concise overview of the history of grounded theory and its uses. Moreover, they offer readers solid guidance on comparative qualitative studies and defense of the same in the world of research. ... Read more

Product Description

The Third Edition of the bestselling Basics of Qualitative Research:Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory continues to offer immensely practical advice and technical expertise to aid researchers in making sense of their collected data. Authors Juliet Corbin and the late Anselm Strauss (co-creator of Grounded Theory) present methods that enable researchers to analyze and interpret their data, and ultimately build theory from it. Highly accessible in their approach, Corbin and Strauss provide a step-by-step guide to the research act--from the formation of the research question through several approaches to coding and analysis, to reporting on the research. Full of definitions and illustrative examples, this book concludes with chapters that present criteria for evaluating a study, as well as responses to common questions posed by students of qualitative research. Significantly revised, Basics of Qualitative Research remains a landmark volume in the study of qualitative methods.

Key Features of the Third Edition:

• Allows for students to develop their critical thinking skills in the "Critical Issues" section at the end of each chapter.

• Shows the actual steps involved in data analysis (from description to grounded theory) and data gathering by means of theoretical sampling.

• Provides exercises for thinking, writing and group discussion that reinforces material presented in the text.

• Consists of a student companion Web site at www.sagepub.com/corbinstudysite that includes real data and practice with qualitative software such as MAXQDA, as well as student practice exercises.

Customer Reviews (7)

The BEST up-to-date book on Grounded Theory!!
This book is a must!! It responded to all the other GT critics/methods and explains the steps in easy-to-understand terms.

Very Detailed & descriptive.
I purchased this text to gather the step by step information on understanding and following appropriate qualitative research analysis protocol.It has been some years since I studied this area.I found this text to be helpful in this respect.It is a bit dense and complex in use of terminology at times.But I found I had a better understanding of the principles and rules attached to conducting good qualitative research analysis.

Very helpful
This book describes all the basics of research in a clear, concise manner. It's useful for the lay person and the experienced researcher alike.

3rd Edition - Still needs editing
The bottom line with this book is that, while it delivers the goods in terms of an introduction to grounded theory, it's poorly written for a 3rd edition. By the time a text book is in its third version it should be tight, and I'm afraid this book just isn't. Structurally the book is basically fine, but I found myself mentally editing various sentences and paragraphs as I read it because it simply wasn't written very well. This is particularly annoying for a pair of respected qualitative researchers, seeing as language is the stock and trade of qualitative work.

Additionally, I felt like it was a little terminology heavy for terms that are not universally accepted as common language for discussing qualitative research, but I'm more forgiving in this latter regard. We are generally a bit challenged in the field when it comes to common language, and there remains a residual need to demarcate one's academic territory.

Three stars . . . it could have earned 4 with better writing/editing.

Research and Theory Construction
This book's title shows that "qualitative research" is its primary subject, and "developing grounded theory" is its secondary subject. The opposite is true in the case of the book coauthored earlier by Strauss: "The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research." In the interval between the writing of the two books, Strauss may have realized that his thesis was about research work more than theory construction. But the text of this second book too presents research work as theory construction, as explained below. It could be thought that what is to be called a "theory" is a linguistic issue. But the definition of this term must not prevent the construction of real theories as distinct from empirical knowledge.

In lieu ofthe implicit definition of "theory" that appeared in the earlier book (p. 1), an explicit one is given in this second book: "A set of well developed concepts related through statements of relationship, which together constitute an integrated framework that can be used to explain or predict phenomena" (p. 15). The new and critical but obscure expressions in this definition are "well developed concepts" and "integrated framework," whereas the idea of explaining or predicting phenomena by using a theory appeared also in the earlier definition. As I mentioned in my review of the earlier book, explaining or predicting phenomena can be done by using empirical knowledge too and therefore cannot be considered a distinguishing characteristic of theories. For example, the empirical laws of electromagnetism known before Maxwell served to explain, predict, and control many electromagnetic phenomena but did not constitute a theory. The authors repeat the same mistake when they admit that "a theory is more than a set of [empirical] findings;" and continue by saying, "it offers an explanation of phenomena" (p.22). They also say, "generating theories about phenomena, rather than just generating a set of findings, is important to the development of a field of knowledge" (pp. 22-23). That is correct, but the problem is to know how theories are generated. Also, "findings" too serve to explain phenomena, as mentioned, although they have a narrower scope than theories.

"Statements of relationship [between phenomena] are commonly referred to as `hypotheses'" (p. 103). "Any hypotheses and propositions derived from data must be continuously `checked out' against incoming data and modified, extended, or deleted as necessary" (p. 22). The key concept here, which the authors do not clarify sufficiently, is the derivation of hypotheses from data. First, some relationships between phenomena can be deduced from the data. But what is thus produced constitutes not a hypothesis but empirical knowledge about those phenomena. It is when those relationships are "generalized through induction," in Newton's words, that they become general rules which are of hypothetical nature, or hypotheses, because induction yields only probabilities, not certainties, as Bertrand Russell emphasized. The authors seem to ignore this fact. Moreover, when the hypotheses thus derived from data are "continuously `checked out' against incoming data and modified, extended, or deleted as necessary" and those that are conserved are finally supported by all new information, they stop being hypotheses and become empirically known facts. And any set of such facts constitutes empirical knowledge, not a theory.

The authors seem not to have a clear view of where induction and deduction are used. "Anytime a researcher derives hypotheses from data, because it involves interpretation, we consider that a deductive process" (p. 22). A relationship that is deduced from the data related to some singular phenomena constitutes empirical knowledge about those phenomena. A hypothesis is created out of that knowledge when it is "generalized through induction." The total process is not only deduction but involves alsoinduction. The authors express these facts in an obscure way thus: "At the heart of theorizing lies the interplay of making inductions (deriving concepts, their properties, and dimensions from data) and deductions (hypothesizing about the relationships between concepts, the relationships also are derived from data, but data that have been abstracted by the analyst from the raw data)" (p. 22). What the authors unclearly describe as "abstracted by the analyst from the raw data" is what Newton meant by the words "generalized through induction." And the generalization must cover phenomena that do not allow the deduction of the hypothesis from the data if the hypothesis is expected to be used to construct a theory. The authors conclude: "At the end, it is hoped, the researcher has systematically developed the products of analysis into a theory" (p. 22). The major mistake in this conception of theory construction is that it ignores the following fact: A hypothesis that is "checked out against incoming data," (i.e. fits the data, is deducible from the data) is no more a hypothesis but empirical knowledge and therefore a system of statements that contains only such tested hypotheses constitutes not a theory but a group of empirical knowledge. The authors repeat the same mistake when they say that a theory "is validated during the actual research process" (213). What can be validated during the "actual" (original) research process is empirical knowledge. A second phase of theory work is concerned with the validation of the theory, i.e. with showing that the consequences of the theory fit the phenomena, or that they are deducible not only from the theory but also from the phenomena. Consequently, the theory becomes usable in explaining, predicting, and controlling the phenomena.

Only when knowledge that is deduced, or readily obtained, from the raw data related to some singular phenomena is "generalized through induction" and assumed, or hypothesized, to be valid also in relation to phenomena that do not make possible the deduction of that hypothesis from the data that a hypothesis is created that can be used to construct a theory. This means that a theory contains at least one hypothesis that cannot be deduced from the empirical data related to all phenomena to which it is assumed to apply. The reason for this is that a law of nature may be deduced from the data related to some phenomena but not from the data related to other phenomena. Consequently, by transferring knowledge from one set of phenomena to another can provide hypothetical knowledge that is otherwise unavailable. A theory is a set of general statements, or laws, of which at least one is such a non-testable hypothesis at the time of the construction of the theory. After a theory is thus constructed, consequences are deduced from it that serve to explain, predict, and control the related phenomena. The usefulness of a theory in doing these things constitutes the proof of its usability and also the proofs of all of its contents, including the non-testable hypothesis, or hypotheses. When phenomena that do not fit a tested and accepted theory are encountered, a more general theory is constructed. The old theory is not discarded by being considered wrong but remains in use in the area where it is valid, because it is simpler than the more general theory.

The above-presented knowledge about the content and the method of construction of theories is derived from the grand theories of physics. I have shown in my books how the same method can be used in psychology too. As an example, I constructed a theory of automatic responses such as the symptoms of non-organic mental disorders, dreams, cerebral lateralization as structural response, etc. This theory serves not only to explain and predict those phenomena but also to control them very effectively where this is possible. I had to mention these here because the best test of ideas is their usefulness in explaining, predicting, and controlling the phenomena.

Although Strauss and Corbin advocate what they call "grounded theory," which is in reality nothing else than empirical knowledge, they expose their distrust of their work, which contains many unclear points, when they warn the reader by saying, "Remember that a theory is just that - a theory" (p. 213). Theories inspire more respect when their method of construction and their function are better understood.

Cognitive-Behavioral Cybernetics of Symptoms, Dreams, Lateralization: Theory, Interpretation, Therapy

Theory Construction and Testing in Physics and Psychology

... Read more

Product Description
Grounded theory is the most popular genre of qualitative research used in the health professions and is widely used elsewhere in the research world. In this volume, six key grounded theory methodologists examine the history, principles, and practices of this method, highlighting areas in which different strands of the methods diverge. Chapters cover the work of Anselm Strauss, Barney Glaser, Leonard Schatzman, and the postmodern and constructivist schools. Dialogues between the participants sharpen the debate and show key topics of agreement and disagreement. This volume will be ideal for courses on grounded theory that wish to show the ways in which it can be used in research studies. ... Read more

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'Tony Bryant and Kathy Charmaz are the perfect editors for this excellent and forward looking Handbook which is surely destined to be a classic'

- David Silverman, Professor Emeritus, Goldsmiths College

For anyone interested in grounded theory this is a must have book.No longer will students have to search the library or internet to find authoritative voices on a variety of topics.It’s all right there at their fingertips

- Juliet Corbin, San José State University

Grounded Theory is by far the most widely used research method across a wide range of disciplines and subject areas, including social sciences, nursing and healthcare, medical sociology, information systems, psychology, and anthropology.This handbook gives a comprehensive overview of the theory and practice of Grounded Theory, taking into account the many attempts to revise and refine Glaser and Strauss' original formulation and the debates that have followed.

Antony Bryant & Kathy Charmaz bring together leading researchers and practitioners of the method from the US, the UK, Australia and Europe to represent all the major standpoints within Grounded Theory, demonstrating the richness of the approach.The contributions cover a wide range of perspectives on the method, covering its features and ramifications, its intricacies in use, its demands on the skills and capabilities of the researcher and its position in the domain of research methods.

The SAGE Handbook of Grounded Theory is an indispensable reference source for academics and researchers across many disciplines who want to develop their understanding of the Grounded Theory method. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Grounded Theory primer
Anyone who wants to understand the basics of Grounded Theory or is attempting a study for the first time will find this book to be invaluable.All aspects of grounded theory are treated in a thorough but approachable manner.THis is as good as having a personal mentor to guide you through the process.

Very helpful
I am a novice grounded theory researcher. I have read Glaser, Strauss, Srauss and Corbin, Charmaz and Clarke's books. Every time I need to bring it all together I can rely on this book to show me how. I would not substitute it for the others but it has been indispensable in trying to figure out what the heck I am trying to do. There is always a different perspective that is useful in bringing it together. ... Read more

Product Description

Grounded theory methodology and procedure have become one of the most influential modes of carrying out qualitative research when generating theory is a principle aim of the researcher.

This volume presents a series of readings that emphasize different aspects of grounded theory methodology and methods. The selections are written by former students of the late Anselm Strauss and have been chosen for their accessibility and range.

Product Description
Grounded Theory in Management is the most widely used qualitative method in social science research, and is a particularly popular method amongst management and organization reserachers. However, resources for conducting grounded theory are spread across a number of disciplines, such as sociology, nursing, education and pyschology, making it difficult for organization and management scholars to track them down.

Customer Reviews (1)

A masterful job of explaining grounded theory
Karen Locke manages, in a little over 100 pages, to simultaneously explain grounded theory, document its roots, show the conditions under which it can be used, and still maintain a critical stance toward it!She includes an extensive discussion of Barry Turner's work on disaster; an account of Glaser & Straus's procedure called 'coding,' unpacks the various varieties of grounded theory (there's not just one!), and shows great familiarity with the French influences on American social science in the past several decades.

Although she doesn't say it, her discussion implies that grounded theory is best learned from a mentor, when a novice is in an apprentice's role.My impression from some purported 'grounded theory' papers I've read in the past few years is that some junior scholars invoke it as a way of avoiding the hard work of doing what Glaser & Straus (& their followers) showed is really required to achieve a scholarly product. Some young scholars I've spoken with see it as a short cut, rather than as a serious & rigorous method in its own right. Locke does a great job of indicating how time consuming serious grounded theory work can be.

This is a great book for people just starting to think about doing grounded theory building. ... Read more

Product Description
Written with a clarity of style and a practical slant throughout, this book represents a primer for organizational, business and marketing students studying for research degrees who would like to adopt the grounded theory methodology approach for their dissertation or thesis. In a similar vein, it also should be a hugely important resource for researchers. It aims to both properly contextualise grounded theory by looking at its background, characteristics and the different sides of the argument of its potential for the researcher, but also to outline how the approach may be applied within a research context.

Grounded Theory is different from other texts on four levels:

À It offers an overview of qualitative methods in general and locates grounded theory in this context;

À It compares and contrasts the various grounded theory approaches in an accessible manner;

À It offers an in-depth case study for students and researchers to follow//use;

À And it provides a critique of the methodology itself.

Essential reading for advanced students and academics in the fields of organizational and business studies, marketing and management. ... Read more

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Situational Analysis: Grounded Theory After the Postmodern Turn provides an innovative approach to grounded theory useful in a wide array of qualitative research projects. Extending Anselm Strauss’s ecological social worlds/arenas/discourses framework, this book offers researchers three kinds of maps that place an emphasis on the range of differences rather than commonalities, as found via the traditional grounded theory approach. These maps include situational, social worlds/arena, and positional maps.

Customer Reviews (2)

Most important research book I've read for some time.
Situational Analysis seeks to rid Grounded Theory of its remaining positivism by examining situations as a whole--their discourses, social worlds, arenas, and the like--rather than dealing in supposedly isolable variables or simplistic cause-effect linearities. To help with this, situational mapping receives more emphasis than narratives or formulae that imply am omniscient, genderless, disembodied researcher somehow standing apart from what is researched.

The author remains clear and avoids the worst of the dreadful jargon that infests so many postmodern texts. This one offers some background in the methodology, alternates theory with example, and uses exemplar studies to show the reader how to do things. Students and instructors alike can sit down with this book and find many concrete applications of this way of doing research. The mapping could also come in very handy in other kinds of qualitative studies.

By way of a wish list: (1) It seems to me that the postmodern horror of regularity, unity, and replication overlooks that these need not always be hegemonic homogenizations of human experience. In addition to differences and complexities, why not look for a few interesting patterns and commonalities in the mix of what's being studied? (2) 3D maps online would bring out their depth and multidimensionality. (3) Like to see more emphasis on peer review or what Braud and Anderson call a "resonance panel" to minimize the risk of mapping biases and projections. (4) Like to see some tentative interpretations of the map symbols. What does it say about a situation when the map's balloons and boundaries crowd out the lines of communication? Does it mean anything if most of the map consists of boxes and straight lines? How much does the map also diagram the researcher's psyche? etc.

Useful for Dissertations
For the graphically-oriented person interested in grounded theory (or to some extent, Actor-Network-Theory ANT), this book offers a solid guide to the necessary mechanics for a dissertation.On the other hand, it's not a manual.There are no A-B-C or 1-2-3 steps for doing situational analysis a la Cresswell or other more hand-holding method texts.I view this as an advantage.Method ought to be a guide, not a script for performing research--especially qualitative research, but that is of course up to the researcher.

If one combines this book with Charvaz (2006) and Strauss and Corbin (1998) the necessary pieces are there for passing any level of methodological rigor related to grounded theory.

This is not ANT, but it is quite related.ANT comes from different intellectual antecedents and has a few different emphases that link contextually to Latour's project.Still, Latourians will see obvious similarities.

Overall, Clarke wants to add Foucauldian genealogy to Straussian grounded theory, in order to broaden the data sources considered as discourse, and to make some of the description and theorizing tools graphical.I do not downplay the reworking of grounded theory, but it is a refined branch within grounded theory--not something altogether new, I'd argue.And I think it is not excessively modest for Clarke to describe it this way, too.Strauss was a giant and deserves more acclaim.

I do not mean to detract from this important work.Situational analysis represents the state of the art of a symbolic interactionist methodology broadened out from where Strauss ended his work.Yet method isn't quite the right term--as Clarke discusses at some length in the book.Situational analysis is a way of thinking about research problems along with some tools for investigating the sort of approach that has built up from interactionists since Mead.

If advisors or reviewers aren't sypathetic to ethnographic or interpretive approaches, there is nothing here that will overcome that hurdle in all probability.On the other hand, if you can do a rigorous qualitative project, this is an interesting way to go for someone interested in developing theory while investigating facts.I think it is particularly relevant to areas where little has been written or developed.

There is a lot to be done with refining and extending the method, but the book nevertheless constitutes an exciting advance.Highly recommended.

... Read more

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"This book provides an overview of Glaserian grounded theory and its application to nursing research. It is easy to understand and should serve as a good reference for anyone using grounded theory method." Score: 93, 4 stars

--Doody's

This book illustrates the development of the Grounded Theory (GT) method as applied to nursing research. Initially developed by Glaser & Strauss (1967), and further described by Glaser in Theoretical Sensitivity (1978), this groundbreaking research method proposes that the first step is to collect data, and subsequently generate the theory that emerges from that data. In essence, this method allows theory to capture experience.

The authors present an engaging overview of the GT method, followed by examples of early modes of GT studies. The book focuses on how novice researchers, working at the descriptive level, can apply GT to their nursing research with sensitivity to emerging theoretical codes.

Key Features:

• Guidelines for using Glaserian grounded theory in nursing research
• Readable research designs suitable for novice researchers
• Techniques of conceptual mapping to assist in the analytical process
• Use of emergent theoretical codes to enhance and integrate descriptive theory
• Testing of completed research in intervention programs in clinical practice
• Supplementary online materials with definitions of the different modes of GT, a presentation of the Intersystem Model, and more

Product Description
This is an updated version of an article on the similarities between the procedures of grounded theoryresearch 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." ... Read more

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Professor Dey's persuasive, instructive, critical, engaging, and often humorous investigation places many elements of grounded theory under close scrutiny. In searching out the methodological principles on which grounded theory is built, he reveals its main features as a qualitative research methodology for social research and the issues fundamental to understanding it. He also highlights the disagreements between the originators of grounded theory, their reasons, and their effects. His enlightened perspective thereby makes sense of the ways in which grounded theory approaches some of the key issues in qualitative analysis, such as coding and categorization, analysis of process, and generation of theory.

Key Features
* Critically considers what grounded theory has to offer qualitative inquiry
* Explores the principles and methodologies raised during the course of grounded theory's evolution
* Not another "how-to" version of grounded theory ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Good though needs updating
This is a good book, though it is probably true to say that its critique has been superseded and bettered. Dey provides a comprehensive list of criticisms of grounded theory, suggesting that there are many ambiguities, confusions and unanswered questions surrounding its use. For example, he illustrates how tensions in the original formulation of the approach are revealed in the gulf that developed between the originators, such that the role of verification remains a "puzzle" and the role of prior theory is unclear. Despite this critique, though, Dey maintains a surprising degree of optimism in the approach. He sees grounded theory as capable of development and as offering a "middle way" between ideographic and nomothetic theorizing. A more up to date and comprehensive critique is provided in the Thomas and James article 'Reinventing grounded theory'.

Learning to use Grounded theory
Ian Dey provides a good explanation of grounded theory method and he is especially worried in the definition of concepts, something very important in a research method. Special relevant are his highlights along the book, that help to focus on the essential of each section. In my opinion this book is a good analysis of Glaser and Strauss work, and he gives a more neutral perspective on how to use grounded theory. Very analytical and objective in his explanations.

more problems than solutions?
As a student of its originators and a practitioner of the grounded theory approach, this book was for me a bit like reading an intelligent observer's critique of the conversations overheard at my family reunion, withoutknowing any of the context, history, or quirks of the family membersthemselves. Although Dey titles this book "Guidelines," I foundit instead to be a methodological critique, as acknowledged in theeditorial review provided by this website. Many issues Dey raises arereasonable and provocative, but his critique of the major methods texts ofgrounded theory bypasses the many hundreds of published examples ofgrounded theory research and thus doesn't address how the method isactually used in practice. This book will be of interest to seriousgrounded theory devotees who are able to see beyond some errors andmisconceptions to a thoughtful exploration of important ideas behindgrounded theory analysis, but it may discourage and confuse novices.

Excellent, Detailed, on level ground!
If you've read Glasner and Straus' (1967), then this is an excellent modern day treatment of developing grounded theory. A must-have title for any qualitative researcher. Above all, suggestions throughout this bookoffer practical tips that any academic researcher will appreciate. ... Read more

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Virtue as Social Intelligence: An Empirically Grounded Theory takes on the claims of philosophical situationism, the ethical theory that is skeptical about the possibility of human virtue. Influenced by social psychological studies, philosophical situationists argue that human personality is too fluid and fragmented to support a stable set of virtues. They claim that virtue cannot be grounded in empirical psychology. This book argues otherwise.

Drawing on the work of psychologists Walter Mischel and Yuichi Shoda, Nancy E. Snow argues that the social psychological experiments that philosophical situationists rely on look at the wrong kinds of situations to test for behavioral consistency. Rather than looking at situations that are objectively similar, researchers need to compare situations that have similar meanings for the subject. When this is done, subjects exhibit behavioral consistencies that warrant the attribution of enduring traits, and virtues are a subset of these traits. Virtue can therefore be empirically grounded and virtue ethics has nothing to fear from philosophical situationism.

Customer Reviews (1)

Virtue ethics grounded in psychology
Some readers might be disappointed that Nancy Snow's book doesn't provide a complete account of virtue. We are never told exactly what aspects of social intelligence counts as virtues since vices are also grounded in social intelligence.

What this book does do quite well is show how a philosophically viable account of virtue ethics could be made consistent with the available empirical evidence. Situationism, which denies that there are any "global" character traits that could could as virtues, overlooks ways to interpret the evidence in ways consistent with the existence of virtues. Snow's interpretations, I think, are quite plausible and far more in keeping with common sense than those of the situationists.

The points in this book are well made, but I came hoping to find a complete account of virtues here. For that, we may need to wait for a follow-up. ... Read more

Product Description
With the growth in the proportion of the population of older people more attention is being given to their well-being. Occupational therapy has much to offer older people and their well-being, ensuring that they live well as they understand it. However examination of occupational therapy and other health related literature reveals that the meaning of well-being is often not articulated, how people achieve well-being is unclear and the perspective of the older person with regard to well-being is missing. This book reports on a study that uses grounded theory to explore how older people perceive and understand well-being. To experience well-being older people have to perceive that they are in control. The social process of ¿trading off¿ is used to increase the perception of being in control. ¿Trading off¿ is used to exchange occupations that are no longer within their capacity, for occupations that are, or for other people to complete those tasks for the person to perceive that they are in control. The major contribution that this book makes is an explication of the dynamic process that older people engage in to achieve well-being. ... Read more

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For a period of 6 years, the course retention rate for Marylhurst University's (MU) online courses was 91%, which is within four percentage points of its on-campus course retention rate (Schreck, 2001).This grounded theory, web-based, research study aims to explicate the reasons why MU online students complete courses at high rates and develop this understanding into an online student retention model. A grounded theory approach was used to conduct this study, which is described by Creswell (2002) as, a systematic qualitative procedure used to generate a theory that explains at a broad conceptual level a process an action or interaction about a substantive topic" (p. 439)." ... Read more

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Asserting that military organizations need to operate in complex environments is one of the least controversial statements one can make in the realm of military studies. In fact, it is a truism that military organizations need to operate in difficult circumstances. During their deployment, armies are confronted with dangers, cunning enemies, unexpected changes, and a general level of uncertainty. The obvious implication is that armies need to be able to deal with complexity, or dynamic complexity as it will be labelled in this book.This study develops an analytical framework that is composed of different ingredients of formal theory. Central to this framework is the idea that the ability to 'doubt' is of crucial importance for organizations that are confronted with dynamic complexity. From this it follows that organizations need to organize their ability to doubt in such environments. The framework is used to analyze the way military units of the Dutch Armed Forces deployed to perform peace operations dealt with dynamic complexity.Subsequently, it is analyzed how specific organizational characteristics of the mother organization in the Netherlands influenced the ability of the deployed units to organize doubt. ... Read more