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Qualitative Family Research
A Newsletter of the Qualitative Family Research Network National Council on Family RelationsVolume 7, Numbers 1 & 2 November 1993
Dimensional Analysis and Grounded Theory: Interviews with Leonard Schatzman
By Jane F. Gilgun University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA
“In the history of qualitative research, most professors couldn't articulate the method. Astudent would ask a prof, ‘Where did you get that concept?’ The prof would mumble somethingand then add, ‘Hang around a few years, and you'll see.’ Sure enough, the student would hangaround for a couple of years and would see. The student becomes a professor and her studentasks, ‘Where did you get that concept?’ The prof mumbles something and then says, ‘Hangaround a few years. You'll see.’”The speaker is Leonard Schatzman, with whom I talked several times by phone in order to understand his place in the development of grounded theory analysis. Schatzman's storyevokes the difficulty and complexity of teaching and learning qualitative methods, a difficultywhich can extend over generations. In our conversations, Schatzman spoke on a wide range of topics, such as grounded theory analysis and the challenges it poses to students, dimensionalanalysis, the history of his relationship to Anselm Strauss, and methods of teaching and learninggrounded theory.In this article, I will attempt to give a flavor of a man who taught qualitative methods togenerations of sociology and nursing students and whose writings have helped many others to become qualitative researchers (Schatzman & Strauss, 1973).
Taught Field Methods for Almost 30 Years
For 28 years Schatzman taught the field methods course which preceded grounded theorysequence at the University of California, San Francisco. Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss(1967), widely recognized as the originators of grounded theory analysis, taught courses on dataanalysis and interpretation, following the field work course. All three were faculty members inthe sociology department, and their courses also were part of the School of Nursing curriculum.“Glaser and Strauss made a contribution in articulating method and challenged others toarticulate theirs,” Schatzman said. “Their great contribution was to push us into makingmethodological commitments which historically we did not do.”
The Emergence of Dimensional Analysis
Schatzman responded to this challenge and articulated dimensional analysis, a style of doing grounded theory, whose purpose is to make explicit some of the tacit processes involved inanalysis (Schatzman, 1991; Schatzman & Bowers, in preparation). “An analysis cannot have
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occurred without having dimensionalized some complex phenomenon and brought thosedimensions into some kind of configuration,” Schatzman explained. The configuration of research findings depends on the selection of one of the dimensions to order all the others.Schatzman suggested that students analyze their data using several different dimensions untilthey settle on one or more organizing dimensions. Then, “You at least have made acommitment, a public commitment to which of the dimensions will be most telling of all that isinvolved in understanding a situation--indeed, creating the very situation being analyzed. Naturedoesn't provide situations; situations are constructed.” Perhaps the single most important premiseof dimensional analysis is that all human beings do it naturally, though not necessarilysystematically,” he said.
Feminism and African-American Scholarship as Forms of Dimensional Analysis
African-American and feminist scholars provide examples of the unwitting, use of dimensional analysis. These scholars--without naming their analytic processes as dimensionalanalysis--have transformed our understanding of history through using race and gender as centraldimensions of their analyses, Schatzman pointed out.“What do black scholars do?” he asked. They use race as a central dimension. It givesthem a perspective through which they look at the processes of history. Through race, historycomes out differently.” He continued, “Contemporary feminism has reconstituted history--itsconstruction. Feminism took gender as a basic perspective,” he said. “We're going to makegender central to the configuration of all the dimensions we're going to examine. Everyone of them will be examined against the dimension of gender--like leadership, freedom, whatever youwant to bring in.”Dimensional analysis, therefore, provides a lens through which to view the variousaspects of a situation, and it fits well with Strauss and Corbin's (l990) style of doing groundedtheory analysis whose focus is on the identification of core concepts of social processes, theconditions under which they exist, and the associated outcomes or consequences of these processes. This conceptualization of grounded theory often was experienced as abstract anddifficult by students.In applying these ideas of dimensional analysis to students' research, Schatzman pointsout that “Every code really stems from or is rooted in some kind of dimension that you haveconstructed.” He said, “I insist my students gather all the flowers [dimensions] and tell whichone of these dimensions ended up as a central perspective and then aligned all the other dimensions.” Dimensional analysis, therefore, guides researchers toward choosing one or morecentral concepts that can organize their findings.Schatzman began formulating dimensional analysis in the early 1970s, in response tostudents' difficulty in doing grounded theory analysis. “The method Strauss teaches and Glaser teaches is very, very difficult," he said. "It simply is not easy to grasp.” Many studentsexperience grounded theory analysis as not providing any anchors and feel uneasy with theapparent vagueness of allowing the ideas to emerge and to discover social processes, theconditions under which they occur, and their consequences or outcomes. Schatzman has beenteaching dimensional analysis for many years and several student dissertations were based onthis approach (Bowers, 1983; Droes, 1989; Fisher, 1989; McCarthy, 1991).
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Recently, Strauss, in collaboration with Juliet Corbin (Corbin, 1991; Strauss, 1987;Strauss & Corbin, 1990), has suggested the use of matrices to organize the elements of theanalysis. They, too, recognized the advantages of articulating some of the tacit processes of doing grounded theory analysis.
Some Pitfalls of Working Within the Grounded Theory Tradition
In his advising of students on their dissertation research, Schatzman found several typesof misapplication of grounded theory analysis. Some imposed “received” theories on data rather than fostering the gradual emergence of ideas. Others technically followed the procedures of grounded theory but developed results which did not add to theoretical understandings.Some made premature commitments to codes (concepts) which had unexamined levels of abstraction and little integration among them, and still others appeared to be respondingintuitively to their field experiences and did not make convincing links between procedures, data,and theory. Finally, some students gave up.
Students Who Do Well with Procedures of Grounded Theory Analysis
Students do a superior piece of work “when it is relevant to theoretical constructions intheir fields,” Schatzman said. Relevance means “you can order an existing theory, refute it, or force its modification. One of the three is your fate.” If the theory can't do this, “you've failed.”Mainly students who are “accepting of indeterminate realities and plural perspectives” do wellwith processes of grounded theory analysis, Schatzman (l991, p. 306) wrote in a chapter in a book honoring Strauss.
Strauss was Schatzman's Teacher and Then his Colleague
Leonard Schatzman was Strauss's first graduate student. After receiving his Ph.D. at theUniversity of Chicago in 1945, with Ernest Burgess as his advisor, Strauss was an assistant professor at Indiana University. Schatzman had received his bachelor's degree in history atIndiana and, while still in uniform after being demobilized from the U.S. Army, he went to visithis history profs. Edwin Sutherland, a sociological criminologist, noticed him as he “waswandering through the halls of sociology thinking of going to California to study psychiatricsocial work.” Sutherland asked to interview him about G.I.'s and the black market. After threehours of conversation, Sutherland offered him an assistantship in sociology.Schatzman turned him down and went to California, but he could not get into schoolthere because of residency requirements. So, he took Sutherland up on his offer. He learnedsociology mainly from Strauss. “I read and talked to Strauss about it,” he said. “I was never intrigued with sociology until I bought the pragmatic-interactionism that Strauss brought to me.”Strauss and Schatzman parted for a time, Schatzman to teach at Coe College in Cedar Rapids,Iowa, and Strauss to the University of Chicago. Several years passed and Strauss askedSchatzman to join him in Chicago on a three-year study of psychiatric institutions.
Developing the Theory of Negotiated Order
“The theory of negotiated order (Strauss, Schatzman, Bucher, Ehrlich, & Sabshin, 1962)
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An Interview with Leonard Schatzman
This interview gives an insider's view of the development of grounded theory, a research method in the social sciences. Leonard Schatzman is a key figure in the development of grounded theory. For more than 30 years,…
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