Abstract In qualitative research, few tasks are more foundational—and more frustrating—than coding and analysis. The process of deciding which data to focus on, how to code it, and when to move from descriptive labels to analytical claims can feel like a leap in the dark. Drawing on the pragmatist tradition of examining social action as creative problem solving, this article introduces a structured but flexible framework—the goal-obstacle-strategy-implications (GOSI) model—for making that leap more navigable. Reclaiming grounded theory’s commitment to theory generation, GOSI encourages researchers to analyze how people pursue provisional goals, confront obstacles, experiment with strategies, and generate consequences in context. The framework provides a practical and portable method for identifying patterned variation across cases, surfacing how structural constraints and social positions shape action over time. By foregrounding action as situated, adaptive, and recursive, GOSI moves analysis beyond surface description toward grounded, process-based explanation. It also formalizes a comparative logic for theoretical sampling, helping researchers iteratively refine emerging concepts while collecting data. More than a coding technique, GOSI offers a methodological reorientation—one that clarifies the micro-macro link, makes space and social location analytically visible, and supports asset-based accounts of agency under constraint. It also contributes to ongoing debates about how qualitative scholars can theorize structure without reducing people to passive reflections of it. In doing so, the framework revives grounded theory’s original ambitions while offering new tools for meeting the challenges of contemporary fieldwork.
Stuart et al. (Fri,) studied this question.