Understanding grounded theory: principles and evaluation

Grounded theory was developed initially by Glaser and Strauss as a means to enable the 'systematic discovery of theory from the data of social research' and was first presented in The Discovery of Grounded Theory'( 1 ). The methodology was developed in response to the overwhelming belief held by positivist thinkers that qualitative research was unscientific because it rejected controlled experiments and appeared to embrace interpretation.