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When a topic has so little research documented in the literature that there is no theory to guide practice, deductive reasoning and quantitative research may not be the most appropriate types of methods. Grounded theory is a qualitative method used to identify the "main concerns of subjects and the behaviors they use to resolve their main concerns" (Artinian, 2009, p. 3). It may not be familiar to the student and to many of those in practice. The article by McBroom and Ganong (2017) in this issue used grounded theory. The authors chose to investigate the parenting of divorced mothers of children with type 1 diabetes mellitus.
Grounded theory is a qualitative research method, so the processes used are inductive, rather than deductive. Grounded theory uses data to generate theory, and ultimately, produce hypotheses that account for the behavior seen for further research and testing (Stern & Porr, 2011).
With deductive reasoning, the investigator tests the hypothesis by removing extraneous data or variables to get a clear picture of the most likely cause(es) of the problem. Inductive reasoning includes as much information as possible about each case, including the context of the cases, and then looking for similarities. When multiple participants use the same words or very similar words or behave in the same or similar ways, the researcher makes note of that. As the instances are recognized,...