8 - Integrative diagrams and integrative sessions

Summary

Undoubtedly, the most difficult skill to learn is “how to make everything come together” – how to integrate one's separate, if cumulative, analyses. If the final product is an integrated theory, then integrating is the accurate term for this complex process. (See also Chapter 1.) This is why the inexperienced researcher will never feel secure in how to complete an entire integration until he or she has struggled with the process, beginning early and ending only with the final write-up. Perhaps the integration is more difficult for grounded theorists because they cannot integrate their research by opting for “story lines,” resting only on a conceptual framework, or on several themes or on a few concepts, or on concepts that are not carefully related to each other in the total analysis.

Correspondingly, the most difficult to convey feature of memo writing pertains to the integrative features; including, how the important categories are kept doggedly in analytic focus, and how that focus is embodied in a sequence of memos. These memos will be sorted from time to time, and from that summary, memos will be written, such as the one on safety in the previous chapter. Along with the sorting, the memo sequences and a succession of operational integrative diagrams, together, can help to keep the cumulative analysis much more orderly – and more clear, in the researcher's head.

Given the difficulty of teaching, let alone learning, how to integrate the complex analyses involved in grounded theory studies, we shall present in each of the next two chapters a fairly lengthy case. These will illustrate integrative steps. There are also, in this chapter, commentaries written, after three consultative sessions, by the recipients.