HOW SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM INFORMS GROUNDED THEORY ANALYSIS

Resumen

Qualitative health research requires methodological approaches capable of explaining how meanings, actions and social processes are constructed within particular contexts. Although the relationship between Symbolic Interactionism and Grounded Theory is well established, how symbolic interactionist assumptions inform concrete analytical decisions during category development is less often made explicit. This theoretical–conceptual article addresses this practice-level gap within Corbin and Strauss’ Grounded Theory approach. Its aim is to make visible how epistemological assumptions informed the interpretive transition from descriptive coding to conceptual development. Selected analytical episodes from a previously completed study involving parents of children with cancer are used as an illustrative methodological context rather than to report the study’s findings. The article reconstructs the progression from interview excerpts and provisional open codes to constant comparison, analytical memo writing, axial coding and emerging subcategories. Three analytical movements are examined: interpreting different actions through a shared symbolic function, understanding apparently contradictory meanings as part of the same evolving process, and conceptualising different remembrance practices through a shared relational function. These episodes show that category development involved more than grouping similar behaviours; it required examining how participants defined situations, negotiated meanings and sustained relationships. Reflexivity, theoretical sensitivity, memo writing and diagramming supported the questioning of provisional interpretations, the examination of relationships among subcategories and their integration into substantive theory. By making these analytical transitions visible, the article offers a pedagogical and practice-oriented account of how epistemological assumptions, reflexivity and Grounded Theory procedures can be integrated coherently. This reconstruction may support researchers in maintaining methodological coherence and transparency when developing substantive theory in qualitative health and nursing research.