Questions that relates to my article

In your article, you stated that GT is applicable mainly in the following cases:

• The researcher seeks to create a theory about issues of importance in people's lives and specifically focuses on human interaction or aims to explore new territory (Denscombe, 2003).
• The study of new socio-technical phenomena (Ferna'ndez, 2004).
• The area of interest is a new developing one and does not have a long, firm and empirically based literature yet (Goulding, 1999).

Q:
With all points you have mentioned above, I doubted that how can we make sure that the area that we are going to study is new.

A:

It's not surprising. For me, this kind of questions went along with me till I submitted thesis. It is a part of the research. You will know it when you've done thoroughly literature review, discussed with your supervisors, colleagues, read literature widely about your area. Someone who has been told to undertake a research project by their supervisors/funders may know what is new based on their supervisors'/funders'/research groups knowledge; someone who wants to do a further research study about their interested topic may know what's new because they keep their knowledge updated.

Q:

In my case, I happen to see a lot of research in this topic. Could you please give more explanation about the points that given above with some example. I have read those articles but still could not understand.

A:

In my article, the above points are examples. It does not mean that a GT research study needs to have all the requirements listed there. Also, I didn't suggest more new researcher to apply the GT. It has to fit your research purpose. If there are already many studies in your area, you need to think about why you want to use the GT; ask yourself: Are there alternative methodology and why other approaches are not suitable for your study?

For example, Denscombe's idea: it emphasises the purpose of a research study. The research about dying by Glaser and Strauss (1967) is a typical example on this point. The researcher want to explore some phenomenon (often in social science) that has not been fully explained by existent theories in that area. They intend to interpret the phenomenon by an emerged theory based on what they found in their research. It's definitely a qualitative research study as data is difficult to be measured and quantificat.

Fernandez's idea is clear, for instance, recently there was a piece of news said that women are more likely to date with a man who has an iphone (iphone was released on June 2007). Researchers who explore the iphone related phenomenon is doing a study of new socio-techical phenomena. However, it does not mean they need to use the GT approach.

Goulding's idea can been seen in my research as I was doing research about blogging by higher education students. The phenomenon of using blogging in education was new in 2005 and there was a gap in the literature that my research can contribute to.