Grounded theory is a type of qualitative data analysis designed to discover patterns in human experience. Grounded theory is based on inductive reasoning where the researcher suspends their biases and attempts to discover patterns that emerge from the data. The three steps of grounded theory are:

1. Coding the text for themes

2. Linking themes into theoretical models

3. Validating the models

This method was developed by the sociologists Barney Glaser and Anslem Strauss.

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