Collecting the data for my grounded theory project has been an interesting and eye-opening process. My research topic is exploring and constructing the life history of my great-grandmother, Marjorie (Winter) Field, through archival family materials. My project is focused on constructing Marjorie’s life story based on artifacts of her life that I’ve discovered in my basement, which previously belonged to her daughter (and my grandmother’s sister), Auntie Kay. For the purposes of this project, I collected and analyzed 20 poems written by Marjorie, along with 10 photos of her, one letter, and 90 diary entries.  

I started by transcribing Marjorie’s poems and diary entries and describing the photos. Then I coded these texts line-by-line. I have gathered data for the arc of Marjorie’s life – from her childhood (in photos) until her death. There is a gap during her early 20s and the years she was raising her young daughters. The data is weighted toward the last decade of her life. 

I’ve used elements of narrative in my coding and expect to use more once I start writing my paper. I’m using a theoretical sampling approach, choosing examples across time frames and life events to help create a meaningful story arc to better understand her life through her writing. 

Process 

I started my analysis by identifying and coding a selection of 20 poems in my great-grandmother Marjorie’s collection, Petals from God’s Garden (1966). I first copied the poems from the book into a Word document table and then inserted codes in column next to the texts. I chose poems that cover the range of Marjorie’s favourite themes: God, nature, home, and her family.  

I also found in my basement a photo of Marjorie and her husband, Lee Field, and a letter from Marjorie to her daughter, Dorie (my grandmother) written in 1938 when she was 19 and about to start working and creating her life in the world. I found coding the photos more difficult than I originally expected – I tried to approach each photo as a text and wrote a description of the elements of the photograph along with an attempt at coding these elements. 

I was enthused about these initial discoveries, but I wanted more data and I knew there were other materials related to Marjorie in my basement. I went digging around and discovered an album of photos from her childhood and, most extraordinarily, the diaries she wrote during the last seven years of her life (1934 to 1940). This discovery was beyond my wildest expectations for this project. 

I learned how to code as I went. My coding was descriptive at first, and I had to work at being more analytical. It helped to revisit Charmaz (2014) and incorporate Glaser’s practice of using gerunds (p. 120). As Charmaz notes, gerunds are “a heuristic device to bring the researcher into the data, interact with them, and study each fragment of them” (p. 120). I found that this way of writing pushed me beyond descriptions and into actions.  As I coded the materials, I kept a document of memos, where I wrote down any thoughts and questions about what I’ve done. 

Going Deeper into the Data Set 

From what I learned in the short bio in her poetry collection, Marjorie had many health problems. She wrote the poems after she had recovered from two years of illness, in the last few years of her life before she died at age 48 (I’m not sure what she died of – the final entry in her diary, written by her daughter after the fact, said only that she died suddenly at home). I found myself feeling curious about her health journey, but she didn’t explore her health in her poetry.  

However, in her daily diaries, she recorded the details of her health. She wrote about daily tasks, her health, the weather, and her daughters and husband. Her writing was concerned with the surface of life – I didn’t come across many reflections or feelings.   

The process of coding made it possible to read the text more closely and understand the subtext. I also engaged with the text in a deeper way than I did on the initial reading and caught more details. For example, I almost missed her two-month hospital stay in 1935. Her admittance to the hospital was so briefly noted and barely legible that I skimmed over it. It wasn’t until I read her entry about moving to a semi-private room that I figured she must have been in a hospital, and then I had to read back to find the entry from the day she was admitted. 

Focused Analysis & Next Steps 

Now that I have collected the data and done an initial analysis, it’s time to go deeper into it. What does all of this mean? What can I say about Marjorie and her life that I am confident can be supported by the data examined – even if only through my interpretive lens? 

What is emerging for me about Marjorie’s life is that her health issues and recurrent illnesses prevented her from living her life fully, reaching her potential as an artist, and being present with her family. I grew up with stories about my sensitive, creative, artist great-grandmother, who was loved by her daughters (they lost their mother when they were in their early 20s). I’ve always suspected that Marjorie’s mysterious illnesses were depression, and perhaps this is the theory that I’m trying to build through this work. 

In addition to the focused analysis, my next step is to find a life history methodology to help craft the narrative of Marjorie’s life. I will turn to the life history and narrative methods I studied in a previous MAIS course, WRNM 605 Creating Life Histories. 

It’s an honour to examine my great-grandmother’s life through the pieces she left behind and attempt to craft a narrative around her experiences. Women are so often left out of history books and I see my project as inserting her rightful place in local history. 

reference

Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing grounded theory (2nd ed.). Sage. 

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