Table 1.

Differences in Philosophical Considerations and Their Usefulness Among Three Grounded Theory Perspectives.

Areas of Differences	Glaser	Strauss and Corbin	Charmaz
Philosophical considerations	Positivistic perspective implied. Believes in one reality. Researcher remains neutral (objectivist) and let data speak for itself (passive approach).	Postpositivist perspective implied. Acknowledge implausibility of seeing reality as it “really” is. Researcher controls personal influence by using procedures to maximize objectivity.	Constructivist perspective. Believes in multiple perspectives of reality. Researcher passionately engages in interpretation.
Useful perspective when—	Researcher believes in one reality of a phenomenon of interest. Personal biases can contaminate data, remaining uninformed about the phenomena is helpful for the inquiry.	Researcher is hesitant to apprehend reality as “really” is. Personal biases can contaminate data but are unavoidable, however, could be minimized.	Researcher is aware of changing context or competing perspectives of reality. Personal knowledge and experience can aid knowing.