Educational Research Methods
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Constant comparison
‘Constant comparison’ is a key concept, and feature, of grounded theory studies.
“This forces the analyst into confronting similarities, differences and degrees in consistency of meaning between incidents (indicators), generating an underlying uniformity which in turn results in a coded category and the beginnings of properties of it. From the comparisons of further incidents (indicators) to the conceptual codes, the code is sharpened to achieve its best fit while further properties are generated until the code is verified and saturated.” (Glaser & Holton, 2004, ¶58)
Glaser, Barney G. & Holton, Judith (2004) Remodeling Grounded Theory, Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 5(2), Article 4,
The analysis starts with open-coding. Comparing codes to data and data to codes, and codes to codes, allows the analyst to move to a process of axial coding, where codes are related theoretically. The identification of a core category provides a focus for further theoretical sampling and constant comparison.
This is a personal site of Keith S. Taber to support teaching of educational research methods.
(Dr Keith Taber is Professor of Science Education at the University of Cambridge.)
2015 - 2019
