THEORY BUILDING IN QUALITATIVE RESEARCH AND COMPUTER-PROGRAMS FOR THEMANAGEMENT OF TEXTUAL DATA

This article refers to recent debates about the potential methodologic al costs and benefits of computer use in qualitative research and abou t the relationship between methodological approaches (eg. 'Grounded Th eory') on the one hand and computer-aided methods of qualitative resea rch on the other. It is argued that the connection between certain com puter-aided strategies and methodological approaches is far more loose than is often assumed. Furthermore, the danger of methodological bias es and distortion arising from the use of certain software packages is overemphasized in current discussions, as far as basic tasks of textu al data management ('coding and retrieval') usually performed by this software are concerned. However, with the development of more advanced and complex coding and retrieval techniques, which are regarded by so me authors as tools for 'theory building' in qualitative research, met hodological confusion may arise if basic prerequisites of qualitative theory building are not taken into consideration. Therefore, certain a spects of qualitative theory building which are relevant for computer aided methods of textual data management are discussed in the paper.