Ethical manoeuvring of grounded theory for public health: how grounded can we be?

The ethical imperative of public health as a discipline is being increasingly envisioned to advance the ideas of social justice, human rights, and equity. Research is a powerful tool to meet this end as it brings to the fore the socio-economic and political structures that produce and reproduce health inequity. One of the most widely used research designs to explain health inequity in public health is grounded theory. However, the prevailing understanding of this design demands that the researcher remains largely “uninformed” of the context to maintain its “inductive” nature. This persists despite an alternative approach proposed and practised by Charmaz and others. We argue that given the critical and constructivist nature of this alternative approach, which situates the phenomenon under enquiry in its socio-political context, with the researcher playing a significant part in the process, it is more aligned to the ethical orientation of public health as a discipline.