Promoting Social Justice with Grounded Theory: Applying the Grounded Text Mining Approach to Deposition Analyses

Kathy Charmaz, a developer of constructivist grounded theory (CGT), advocated the use of grounded theory as a tool to attain social justice through research. We developed the grounded text mining approach (GTxA) method by integrating Charmaz's CGT with text mining. This technique is aimed at facilitating the systematic and comprehensive understanding of textual data. GTxA helps researchers engage in abductive reasoning by encouraging them to transition between CGT and text mining analyses. This chapter illustrates an example of how GTxA was utilized when a group of researchers analyzed depositions and semi-structured interview data of a defendant in an actual criminal case in Japan and, thus, detected the possibility of a coerced false confession. The chapter concludes by encouraging researchers to utilize GTxA for attaining social justice.