Glaserian Systematic Mapping Study: An Integrating Methodology

Abstract

This research arises as an answer to the limited classification capability that reaches the vast majority of selected articles within a Systematic Mapping Study (SMS) when studying the Grounded Theory (GT) in Software Development. The result of our research is Glaserian Systematic Mapping Study (GSMS). It is a methodology that combines SMS and Glaserian Grounded Theory (GGT), which is one of the two variants of the GT. Combining the robustness and sequential process of SMS with GGT and its iterative features, GSMS provides a more robust, flexible, iterative, and scalable methodology. SMS and GGT share two main activities, data collection and data analysis. However, they are conducted differently. The resulted integration takes advantage of this fact and maps both related activities and outcomes to produce a more robust and systematic methodology. In addition, our research formalizes equations to represent the typical data saturation of qualitative methods such as GGT. With GSMS, we were able to classify more articles than with SMS alone.