Dissertation - World Federation of Music Therapy

• Specification (1. Sensitizing concepts through analysis of new data, 2.
developing concepts e.g. by new interviews, 3. looking for connections
between concepts in theories and literature).
• Reduction (Developing ‘core concepts’ that 1. reflect the most important data,
2. show good cohesion with other concepts, 3. reflect many raw data).
• Integration (Developing a theory by fitting all concepts together in a narrative
or a causal relationship).
The first step in the present grounded theory analysis was to check whether the
interviews addressed all topics required or suggested in the interview guide (=
Exploration 1). The second step was a systematic processing of the data through open
coding (= Exploration 2, finding the categories) and axial coding (= Specification 1-3,
interconnecting the categories; and Reduction, establishing the core categories). The
third step was a selective coding (= Integration, formulating the theory).
The results of the analysis are presented in section 6.1. No grounded theory is
suggested at this point in the thesis, but the results of the analysis are incorporated in
the proposition of a substantive-level theory in section 7.3.
The therapist’s transcripts and session notes were looked through by the researcher,
while listening to the audio-recordings of the music and imagery experiences. The
researcher corrected mistakes (e.g. incorrect indication of the correlations of music
and imagery) and added missing data (e.g. images, music selections). He also
identified music programs used (if not indicated) and added duration of the music
program/selections.
The corrected and completed session notes were analyzed in order to identify eventual
specific imagery related to cancer, cf. subquestion 5. This was done as part of a
general content analysis. All session transcripts and notes were analysed according to
grounded theory principles, as described above. The results of this analysis are
presented in the beginning of chapter 6.2.
Selected imagery of the patients (as reported in the recordings and transcripts of the
music travels) were analysed, based on the principles of (1) Grounded Theory
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