Memos are a means of stimulating, exploring or extending thinking about a project and its data, providing a private and informal space to record and examine beliefs, assumptions and ideas as they occur. Typically recorded in written form, memos aid a researcher using grounded theory in capturing insights in their early stages of development, meaning they are subject to revision as the project or theory develops. However, it’s important to never discard or revise a memo because its subsequent significance may not be obvious at the time it’s recorded. Instead, memos can be recorded sequentially as additions to initial reflections.
Engaging in memoing from the planning stage or start of a project can help develop a memo-writing habit. The advice is to stop and memo at the moment an insight occurs, though these insights often occur at inopportune moments, for example, mid-interview or while travelling. At such times, embracing audio memos or writing memo jots can help the researcher to capture their transitory thoughts and insights; revisiting, transcribing or expanding upon them at a later date.
Regularly writing memos can create and maintain a sense of momentum and progression, and intentionally sitting down to engage in memoing practice can be particularly helpful in the early phase of a project. The content, length and analytical strength of memos will evolve throughout a grounded theory project, and plays a pivotal role in constant comparative analysis. Memoing can stimulate thinking about a particular code or category, capturing insights, and facilitate analytical activity to increase the level of theoretical abstraction. Memoing can also provide an audit trail of decision making and theory development.
The topics of memos may include some or all of the following, often in a single memo: decision making and research activities; extracting or recording potential meaning from data; exploring potential relationships between categories; considering the utility of a hypotheses. Whatever seems important at the time is worth recording in a memo.
Embrace the flexibility and freedom of memoing and experiment with different ways of memoing, be they hand written, typed or audio recorded.
References
Birks, M., & Mills, J. (2023). Grounded theory: a practical guide (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications Ltd.
Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing grounded theory (2nd ed.). Sage.
Charmaz, K., & Thornberg, R. (2020). The pursuit of quality in grounded theory. Qualitative Research in Psychology. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14780887.2020.1780357
Glaser, B. G. (1998). Doing grounded theory: issues and discussions. Sociology Press.
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