Occupational therapy possesses few mid-range substantive theories, particularly those that have been derived empirically or generated within the profession. Grounded theory offers a systematic and well recognised approach to study the richness and diversity of human experience, in order to generate relevant theory. This paper describes grounded theory, its theoretical orientation and its elements, and offers a critique of the approach. A selection of grounded theory studies related to occupational therapy and occupational science are reviewed to demonstrate the contribution that the approach has begun to make to, and the potential that the approach offers for, developing empirically derived occupational therapy theories.
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