Grounded Visualization

Grounded visualization is a mixed-methods analytic approach that weaves grounded-theory qualitative analysis together with GIS-based spatial visualization, so that emerging codes and maps inform one another iteratively rather than sequentially. Instead of mapping results after the qualitative analysis is finished, the analyst moves back and forth: a pattern noticed while coding interviews prompts a map, the map raises a spatial question that sends the analyst back to the text, and so on. The aim is an interpretation that is simultaneously grounded in participants' accounts and attentive to the geography in which those accounts are situated.