A Grounded Theory of Adolescent High School Women’s Choir Singers’ Process of Social Identity Development

Abstract

The purpose of this grounded theory study was to discover the process of social identity development for adolescent high school women’s choir participants. Purposive maximum variation sampling was used to identify three public high school women’s choirs where 54 interviews were conducted with 40 different public school singers. Three waves of data collection and analysis revealed a seven-step process beginning with coming in singing and ending with envisioning myself. The central phenomenon was identified as opening up my voice and me and emphasized singers’ increased self-confidence. Intervening conditions included competition, the absence of choral opportunities, and lack of understanding from those outside of the choral program. Amount of time in the choral program, number of groups, and community recognition were identified as contextual conditions. Dimensionalized properties, a temporal matrix, and propositional statements are presented.