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Theories in Scientific Research - Coggle Diagram
Theories in Scientific Research
Theories are explanations of a natural or social behavior, event, or phenomenon.
More formally, a scientific theory is a system of constructs (concepts) and propositions (relationships between those constructs) that collectively presents a logical, systematic, and coherent explanation of a phenomenon of interest within some assumptions and boundary conditions
(Bacharach 1989).
Theories should explain why things happen, rather than just describe or predict.
Establishing causation requires three conditions: (1) correlations between two constructs (2) temporal precedence (the cause must
precede the effect in time), and 3) rejection of alternative hypotheses (through testing).
Explanations can be idiographic or nomothetic.
Idiographic explanations are those that explain a single situation or event in idiosyncratic detail.
Nomothetic explanations seek to explain a class of situations or events rather than a specific situation or event.
Theory is not data, facts, typologies, taxonomies, or empirical findings.
Theories provide the underlying logic of the occurrence of natural or social phenomenon by explaining what the key drivers and key outcomes are of the target phenomenon and why, and what underlying processes are responsible driving that phenomenon.
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David Whetten (1989) suggests that there are four building blocks of a theory: constructs, propositions, logic, and boundary conditions/assumptions.
Constructs are abstract concepts specified at a high level of abstraction that are chosen specifically, to explain the phenomenon of interest.
Propositions are associations postulated between constructs based on deductive logic.
Logic acts like "glue" that connects the theoretical constructs and
provides meaning and relevance to the relationships between these constructs.
Logic also represents the "explanation" that lies at the core of a theory.
Finally, all theories are constrained by assumptions about values, time, and space, and boundary conditions that govern where the theory can be applied and where it cannot be applied.
The first approach is to build theories inductively based on observed patterns of events or behaviors.
The second approach to theory building is to conduct a bottom-up conceptual analysis to identify different sets of predictors relevant to the phenomenon of interest using a predefined framework.
The third approach to theorizing is to extend or modify existing theories to explain a new context, such as by extending theories of individual learning to explain organizational learning.
The fourth approach is to apply existing theories in entirely new contexts by drawing
upon the structural similarities between the two contexts.
Agency theory to explain
two-party relationships whose goals are
not congruent with each other.
The theory of planned behavior (TPB) is a generalized theory of human behavior in the social psychology literature that can be used to study a wide range of individual behaviors.
Innovation diffusion theory (IDT) is a seminal theory in the communications literature that explains how innovations are adopted within a population of potential adopters.
At the micro (adopter) level, Rogers (1995)6 suggests that innovation adoption is a
process consisting of five stages:
Knowledge
Persuasion.
Decision.
Implementation
Confirmation
The elaboration likelihood model (ELM) is a dual-process theory of attitude formation or change in the psychology literature.
General Deterrence Theory (GDT) as both an explanation
of crime and a method for reducing it.
GDT examines why certain individuals engage in deviant,
anti-social, or criminal behaviors
The focus of GDT is not how to rehabilitate criminals and avert future criminal behaviors, but how to make criminal activities less attractive and therefore prevents crimes.