A Primer in

Theory
Construction
By
Paul Davidson Reynolds

Introduction

1.
2.
3.

4.

For what should scientific knowledge by useful?

Most people would want scientific knowledge to provide:
Typologies A set of concepts used to organize and
classify
Prediction and Explanation This involves the prediction
of future events and explanations of past events
A Sense of Understanding This is provided when
causal mechanisms that link changes in one or more
concepts (the independent variables) with changes in
other concepts (the dependent variables) have been fully
described
Controlling Events It is important to make a distinction
between understanding how certain variable affect one
another and being able to change the variables

Introduction

1.

2.

What is a theory?
Currently it is defined two schools of thought:
A theory is a set of well-supported empirical
generalizations or laws
A theory can also be defined as an
interrelated set of definitions, axioms, or
propositions
Theories are also thought to include abstract
formulations, that are vague, prescriptive, or
untested hypotheses or ideas

Introduction

1.

2.

How does a concept or a statement

become part of a scientific body of
knowledge?
As overall knowledge increases the
degree of acceptance is affected by:
Individual scientists becoming more
confident that the idea is useful for the
goals of science
The number of scientists that consider
the ideas useful for the goals of science
increases

Introduction

1.
2.

3.

What are the desirable characteristics of

scientific knowledge?
Abstractness A concept being independent
of time and space
Intersubjectivity This means that there is an
agreement about meaning among relevant
scientists
Empirical relevance This includes the
possibility of comparing some aspect of a
scientific statement, a prediction or an
explanation, with objective empirical
research

The Idea

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4.

Kuhn Paradigms have the following features:

New conceptualization of the phenomena
Possibilities of a new research strategy or
methodological procedure for gathering
empirical evidence to support the paradigm
It tends to suggest new problems for the
solution
Application of the new paradigm frequently
explains phenomena that previous
paradigms were unable to explain

The Idea

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2.

3.
4.

Paradigms have the following features:

The conceptualization represents a unique
description of the phenomena, but a dramatic new
orientation or world view is absent
Although new research strategies may by
suggested, dramatic new procedures or
methodologies are absent
The new conceptualization may suggest new
research questions
The new conceptualizations may explain events
previously unexplained
The Kuhn Paradigm represents a significant change
from the past (this leads to a scientific revolution),
whereas a paradigm leads to a shift in orientation,
but less than a scientific revolution

Paradigm Variations

What happens when there are a large

number of details or refinements that
are ambiguous or unspecified?
These variations are considered to
offer refinement of details or variations
in emphasis, not changes in the basic
conceptualization of phenomena
associated with the paradigm

Concepts

What defines various concepts?

Primitive terms they are often related directly
to shared impressions, therefore, anyone with
the proper training should be able to share
these special experiences and the meaning of
the primitive terms
Dictionary definitions these are attempts to
describe the concepts indicated by the terms of
the natural language
Real definitions these describe the real
essence or real characteristics of an object of
phenomenon

Concepts

Abstract versus concrete concepts

Abstract concepts are those
concepts that are completely
independent of a specific time or
place
A concrete concept is related to a
particular spatial or temporal
setting

Concepts

A scientific statements should have relevance

special types of definitions have been
invented to provide instructions for
determining the existence of a theoretical
concept in a concrete setting these are
known as operational definitions
Operations definitions describe a set of
procedures and activities that an observer
should perform in order to receive sensory
impressions that indicate the existence, or
degree of existence, of a theoretical concept

Concepts

1.
2.

3.

4.

How are concepts quantified?

Different types of quantification are generally referred
to as levels of measurement these consist of:
The nominal level when the state of a concept that
can be labeled in any fashion
The ordinal level an ordinal level of quantification
applies to concepts that vary in such a way that
different states of the concept can be rank ordered
with respect to some characteristic
The interval level the states of the concept are not
only rank ordered, but also the difference between the
states has meaning
The ratio level this is an operation that cannot be
carried out with numbers that indicate location on an
interval scale

Concepts

Quantification does not necessarily

indicate scientific knowledge
In other words, even an
approximate answer to an important
question is more useful than a
precise, elegant, and quantified
answer to a trivial question

Statements

1.

2.

Statements can be classified into two

groups:
Existence statements include a concept,
identified by a term, is applied to an
object or phenomenon, and they can be
right or wrong
Relational statements describe the
relationship between two concepts (this
includes causal, association, and
deterministic or probabilistic
relationships)

Statements

(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)

(5)

Theoretical Statements are characterized by

five different labels
Laws or absolute truths
Axioms a basic set of statements, each
independent of the others
Propositions these are statements derived
from axioms
Hypotheses these refer to a statement
selected for comparison against data collected
in a concrete situation
empirical generalizations a summarization of
patterns in empirical research

Forms of Theories

1.

2.

There are three difference conceptions of how sets of

statements should be organized to constitute a theory:
Set of Laws This approach accepts statements that can
be considered laws as part of scientific knowledge
furthermore, all laws are directly supported by
empirical research
The Axiomatic Form This includes an interrelated set of
definitions and statements with several important
features:
- a set of definitions (primitive, derived, and operational)
- a set of existence statements that describe the
situations in which the theory can be applied
- a set of relational statements divided into two groups
(1) axioms, and (2) propositions
- a logical system

Forms of Theories
(contd)
3.

The Causal Process Form This is an interrelated set

of definitions and statements that include the
following features:
- a set of definitions including theoretical concepts,
primitive and derived terms, and operational
definitions
- a set of existence statements that describe those
situations in which one or more of the causal
processes are expected to occur
- a set of causal statements, with either deterministic
or probabilistic relations, that describe one or more
causal processes or causal mechanisms that identify
the effect of one or more independent variables on
one or more dependent variables

Forms of Theories

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2.
3.
4.

Evaluation of the Three Forms of Theory The

author felt there was a strong enough
relationship to group the axiomatic and causal
forms creating the axiomatic-causal
process
The axiomatic-causal process is preferred
over the set of laws model due to several
reasons:
It provides a sense of understanding
It makes it easier to describe new paradigms
It may allow for more efficient research
It suggest a more concise and interrelated
organization of scientific knowledge

Forms of Theories

Developmental simulations or models are

referred to as representational models
this is often considered theory building
Simulations are often used for the solution
of practical problems
The differences between simulation
processes and actual processes is not
always clear, and it may be that some
processes initially intended as simulation
processes may later be considered as
causal processes, or vice versa

Testing Theories

Abstract Statements and Concrete

Research Scientific statements are
abstract and can be difficult to support
with concrete research
To resolve this researchers must conduct
empirical research so that the settings
can affect the confidence a scientist has
in the usefulness of an abstract statement
for the purposes of explanation and
prediction

Testing Theories

Statistical decision procedures are

often used to prove whether or not a
statement is true or false statistics
are frequently misused by
researchers who try to apply them
directly to abstract statements to
prove whether the statement is true
or false

Testing Theories

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2.

Statistics are often applied to two different activities:

Descriptive statistical inference this is used to
describe some characteristic of an event or
phenomenon
Inferential statistics this procedure is used to help
individuals decide which of several descriptions (of
an event or phenomenon) is the true description
this is also referred to as a statistical decision or
making decisions about which description to accept
It is important to note that the best research
design is the one that does not require
statistical analysis this is unlike due to the
economies gained by using statistical analyses
and the need to study some processes in
complex natural settings

Testing Theories

Should the hypothesis be presented before the

data are examined?
Although it is always a pleasant surprise for a
hypothesis derived from a theory to accurately
predict an unexpected result, there is no
reason why research data that tests a theory
must be collected after a theory is invented
It is clear that if a research project is designed
to test a persons intuitive judgments about a
particular situation, then these guesses
should be made more open and explicit before
the data are collected, or before the guesser
knows the answer

Testing Theories

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3.

Comparing theories there is a popular

conception that much of scientific activity is
devoted to choosing between theories this
conception is in error in several respects:
Scientific activity is more usefully conceived as
the development of more accurate descriptions
of phenomena
No single empirical study will provide enough
evidence to cause a theory to be completely
rejected
It may be more productive to ask how much
effect a particular process has under certain
conditions, rather than the process or theory
that is operating

Testing Theories

Choosing between theories is not a

frequent activity in social science,
but when it occurs, it is one of the
most important

Strategies for Developing a

Scientific Body of
Knowledge

1.

There are two strategies:

Research-Then-Theory this includes:
- selecting a phenomenon and listing its
characteristics
- Measuring the characteristics of the
phenomenon in a variety of situations
- Analyzing the data carefully to determine
if there are any systematic patters among
the data worthy of further attention
- Formulating significant patters as
theoretical statements constituting the law
of nature

Strategies for Developing a

Scientific Body of
Knowledge (contd)
Theory-Then-Research this includes:

2.

- developing an explicit theory in an axiomatic or

process description form
- selecting a statement generated by the theory for
comparison with the results of empirical research
- designing a research project to test the chose
statements correspondence with empirical research
- if the statement derived from the theory does not
correspond with the research results, make
appropriate changes in the theory or the research
design and continue with the research
- if the statement from the theory corresponds with
the results of the research, select further statements
for testing, or attempt to determine the limitations of
the theory

Strategies for Developing a

Scientific Body of
Knowledge

Comparison of the strategies

Research-Then-Theory approach
reflects the assumption that there are
real patters in nature an that the
tasks of scientists is to discover these
patters. The Theory-Then-Research
approach reflects the assumption that
scientists impose their descriptions
on any phenomenon that is studied.

Strategies for Developing a

Scientific Body of
Knowledge

1.

2.

What are the characteristics of a new

idea? There seem to be two things that
are involved:
The invention of a new theoretical
concept that can be used as part of a
theory, either hypothetical or one that
has empirical referents
A suggestion of new ways of organizing
the causal relationships among old or
old and new theoretical concepts

Strategies for Developing a

Scientific Body of
Knowledge
The Composite Approach This combines the

1.

2.

3.

Research-Then-Theory, and Theory-Then-Research to

provide a more efficient overall procedure and more
accurate representation of the process that actually
occurs in building scientific knowledge it divides
activity into three stages:
Exploratory Research is designed to allow an
investigator to just look around with respect to some
phenomenon
Descriptive The goal at this stage is to develop
careful descriptions of patterns that were suspected in
exploratory research
Explanatory The goal at this stage is to develop
explicit theory that can be used to explain the
empirical generalizations that evolve from the second
stage

Strategies for Developing a

Scientific Body of
Knowledge
Research Methods There are three primary types of

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3.

research activity currently associated with social

science:
Individual observation the researcher directly
observes a certain social phenomenon in a natural
setting and attempts to provide an accurate and
unbiased record of their observations
Survey a collection of people or social systems is
measured with respect to certain individual
characteristics
Experimental The phenomenon is reproduced in a
controlled situation, and then various measurements
are made of the phenomenon, often measurements
that could not be collected in natural settings.

Conclusion

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It is clear that the goal of developing a scientific body

of knowledge related to social and human
phenomenon is complicated by a number of problems
inherent in the phenomena and that social scientists
are not yet ideal scientists. This is due to:
The large number of subtle and interrelated processes
The problems of achieving intersubjective
measurement of abstract objects
The change of social and individual phenomena under
observation
The difficulty of achieving complete objectivity in
dealing with social phenomena
Ethical considerations that prevent the use of certain
types of research procedures or require more
expensive alternatives