Revisiting theoretical frameworks
Revisiting theoretical frameworks
Theoretical frameworks play a central role in research, serving as the bedrock of any investigation. This section offers a refresher on the essential elements and functions of theoretical frameworks in research.
A theoretical framework refers to existing theory, concepts, and definitions that you use to collect relevant data and offer meaningful empirical findings. Providing an overall orientation or lens, it guides your understanding of the research problem and directs your approach to data collection and analysis.
Your chosen theoretical framework directly influences your research questions and methodological choices. It contains specific theories or sets of assumptions drawn from relevant disciplines—such as sociology, psychology, or economics—that you apply to understand your research topic. These existing models and concepts are tools to help you organize and make sense of your data.
The theoretical framework also plays a key role in crafting your research questions and objectives. By determining the theories that are relevant to your research, the theoretical framework shapes the nature and direction of your study. It’s essential to note, however, that the theoretical framework’s role in qualitative research is not to predict outcomes. Instead, it offers a broader structure to understand and interpret your data, enabling you to situate your findings within the broader academic discourse in a way that makes your research findings meaningful to you and your research audience.
Revisiting conceptual frameworks
Conceptual frameworks, though related to theoretical frameworks, serve distinct functions within research. This section reexamines the characteristics and functions of conceptual frameworks to provide a better understanding of their roles in qualitative research.
A conceptual framework, in essence, is a system of concepts, assumptions, and beliefs that supports and informs your research. It outlines the specific variables or concepts you’ll examine in your study and proposes relationships between them. It’s more detailed and specific than a theoretical framework, acting as a contextualized guide for the collection and interpretation of empirical data.
The main role of a conceptual framework is to illustrate the presumed relationships between the variables or concepts you’re investigating. These variables or concepts, which you derive from your theoretical framework, are integral to your research questions, objectives, and hypotheses. The conceptual framework shows how you theorize these concepts are related, providing a visual or narrative model of your research.
A study’s own conceptual framework plays a major role in guiding the data collection process and the subsequent analysis. The conceptual framework specifies which data you need to collect and provides a structure for interpreting and making sense of the collected data. For instance, if your conceptual framework identifies a particular variable as impacting another, your data collection and analysis will be geared towards investigating this relationship.
