So the
theme for this time was research and theory, what it is and how it should be
used in the right way. During the lecture Leif Dahlberg explain the two
concepts, one a bit more
briefly than the other. So my main focus of the two concepts will still be on
theory. But since I did not write anything on research in my last post I will
just ad this explanation on what it is and why It is done. Why you do research
is to get more facts and knowledge about your theory but it can also be done to
develop new theories. Then there are different ways of performing the research,
in other word how you will collect data and so on.
Like a said
the most part of the theme theory took the bigger part so I will do a bigger recap
of that. If a study doesn’t get published one reason can often be because of the
lack of theory. It is something very
fundamental and has to be good in order to get your study published, but that
is something that is easier said than done. As I wrote in my first post there is
no clear answer on what theory is and that might be the reason why it can be
something difficult to get right. To provide
with some more explanation on what theory is, instead of describing what it is
not, I will a summary form note from the lecture.
Theory
is:
1.
A
set of propositions that aims to identify objects
2.
Abstract
entity aims to explain, describe and enhance understanding
3.
Connection
between phenomena and explaining why,
when and where
4.
Scientific
theories attempt to explain the casual logic between cause and effect.
The last
one indicates that there are different kinds of theories and this is something
that we discussed during the seminar. Most of us had read papers where the
theory was of the kind explanation and so was I, but after discussing the
differences between the types I started questioning my choice. And it was more
then me who did so, the more we talked about it the more insecure I became of
my choice. I chose explanation since it explains why it looks like
it does. But then we have prediction, which is when you have a theory of
how it looks like, and, there is something to test. This was the two I was
thinking about the first time around but ended up choosing explanation was because I thought that
the prediction had to be true but that is not the case. As long as you have a
theory that you can test then it is a prediction so that is why I now change my
mind. The theory has a prediction that it will differ on content between the
top and the bottom links and therefor it is a theory of the kind prediction.
For this
weeks theme I think that the lecture gave me more then the seminar. That can be because
we all read different papers and it was more difficult to discuss any answer
rather then just describing. But in the
end of the seminar we had a general discussion a bit theory and hypothesis and
the differences, which showed that it, can be difficult to separate them to.
Hi Lisa,
SvaraRaderaI think you did a really great job when writing your reflection of theme 3. I especially liked your comprehensive approach that you also tried to cover the “research” part, even if this was way shorter in the focus of the lecture than the “theory” part. Your way of explaining the field of theory is very well structured and pleasant to read. Good job.
Hello! I totally agree that it was difficult to judge which type of theory was most applicable on the ones in the papers, especially as it is stated that a theory must be "testable", yet there are types which are supposedly not. I read your theory from the pre-analysis of this theme, and I'd agree that it is probably of prediction-type for the reason you mentioned (although, it totally depends on how you see it, so it's hard to tell!). Overall, great reflection!
SvaraRaderaHi!
SvaraRaderaAs soon as I read your sentence "As long as you have a theory that you can test then it is a prediction" . I thought it would be worth mentioning that a theory that can be tested is built on a hypothesis and this is why a prediction theory makes it possible to create a theory since they formulate hypothesis. I totally agreed on the your statement of it being hard to discuss during the seminar since we all read different papers. But from reading your reflection you seem to have gained some better understanding on some things! Keep up the good work!
I think the numbered points were a great way of summarising what theory is. It is always easy to explain what theory is not and in my post I attempted to explain what it is, but my explanation became several paragraphs long.
SvaraRaderaI also thought the lecture gave more than the seminar for this week. During the seminar it seemed that everybody in the class had pretty much the same view on the subject. As a result this didn´t lead to any great discussions and we even finished the seminar early because we had already talked about everything worth discussing. Good reflection! I think it is easy to follow how your thoughts have changed from before and after this theme!
SvaraRaderaIt's good that you actually went into what a theory is; most of the others (including, admittedly, myself) mostly went into what a theory is not, similar to one of the two texts we've read. It seems quite self-explanatory at first, but in reality I've found that there are many prerequisites to consider. The fact that a theory had to be verifiable, as we discussed in our seminar, was not one that I would've brought up myself - I would've said religion was a theory, for example.
SvaraRadera