• Theory and Science
• When you study something scientifically, you work with three processes --
  1. theory
  2. operationalization
  3. observation
• This presentation will focus mostly on theory.



• Three steps
• You develop a theoretical explanation for the situation you are investigating. Your theory specifies how your concepts are related to one another.
• To connect your theory to the world you live in, you have to operationalize your concepts. That is, you have to create explicit links from the abstract concepts in the theory to concrete phenomena in the real world.
• Finally you need to perform some observations. This is the part that makes science empirical.



• Say you are interested in the increasing divorce rate in Canadian cities.
• Your theoretical explanation may relate a number of concepts, such as 1) a shift away from older traditions, 2) increasing exposure to a variety of ethnic customs, and 3) pressures on family structures created by the increasingly explicit content of popular media.
• Your theory would specify how these concepts are related to one another and how they come together to produce an increase in the divorce rate.



• You need to establish the connection between the abstract concepts and the concrete world.
• Your theory says that the increasing divorce rate in Canadian cities is due to:
• a shift away from older traditions,
• increasing exposure to a variety of ethnic customs, and
• pressures on family structures created by the increasingly explicit content of popular media



• This generally means that you will be doing one of the following:
• sort things into categories (men vs women, tall vs short, red vs blue ...)
• rank things according to size or order or ability
• count how often things happen or how many people there are
• measure the size, magnitude, distance, quantity, duration, etc. of things



• More specifically:
• a theory is a formal statement of definitions and propositions concerning the relations among a set of constructs
• created for the purposes of explanation, understanding, prediction, and control of phenomena.



• Parts of a theory
• generative force or motivating reason (x),
• a pattern of effects (y), and
• a set of boundary conditions (z)



• There are different kinds of generative forces in theories, leading to different forms of explanations:
• causes
• norms or social customs
• reasons



• A theory that explains social patterns by reference to norms or social customs employs rule-based explanation and is called a rule of communication.



• A reason refers to the preexisting goals, needs, and desires of a person that explain patterns of behavior and of communication.
• A theory that explains patterns by reference to goals or subjective reasons for acting is called a teleological explanation.



• Where does theory come from?
• Sometimes you make observations, you notice a pattern, and then you construct a theoretical explanation that would account for what you think you saw. This is called "Data-to-theory"
• Sometimes you may just be thinking about some ideas and make some logical connections and you get the idea that if your thinking is correct, something should happen in the right conditions. This is "Theory-from-Thin-Air"
• Sometimes you read the work of other researchers and think about it and draw your own conclusions and develop your own theoretical explanation for what happened.



• At first, the theory is nothing more than an argument based on some knowledge, some assumptions, some suppositions, and some reasoning.
• The goal of verification is to test that argument: are its predictions and implications correct?
• Could they be due to factors not included in the theory -- perhaps a different generative force? . . . a relationship with something not included in your theory?



• Theories are statements about relations between abstract concepts.
• They don't say anything about concrete reality.
• You can't observe abstract concepts directly.
• You need a way to make the theory connect with the concrete world.
• Here is where you use some deductive reasoning:
• You don't test the abstract theory directly;
• you test the specific conclusions logically implied by the theory.



• If the theory is valid, you would expect to see evidence of the conclusions implied by the theory.
• If you don't see that evidence, you know you have a problem.



• Even if you do see the evidence, though, you still can't say that you have proven that the theory is true.
• Why? Alternative explanations may fit the data just as well, although they may be based on completely different generative forces and relations between phenomena.
• Since it is not possible to rule out all alternative explanations, it is not possible to prove a theory is true.



• Criteria for evaluating Theories
  1. Empirical validity
  2. Perspipcuity
  3. Parsimony
  4. Utility
     
     
• Empirical validity
• Do the predictions implied by the theory match the data?
• If they do, your theory has empirical validity.
• If they don't, your theory leads you to make false predictions. It doesn't match reality.



• Perspicuity
• A perspicuous theory is clear, lucid, precise, and readily understandable.
• Because of these qualities, the basic components of the theory and the statements linking the components together will be clearly and precisely defined, so a perspicuous theory will lead to clear, unequivocal predictions.
• Furthermore, without clear and precise definitions and predictions, it is impossible to take the measurements needed to test the theory.



• Parsimony
• A parsimonious theory has few concepts and relationships between them.
• Because it has few concepts and relationships, a parsimonious theory is more straightforward, more likely to be internally consistent and easier to connect with reality than a complex theory that ties numerous concepts together in many different ways.
• Because it is simpler, it is also more likely to lead to unambiguous and unequivocal predictions.



• Utility
• Does the theory explain previously inexplicable phenomena?
• Does it increase your practical understanding of communication, adding new insights?
• Does it have heuristic value -- does it stimulate further conceptual and empirical research?
• Does it matter?