COMM 305 Edition 1st Different Types of Theories Outline of Last Lecture Intro to Class What is theory Outline of Current Lecture 1 Course Introductions11 2 The map is not the territory 3 Lay Theory vs Formal Theory The Empirical World 4 What do theories typically include 5 What should a theory do for us 6 What questions should we ask about theory Current Lecture Last time it was related to two concepts Metatheory is theory about theory A theory is a map explanation story Theories are wrong like maps are wrong Theories are representations but it is not the process The principle of abstraction is important They are not what they are describing but an abstraction Theories are imperfect abstractions They are representations of what we are trying to explain Empirical is measurable It is the real world What is physically there It is observable You can see and assess it in some way We must be careful about the real world because even in making observations we don t know if we are seeing what we are really happening Theories are maps of the empirical world Maps as theories fits in a powerful way because scholars are explorers It is a class about exploration Map making is useful not just in class but how we make sense of the world around us Research as exploration A map is not the world The principle of abstraction We have to question what we mean by better The map can be useful Maps can be distorted by size you frame the world in a certain way when the top is larger Some maps have shortcomings but they aren t useless One map may be better than another for different purposes We have to judge better or worse for what problem We take a class to remind us that the map is not the territory We can better use of the maps we have COMM 305 Edition 3 1st Lay Theory vs Formal Theory There are lessons that are good not only for formal theory but lay theory Lay theory is the idea that all human beings are theory builders We all have operating ideas on how the world works The difference in lay vs formal theory is being systematic In formal theories we write things down We have formal ways of collecting data The relationship between the real world and the world of abstractions there are different ideas on how the world works and our experiences We can start with our map and go out and test it Do observations Go from a general map to a specific map you are trying to make sense of Going from a general to the specific is deduction Going from abstraction to the real world is called inducing As explorers we are involved in both induction and deduction The connections are important How do we systemize theory What are theories made up of What do most theories include Description of phenomena Relationships among phenomena A story Links to Empirical Most theories will include a description of the phenomenon It will describe the variables in some way Our maps have a language for representing trains borders pipelines ect Theories have to convey relationships among the phenomenon On a map you have to show how far one street is from another Theories show what we have observed and how they are related Stories are embedded in maps Theories have the same sorts of stories embedded in them They have to tie together descriptions to tell as story This all falls into abstraction There also has to be a way to map the abstraction to the empirical world The theory needs to show us what we are likely to see if we observe COMM 305 Edition 1st With maps there is an obvious link to the real world What should theory do for us Solve Empirical Problems Solve Conceptual Problems Solve Practical Problems Theories can solve many problems They can accurately or with more insight describe the real world Theories can also solve conceptual problems They are about how are you defining what you are observing Theories help us by explaining what something happens in the real world Giving feedback is different in different areas by how well you know people your relationship to them ect A practical problem is making someone change their behavior based on a theory What questions should we ask of theory Scope What is the scope of the theory Can we compare theories of different scopes Scope is what conditions does the theory apply to One map that describes a tiny area versus a map that describes the whole campus Appropriateness Are the assumptions made by the theory appropriate Do they fit what we are trying to do Theories focus our attention on some things at the expense of others Heuristic Value About the value of the theory Will the theory generate new ideas for research Will the theory encourage making of new theory We want it to be something more than a no duh theory We want it to make us dig deeper Theories don t have to just give us questions but answers What questions does the theory raise Parsimony Is it just complicated enough Make it simple without making it simplistic Validity Is it true and is it true about the right things For a theory to be valid it has to fit what we observe There has to be some correspondents There has to be correspondents about the things we care about COMM 305 Edition 1st Openness Is the theory open Is it accessible enough so that other scholars and people can do something with it Inherently there will be trade offs between the trade off between scope and parsimony and validity It is easy to describe something if it is narrow It may not be useful if the scope is narrow There are trade offs between the connections We don t want theory to have a particular scope or parsimony We have to think about things in balance between our criteria We have a map for critiquing maps it is more about the balance