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This article throws light upon the six main roles of theory for social research.
1. Theory provides significant guidelines and trails for the conduct of research by pointing to areas that are most likely to be fruitful, that is, areas in which meaningful relationships among variables are likely to be found. If the variables come to be selected such that no relationships between them obtain, the research will be sterile no matter how meticulous the subsequent observations and inferences.
A theoretic system narrows down the range of facts to be studied. Theory provides the researcher with a definite view point a direction which goes a long way toward helping him enquire into relationships between certain variables selected from among an almost infinite array of variables.
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As Oppenheimer puts it, “in order for us to understand anything we have to fail to perceive a great deal that is there. Knowledge is purchased at the expense of what might have been seen and learned and was not…it is a condition of knowledge that somehow or the other we pick the clues which give us insight into what we have to find out about the world.”
As a storehouse of meaningful hypotheses a fruitful theory suggests potential problems for study and thus ignites new investigative studies.
In fact, a theory can be judged productive (to the extent it can spark off a number of questions. A productive theory suggests potential problems, fruitful hypotheses and provides new perspectives. Einstein and Infield observe, “It is never possible to introduce only observable quantities in a theory. It is the theory which decides what can be observed.” Only thus can the task of science be reduced to manageability.
Besides suggesting fruitful approaches to phenomena in the general area with which it is concerned, theory also provides leads for research in a different way, viz., by suggesting other kinds of phenomena that may perhaps be understood or explained in the same general terms. Take the example of Cohen’s theory of ‘delinquent subculture’.
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The Central idea of Cohen’s theory is that the delinquent sub-culture evolved by the working class juveniles is a response of these juveniles to deal with the problem of individual adjustment attendant upon the difficulty in meeting the criteria of status as prescribed by the middle-class standards which have to be reckoned with.
The delinquent sub-culture provides alternative criteria of status which these children can meet and thus, helps them deal with the problem of individual adjustment.
Cohen’s theoretical formulation constitutes a generic approach to the understanding of how and why any sub-culture arises. Thus, such different sub-cultures as those emerging among different professional groups or social classes or small communities may be understood in the same terms.
Research on such groups would concentrate on discovering the common problems of adjustment faced by the members and the ways in which the particular patterns of these sub-cultures help members to deal with them.
In as much as a theory summarizes known facts and predicts facts which have not yet been observed, it also points to areas which have not yet been explored, in other words, what gaps typically obtain in our knowledge.
Needless to say, such gaps would not be visible if our facts were not systematized and organized. It is thus that theory suggests where our knowledge is deficient. A researcher’s acquaintance with the existing theories helps him to select research problems that are likely to prove productive and worthwhile and to avoid enquiries into problems that may prove sterile, yielding no insights.
Formulation of worthwhile questions is an important step and a precondition to the extension of knowledge. Alerting oneself to the gaps in theory and fact increases the likelihood of formulating significant questions for research.
2. Another contribution of theory for research is in terms of increasing the meaningfulness of the findings of a particular study by helping us to perceive them as special cases of the operation of a set of more general or abstract statements of relationships rather than as isolated bits of empirical information.
A theory typically enhances the meaningfulness of research, since seemingly unrelated findings of isolated studies assume new meaning and significance when they are put into proper theoretical perspective. Let us take the example of observation by Durkheim that Catholics have a lower suicide rate as compared to the Protestants.
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As an isolated empirical uniformity, the finding would not add greatly to our understanding of suicidal behaviour unless it conceptualized, that is, conceived of as an illustration of a linkage amongst abstractions of a higher order (e.g., Catholicism-Social Cohesion unrelieved anxieties-suicide rate).
This done, we are easily able to understand that what was initially taken as an isolated empirical finding of a relationship between religious affiliation and suicidal behaviour is in fact a reflection of a much more general relationship between groups with certain conceptualized attributes (social cohesion) and behaviour of their members.
This way, the scope of the original empirical finding gets considerably extended and several seemingly disparate findings can be seen to be the contextual manifestations of the general principle.
Similarly, to take another example, the seemingly isolated finding that wives complain of heavy expenditure when the husband’s relatives are in the house-guests may be understood on a higher plane of abstraction, to be an instance of the factor of emotional proximity or distance influencing perception.
The scope of the findings thus enlarged, other apparently disparate findings may be seen to be interrelated by means of a theoretic thread (e.g., the distorting effect of lack of confidence or morale on perception may be derived from the same theoretical orientation). As a mental shorthand, theory summarizes relationships amongst variables in a conceptual framework.
It is through establishing the theoretical pertinence of an empirical finding or uniformity, that we can provide for the cumulation both of theory and research findings. To illustrate, the empirical uniformities about differentials in the suicide rate lend added confirmation to the set of propositions (theory) from which they and other uniformities have been derived. This may be underlined as a major function of theory.
3. The linkage of the specific empirical findings to a more general concept has another major advantage. It affords a more secure ground for prediction than do these empirical findings by themselves. The theory by providing a rationale behind the empirical findings introduces a ground for prediction which is more secure” than mere extrapolation from previously observed trends.
Thus, if studies indicated a decrease in social cohesion among a community of tribals, the theory-oriented researcher would feel secure to predict increased rates of suicide in this group. On the contrary, the a theoretic empiricist would have no alternative but to predict on the basis of extrapolation.
The prediction may be concerned with estimating whether a relationship between two variables, X and Y, which has been observed in the past, will continue in future, or it may be concerned with estimating whether changes in certain conditions will lead to changes in observed relationship (among the variables).
To revert to our earlier illustration of delinquency, while Cohen points out that there need not be a direct link between understanding the ’cause’ of a phenomenon and finding a ‘cure,’ his theory nevertheless seems to suggest that a measure intended to reduce gang delinquency is likely to be successful to the extent that it either changes the standards by which working class students are judged in school and (in the community, generally) or helps them to meet and prove equal to those standards.
4. Whereas an empirical finding as a proposition referring to certain concrete contextual manifestation of a phenomenon does not afford a basis for drawing diverse inferences about what will follow, its reformulation or revamping in theoretic terms affords a secure basis for arriving at the inferences about the varied positive consequences in areas quite remote from the central area to which the given finding relates.
For example, the empirical uniformity that Catholics have a lower suicide rate relative to Protestants does not by itself suggest diverse consequences in fields of conduct apparently far removed from that of suicidal behaviour. But once this uniformity is theoretically reformulated, obsessive behaviour and other maladaptive actions may be seen to be related to inadequacies of group-cohesion.
Thus, the lower the degree of social cohesion, higher the rate of mental illness). The imaginative conversion of empirical uniformities into theoretic statements thus increases the fruitfulness of research through successive exploration of its implications (or any empirical uniformity).
Theory thus mediates between specific empirical generalization or uniformities and broad theoretical orientations anchored in the intellectual tradition.
5. In affording broader meanings to empirical findings the theory also attests to their truth. A hypothesis is as much confirmed by fitting it into a theory as by fitting it into facts, because it then enjoys the support provided by evidence for all the other hypotheses of the given theory.
6. Theory helps us to identify gaps in our knowledge and seek to bridge them up with intuitive, impressionistic or extensional generalizations. As Karl Jaspers said, “It is only when using methodologically classified sciences that we know what we know and what we do not know.” This way, theory constitutes a crucially important guide to designing of fruitful research.