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What Is a Theoretical Framework? | Guide to Organizing

Published on October 14, 2022 by Sarah Vinz . Revised on November 20, 2023 by Tegan George.

A theoretical framework is a foundational review of existing theories that serves as a roadmap for developing the arguments you will use in your own work.

Theories are developed by researchers to explain phenomena, draw connections, and make predictions. In a theoretical framework, you explain the existing theories that support your research, showing that your paper or dissertation topic is relevant and grounded in established ideas.

In other words, your theoretical framework justifies and contextualizes your later research, and it’s a crucial first step for your research paper , thesis , or dissertation . A well-rounded theoretical framework sets you up for success later on in your research and writing process.

Table of contents

Why do you need a theoretical framework, how to write a theoretical framework, structuring your theoretical framework, example of a theoretical framework, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about theoretical frameworks.

Before you start your own research, it’s crucial to familiarize yourself with the theories and models that other researchers have already developed. Your theoretical framework is your opportunity to present and explain what you’ve learned, situated within your future research topic.

There’s a good chance that many different theories about your topic already exist, especially if the topic is broad. In your theoretical framework, you will evaluate, compare, and select the most relevant ones.

By “framing” your research within a clearly defined field, you make the reader aware of the assumptions that inform your approach, showing the rationale behind your choices for later sections, like methodology and discussion . This part of your dissertation lays the foundations that will support your analysis, helping you interpret your results and make broader generalizations .

• In literature , a scholar using postmodernist literary theory would analyze The Great Gatsby differently than a scholar using Marxist literary theory.
• In psychology , a behaviorist approach to depression would involve different research methods and assumptions than a psychoanalytic approach.
• In economics , wealth inequality would be explained and interpreted differently based on a classical economics approach than based on a Keynesian economics one.

To create your own theoretical framework, you can follow these three steps:

• Identifying your key concepts
• Evaluating and explaining relevant theories
• Showing how your research fits into existing research

1. Identify your key concepts

The first step is to pick out the key terms from your problem statement and research questions . Concepts often have multiple definitions, so your theoretical framework should also clearly define what you mean by each term.

To investigate this problem, you have identified and plan to focus on the following problem statement, objective, and research questions:

Problem : Many online customers do not return to make subsequent purchases.

Objective : To increase the quantity of return customers.

Research question : How can the satisfaction of company X’s online customers be improved in order to increase the quantity of return customers?

2. Evaluate and explain relevant theories

By conducting a thorough literature review , you can determine how other researchers have defined these key concepts and drawn connections between them. As you write your theoretical framework, your aim is to compare and critically evaluate the approaches that different authors have taken.

After discussing different models and theories, you can establish the definitions that best fit your research and justify why. You can even combine theories from different fields to build your own unique framework if this better suits your topic.

Make sure to at least briefly mention each of the most important theories related to your key concepts. If there is a well-established theory that you don’t want to apply to your own research, explain why it isn’t suitable for your purposes.

3. Show how your research fits into existing research

Apart from summarizing and discussing existing theories, your theoretical framework should show how your project will make use of these ideas and take them a step further.

You might aim to do one or more of the following:

• Test whether a theory holds in a specific, previously unexamined context
• Use an existing theory as a basis for interpreting your results
• Critique or challenge a theory
• Combine different theories in a new or unique way

A theoretical framework can sometimes be integrated into a literature review chapter , but it can also be included as its own chapter or section in your dissertation. As a rule of thumb, if your research involves dealing with a lot of complex theories, it’s a good idea to include a separate theoretical framework chapter.

There are no fixed rules for structuring your theoretical framework, but it’s best to double-check with your department or institution to make sure they don’t have any formatting guidelines. The most important thing is to create a clear, logical structure. There are a few ways to do this:

• Draw on your research questions, structuring each section around a question or key concept
• Organize by theory cluster
• Organize by date

It’s important that the information in your theoretical framework is clear for your reader. Make sure to ask a friend to read this section for you, or use a professional proofreading service .

As in all other parts of your research paper , thesis , or dissertation , make sure to properly cite your sources to avoid plagiarism .

To get a sense of what this part of your thesis or dissertation might look like, take a look at our full example .

If you want to know more about AI for academic writing, AI tools, or research bias, make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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While a theoretical framework describes the theoretical underpinnings of your work based on existing research, a conceptual framework allows you to draw your own conclusions, mapping out the variables you may use in your study and the interplay between them.

A literature review and a theoretical framework are not the same thing and cannot be used interchangeably. While a theoretical framework describes the theoretical underpinnings of your work, a literature review critically evaluates existing research relating to your topic. You’ll likely need both in your dissertation .

A theoretical framework can sometimes be integrated into a  literature review chapter , but it can also be included as its own chapter or section in your dissertation . As a rule of thumb, if your research involves dealing with a lot of complex theories, it’s a good idea to include a separate theoretical framework chapter.

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Theories are formulated to explain, predict, and understand phenomena and, in many cases, to challenge and extend existing knowledge within the limits of critical bounded assumptions or predictions of behavior. The theoretical framework is the structure that can hold or support a theory of a research study. The theoretical framework encompasses not just the theory, but the narrative explanation about how the researcher engages in using the theory and its underlying assumptions to investigate the research problem. It is the structure of your paper that summarizes concepts, ideas, and theories derived from prior research studies and which was synthesized in order to form a conceptual basis for your analysis and interpretation of meaning found within your research.

Abend, Gabriel. "The Meaning of Theory." Sociological Theory 26 (June 2008): 173–199; Kivunja, Charles. "Distinguishing between Theory, Theoretical Framework, and Conceptual Framework: A Systematic Review of Lessons from the Field." International Journal of Higher Education 7 (December 2018): 44-53; Swanson, Richard A. Theory Building in Applied Disciplines . San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers 2013; Varpio, Lara, Elise Paradis, Sebastian Uijtdehaage, and Meredith Young. "The Distinctions between Theory, Theoretical Framework, and Conceptual Framework." Academic Medicine 95 (July 2020): 989-994.

Importance of Theory and a Theoretical Framework

Theories can be unfamiliar to the beginning researcher because they are rarely applied in high school social studies curriculum and, as a result, can come across as unfamiliar and imprecise when first introduced as part of a writing assignment. However, in their most simplified form, a theory is simply a set of assumptions or predictions about something you think will happen based on existing evidence and that can be tested to see if those outcomes turn out to be true. Of course, it is slightly more deliberate than that, therefore, summarized from Kivunja (2018, p. 46), here are the essential characteristics of a theory.

• It is logical and coherent
• It has clear definitions of terms or variables, and has boundary conditions [i.e., it is not an open-ended statement]
• It has a domain where it applies
• It has clearly described relationships among variables
• It describes, explains, and makes specific predictions
• It comprises of concepts, themes, principles, and constructs
• It must have been based on empirical data [i.e., it is not a guess]
• It must have made claims that are subject to testing, been tested and verified
• It must be clear and concise
• Its assertions or predictions must be different and better than those in existing theories
• Its predictions must be general enough to be applicable to and understood within multiple contexts
• Its assertions or predictions are relevant, and if applied as predicted, will result in the predicted outcome
• The assertions and predictions are not immutable, but subject to revision and improvement as researchers use the theory to make sense of phenomena
• Its concepts and principles explain what is going on and why
• Its concepts and principles are substantive enough to enable us to predict a future

Given these characteristics, a theory can best be understood as the foundation from which you investigate assumptions or predictions derived from previous studies about the research problem, but in a way that leads to new knowledge and understanding as well as, in some cases, discovering how to improve the relevance of the theory itself or to argue that the theory is outdated and a new theory needs to be formulated based on new evidence.

A theoretical framework consists of concepts and, together with their definitions and reference to relevant scholarly literature, existing theory that is used for your particular study. The theoretical framework must demonstrate an understanding of theories and concepts that are relevant to the topic of your research paper and that relate to the broader areas of knowledge being considered.

The theoretical framework is most often not something readily found within the literature . You must review course readings and pertinent research studies for theories and analytic models that are relevant to the research problem you are investigating. The selection of a theory should depend on its appropriateness, ease of application, and explanatory power.

The theoretical framework strengthens the study in the following ways :

• An explicit statement of  theoretical assumptions permits the reader to evaluate them critically.
• The theoretical framework connects the researcher to existing knowledge. Guided by a relevant theory, you are given a basis for your hypotheses and choice of research methods.
• Articulating the theoretical assumptions of a research study forces you to address questions of why and how. It permits you to intellectually transition from simply describing a phenomenon you have observed to generalizing about various aspects of that phenomenon.
• Having a theory helps you identify the limits to those generalizations. A theoretical framework specifies which key variables influence a phenomenon of interest and highlights the need to examine how those key variables might differ and under what circumstances.
• The theoretical framework adds context around the theory itself based on how scholars had previously tested the theory in relation their overall research design [i.e., purpose of the study, methods of collecting data or information, methods of analysis, the time frame in which information is collected, study setting, and the methodological strategy used to conduct the research].

By virtue of its applicative nature, good theory in the social sciences is of value precisely because it fulfills one primary purpose: to explain the meaning, nature, and challenges associated with a phenomenon, often experienced but unexplained in the world in which we live, so that we may use that knowledge and understanding to act in more informed and effective ways.

The Conceptual Framework. College of Education. Alabama State University; Corvellec, Hervé, ed. What is Theory?: Answers from the Social and Cultural Sciences . Stockholm: Copenhagen Business School Press, 2013; Asher, Herbert B. Theory-Building and Data Analysis in the Social Sciences . Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1984; Drafting an Argument. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Kivunja, Charles. "Distinguishing between Theory, Theoretical Framework, and Conceptual Framework: A Systematic Review of Lessons from the Field." International Journal of Higher Education 7 (2018): 44-53; Omodan, Bunmi Isaiah. "A Model for Selecting Theoretical Framework through Epistemology of Research Paradigms." African Journal of Inter/Multidisciplinary Studies 4 (2022): 275-285; Ravitch, Sharon M. and Matthew Riggan. Reason and Rigor: How Conceptual Frameworks Guide Research . Second edition. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2017; Trochim, William M.K. Philosophy of Research. Research Methods Knowledge Base. 2006; Jarvis, Peter. The Practitioner-Researcher. Developing Theory from Practice . San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1999.

Strategies for Developing the Theoretical Framework

I.  Developing the Framework

Here are some strategies to develop of an effective theoretical framework:

• Examine your thesis title and research problem . The research problem anchors your entire study and forms the basis from which you construct your theoretical framework.
• Brainstorm about what you consider to be the key variables in your research . Answer the question, "What factors contribute to the presumed effect?"
• Review related literature to find how scholars have addressed your research problem. Identify the assumptions from which the author(s) addressed the problem.
• List  the constructs and variables that might be relevant to your study. Group these variables into independent and dependent categories.
• Review key social science theories that are introduced to you in your course readings and choose the theory that can best explain the relationships between the key variables in your study [note the Writing Tip on this page].
• Discuss the assumptions or propositions of this theory and point out their relevance to your research.

A theoretical framework is used to limit the scope of the relevant data by focusing on specific variables and defining the specific viewpoint [framework] that the researcher will take in analyzing and interpreting the data to be gathered. It also facilitates the understanding of concepts and variables according to given definitions and builds new knowledge by validating or challenging theoretical assumptions.

II.  Purpose

Think of theories as the conceptual basis for understanding, analyzing, and designing ways to investigate relationships within social systems. To that end, the following roles served by a theory can help guide the development of your framework.

• Means by which new research data can be interpreted and coded for future use,
• Response to new problems that have no previously identified solutions strategy,
• Means for identifying and defining research problems,
• Means for prescribing or evaluating solutions to research problems,
• Ways of discerning certain facts among the accumulated knowledge that are important and which facts are not,
• Means of giving old data new interpretations and new meaning,
• Means by which to identify important new issues and prescribe the most critical research questions that need to be answered to maximize understanding of the issue,
• Means of providing members of a professional discipline with a common language and a frame of reference for defining the boundaries of their profession, and
• Means to guide and inform research so that it can, in turn, guide research efforts and improve professional practice.

Adapted from: Torraco, R. J. “Theory-Building Research Methods.” In Swanson R. A. and E. F. Holton III , editors. Human Resource Development Handbook: Linking Research and Practice . (San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 1997): pp. 114-137; Jacard, James and Jacob Jacoby. Theory Construction and Model-Building Skills: A Practical Guide for Social Scientists . New York: Guilford, 2010; Ravitch, Sharon M. and Matthew Riggan. Reason and Rigor: How Conceptual Frameworks Guide Research . Second edition. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2017; Sutton, Robert I. and Barry M. Staw. “What Theory is Not.” Administrative Science Quarterly 40 (September 1995): 371-384.

Structure and Writing Style

The theoretical framework may be rooted in a specific theory , in which case, your work is expected to test the validity of that existing theory in relation to specific events, issues, or phenomena. Many social science research papers fit into this rubric. For example, Peripheral Realism Theory, which categorizes perceived differences among nation-states as those that give orders, those that obey, and those that rebel, could be used as a means for understanding conflicted relationships among countries in Africa. A test of this theory could be the following: Does Peripheral Realism Theory help explain intra-state actions, such as, the disputed split between southern and northern Sudan that led to the creation of two nations?

However, you may not always be asked by your professor to test a specific theory in your paper, but to develop your own framework from which your analysis of the research problem is derived . Based upon the above example, it is perhaps easiest to understand the nature and function of a theoretical framework if it is viewed as an answer to two basic questions:

• What is the research problem/question? [e.g., "How should the individual and the state relate during periods of conflict?"]
• Why is your approach a feasible solution? [i.e., justify the application of your choice of a particular theory and explain why alternative constructs were rejected. I could choose instead to test Instrumentalist or Circumstantialists models developed among ethnic conflict theorists that rely upon socio-economic-political factors to explain individual-state relations and to apply this theoretical model to periods of war between nations].

The answers to these questions come from a thorough review of the literature and your course readings [summarized and analyzed in the next section of your paper] and the gaps in the research that emerge from the review process. With this in mind, a complete theoretical framework will likely not emerge until after you have completed a thorough review of the literature .

Just as a research problem in your paper requires contextualization and background information, a theory requires a framework for understanding its application to the topic being investigated. When writing and revising this part of your research paper, keep in mind the following:

• Clearly describe the framework, concepts, models, or specific theories that underpin your study . This includes noting who the key theorists are in the field who have conducted research on the problem you are investigating and, when necessary, the historical context that supports the formulation of that theory. This latter element is particularly important if the theory is relatively unknown or it is borrowed from another discipline.
• Position your theoretical framework within a broader context of related frameworks, concepts, models, or theories . As noted in the example above, there will likely be several concepts, theories, or models that can be used to help develop a framework for understanding the research problem. Therefore, note why the theory you've chosen is the appropriate one.
• The present tense is used when writing about theory. Although the past tense can be used to describe the history of a theory or the role of key theorists, the construction of your theoretical framework is happening now.
• You should make your theoretical assumptions as explicit as possible . Later, your discussion of methodology should be linked back to this theoretical framework.
• Don’t just take what the theory says as a given! Reality is never accurately represented in such a simplistic way; if you imply that it can be, you fundamentally distort a reader's ability to understand the findings that emerge. Given this, always note the limitations of the theoretical framework you've chosen [i.e., what parts of the research problem require further investigation because the theory inadequately explains a certain phenomena].

The Conceptual Framework. College of Education. Alabama State University; Conceptual Framework: What Do You Think is Going On? College of Engineering. University of Michigan; Drafting an Argument. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Lynham, Susan A. “The General Method of Theory-Building Research in Applied Disciplines.” Advances in Developing Human Resources 4 (August 2002): 221-241; Tavallaei, Mehdi and Mansor Abu Talib. "A General Perspective on the Role of Theory in Qualitative Research." Journal of International Social Research 3 (Spring 2010); Ravitch, Sharon M. and Matthew Riggan. Reason and Rigor: How Conceptual Frameworks Guide Research . Second edition. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2017; Reyes, Victoria. Demystifying the Journal Article. Inside Higher Education; Trochim, William M.K. Philosophy of Research. Research Methods Knowledge Base. 2006; Weick, Karl E. “The Work of Theorizing.” In Theorizing in Social Science: The Context of Discovery . Richard Swedberg, editor. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), pp. 177-194.

Writing Tip

Borrowing Theoretical Constructs from Other Disciplines

An increasingly important trend in the social and behavioral sciences is to think about and attempt to understand research problems from an interdisciplinary perspective. One way to do this is to not rely exclusively on the theories developed within your particular discipline, but to think about how an issue might be informed by theories developed in other disciplines. For example, if you are a political science student studying the rhetorical strategies used by female incumbents in state legislature campaigns, theories about the use of language could be derived, not only from political science, but linguistics, communication studies, philosophy, psychology, and, in this particular case, feminist studies. Building theoretical frameworks based on the postulates and hypotheses developed in other disciplinary contexts can be both enlightening and an effective way to be more engaged in the research topic.

CohenMiller, A. S. and P. Elizabeth Pate. "A Model for Developing Interdisciplinary Research Theoretical Frameworks." The Qualitative Researcher 24 (2019): 1211-1226; Frodeman, Robert. The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity . New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Another Writing Tip

Don't Undertheorize!

Do not leave the theory hanging out there in the introduction never to be mentioned again. Undertheorizing weakens your paper. The theoretical framework you describe should guide your study throughout the paper. Be sure to always connect theory to the review of pertinent literature and to explain in the discussion part of your paper how the theoretical framework you chose supports analysis of the research problem or, if appropriate, how the theoretical framework was found to be inadequate in explaining the phenomenon you were investigating. In that case, don't be afraid to propose your own theory based on your findings.

Yet Another Writing Tip

What's a Theory? What's a Hypothesis?

The terms theory and hypothesis are often used interchangeably in newspapers and popular magazines and in non-academic settings. However, the difference between theory and hypothesis in scholarly research is important, particularly when using an experimental design. A theory is a well-established principle that has been developed to explain some aspect of the natural world. Theories arise from repeated observation and testing and incorporates facts, laws, predictions, and tested assumptions that are widely accepted [e.g., rational choice theory; grounded theory; critical race theory].

A hypothesis is a specific, testable prediction about what you expect to happen in your study. For example, an experiment designed to look at the relationship between study habits and test anxiety might have a hypothesis that states, "We predict that students with better study habits will suffer less test anxiety." Unless your study is exploratory in nature, your hypothesis should always explain what you expect to happen during the course of your research.

The key distinctions are:

• A theory predicts events in a broad, general context;  a hypothesis makes a specific prediction about a specified set of circumstances.
• A theory has been extensively tested and is generally accepted among a set of scholars; a hypothesis is a speculative guess that has yet to be tested.

Cherry, Kendra. Introduction to Research Methods: Theory and Hypothesis. About.com Psychology; Gezae, Michael et al. Welcome Presentation on Hypothesis. Slideshare presentation.

Still Yet Another Writing Tip

Be Prepared to Challenge the Validity of an Existing Theory

Theories are meant to be tested and their underlying assumptions challenged; they are not rigid or intransigent, but are meant to set forth general principles for explaining phenomena or predicting outcomes. Given this, testing theoretical assumptions is an important way that knowledge in any discipline develops and grows. If you're asked to apply an existing theory to a research problem, the analysis will likely include the expectation by your professor that you should offer modifications to the theory based on your research findings.

Indications that theoretical assumptions may need to be modified can include the following:

• Your findings suggest that the theory does not explain or account for current conditions or circumstances or the passage of time,
• The study reveals a finding that is incompatible with what the theory attempts to explain or predict, or
• Your analysis reveals that the theory overly generalizes behaviors or actions without taking into consideration specific factors revealed from your analysis [e.g., factors related to culture, nationality, history, gender, ethnicity, age, geographic location, legal norms or customs , religion, social class, socioeconomic status, etc.].

Philipsen, Kristian. "Theory Building: Using Abductive Search Strategies." In Collaborative Research Design: Working with Business for Meaningful Findings . Per Vagn Freytag and Louise Young, editors. (Singapore: Springer Nature, 2018), pp. 45-71; Shepherd, Dean A. and Roy Suddaby. "Theory Building: A Review and Integration." Journal of Management 43 (2017): 59-86.

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Home » Theoretical Framework – Types, Examples and Writing Guide

Theoretical Framework – Types, Examples and Writing Guide

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Theoretical Framework

Definition:

Theoretical framework refers to a set of concepts, theories, ideas , and assumptions that serve as a foundation for understanding a particular phenomenon or problem. It provides a conceptual framework that helps researchers to design and conduct their research, as well as to analyze and interpret their findings.

In research, a theoretical framework explains the relationship between various variables, identifies gaps in existing knowledge, and guides the development of research questions, hypotheses, and methodologies. It also helps to contextualize the research within a broader theoretical perspective, and can be used to guide the interpretation of results and the formulation of recommendations.

Types of Theoretical Framework

Types of Types of Theoretical Framework are as follows:

Conceptual Framework

This type of framework defines the key concepts and relationships between them. It helps to provide a theoretical foundation for a study or research project .

Deductive Framework

This type of framework starts with a general theory or hypothesis and then uses data to test and refine it. It is often used in quantitative research .

Inductive Framework

This type of framework starts with data and then develops a theory or hypothesis based on the patterns and themes that emerge from the data. It is often used in qualitative research .

Empirical Framework

This type of framework focuses on the collection and analysis of empirical data, such as surveys or experiments. It is often used in scientific research .

Normative Framework

This type of framework defines a set of norms or values that guide behavior or decision-making. It is often used in ethics and social sciences.

Explanatory Framework

This type of framework seeks to explain the underlying mechanisms or causes of a particular phenomenon or behavior. It is often used in psychology and social sciences.

Components of Theoretical Framework

The components of a theoretical framework include:

• Concepts : The basic building blocks of a theoretical framework. Concepts are abstract ideas or generalizations that represent objects, events, or phenomena.
• Variables : These are measurable and observable aspects of a concept. In a research context, variables can be manipulated or measured to test hypotheses.
• Assumptions : These are beliefs or statements that are taken for granted and are not tested in a study. They provide a starting point for developing hypotheses.
• Propositions : These are statements that explain the relationships between concepts and variables in a theoretical framework.
• Hypotheses : These are testable predictions that are derived from the theoretical framework. Hypotheses are used to guide data collection and analysis.
• Constructs : These are abstract concepts that cannot be directly measured but are inferred from observable variables. Constructs provide a way to understand complex phenomena.
• Models : These are simplified representations of reality that are used to explain, predict, or control a phenomenon.

How to Write Theoretical Framework

A theoretical framework is an essential part of any research study or paper, as it helps to provide a theoretical basis for the research and guide the analysis and interpretation of the data. Here are some steps to help you write a theoretical framework:

• Identify the key concepts and variables : Start by identifying the main concepts and variables that your research is exploring. These could include things like motivation, behavior, attitudes, or any other relevant concepts.
• Review relevant literature: Conduct a thorough review of the existing literature in your field to identify key theories and ideas that relate to your research. This will help you to understand the existing knowledge and theories that are relevant to your research and provide a basis for your theoretical framework.
• Develop a conceptual framework : Based on your literature review, develop a conceptual framework that outlines the key concepts and their relationships. This framework should provide a clear and concise overview of the theoretical perspective that underpins your research.
• Identify hypotheses and research questions: Based on your conceptual framework, identify the hypotheses and research questions that you want to test or explore in your research.
• Test your theoretical framework: Once you have developed your theoretical framework, test it by applying it to your research data. This will help you to identify any gaps or weaknesses in your framework and refine it as necessary.
• Write up your theoretical framework: Finally, write up your theoretical framework in a clear and concise manner, using appropriate terminology and referencing the relevant literature to support your arguments.

Theoretical Framework Examples

Here are some examples of theoretical frameworks:

• Social Learning Theory : This framework, developed by Albert Bandura, suggests that people learn from their environment, including the behaviors of others, and that behavior is influenced by both external and internal factors.
• Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs : Abraham Maslow proposed that human needs are arranged in a hierarchy, with basic physiological needs at the bottom, followed by safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization at the top. This framework has been used in various fields, including psychology and education.
• Ecological Systems Theory : This framework, developed by Urie Bronfenbrenner, suggests that a person’s development is influenced by the interaction between the individual and the various environments in which they live, such as family, school, and community.
• Feminist Theory: This framework examines how gender and power intersect to influence social, cultural, and political issues. It emphasizes the importance of understanding and challenging systems of oppression.
• Cognitive Behavioral Theory: This framework suggests that our thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes influence our behavior, and that changing our thought patterns can lead to changes in behavior and emotional responses.
• Attachment Theory: This framework examines the ways in which early relationships with caregivers shape our later relationships and attachment styles.
• Critical Race Theory : This framework examines how race intersects with other forms of social stratification and oppression to perpetuate inequality and discrimination.

When to Have A Theoretical Framework

Following are some situations When to Have A Theoretical Framework:

• A theoretical framework should be developed when conducting research in any discipline, as it provides a foundation for understanding the research problem and guiding the research process.
• A theoretical framework is essential when conducting research on complex phenomena, as it helps to organize and structure the research questions, hypotheses, and findings.
• A theoretical framework should be developed when the research problem requires a deeper understanding of the underlying concepts and principles that govern the phenomenon being studied.
• A theoretical framework is particularly important when conducting research in social sciences, as it helps to explain the relationships between variables and provides a framework for testing hypotheses.
• A theoretical framework should be developed when conducting research in applied fields, such as engineering or medicine, as it helps to provide a theoretical basis for the development of new technologies or treatments.
• A theoretical framework should be developed when conducting research that seeks to address a specific gap in knowledge, as it helps to define the problem and identify potential solutions.
• A theoretical framework is also important when conducting research that involves the analysis of existing theories or concepts, as it helps to provide a framework for comparing and contrasting different theories and concepts.
• A theoretical framework should be developed when conducting research that seeks to make predictions or develop generalizations about a particular phenomenon, as it helps to provide a basis for evaluating the accuracy of these predictions or generalizations.
• Finally, a theoretical framework should be developed when conducting research that seeks to make a contribution to the field, as it helps to situate the research within the broader context of the discipline and identify its significance.

Purpose of Theoretical Framework

The purposes of a theoretical framework include:

• Providing a conceptual framework for the study: A theoretical framework helps researchers to define and clarify the concepts and variables of interest in their research. It enables researchers to develop a clear and concise definition of the problem, which in turn helps to guide the research process.
• Guiding the research design: A theoretical framework can guide the selection of research methods, data collection techniques, and data analysis procedures. By outlining the key concepts and assumptions underlying the research questions, the theoretical framework can help researchers to identify the most appropriate research design for their study.
• Supporting the interpretation of research findings: A theoretical framework provides a framework for interpreting the research findings by helping researchers to make connections between their findings and existing theory. It enables researchers to identify the implications of their findings for theory development and to assess the generalizability of their findings.
• Enhancing the credibility of the research: A well-developed theoretical framework can enhance the credibility of the research by providing a strong theoretical foundation for the study. It demonstrates that the research is based on a solid understanding of the relevant theory and that the research questions are grounded in a clear conceptual framework.
• Facilitating communication and collaboration: A theoretical framework provides a common language and conceptual framework for researchers, enabling them to communicate and collaborate more effectively. It helps to ensure that everyone involved in the research is working towards the same goals and is using the same concepts and definitions.

Characteristics of Theoretical Framework

Some of the characteristics of a theoretical framework include:

• Conceptual clarity: The concepts used in the theoretical framework should be clearly defined and understood by all stakeholders.
• Logical coherence : The framework should be internally consistent, with each concept and assumption logically connected to the others.
• Empirical relevance: The framework should be based on empirical evidence and research findings.
• Parsimony : The framework should be as simple as possible, without sacrificing its ability to explain the phenomenon in question.
• Flexibility : The framework should be adaptable to new findings and insights.
• Testability : The framework should be testable through research, with clear hypotheses that can be falsified or supported by data.
• Applicability : The framework should be useful for practical applications, such as designing interventions or policies.

Advantages of Theoretical Framework

Here are some of the advantages of having a theoretical framework:

• Provides a clear direction : A theoretical framework helps researchers to identify the key concepts and variables they need to study and the relationships between them. This provides a clear direction for the research and helps researchers to focus their efforts and resources.
• Increases the validity of the research: A theoretical framework helps to ensure that the research is based on sound theoretical principles and concepts. This increases the validity of the research by ensuring that it is grounded in established knowledge and is not based on arbitrary assumptions.
• Enables comparisons between studies : A theoretical framework provides a common language and set of concepts that researchers can use to compare and contrast their findings. This helps to build a cumulative body of knowledge and allows researchers to identify patterns and trends across different studies.
• Helps to generate hypotheses: A theoretical framework provides a basis for generating hypotheses about the relationships between different concepts and variables. This can help to guide the research process and identify areas that require further investigation.
• Facilitates communication: A theoretical framework provides a common language and set of concepts that researchers can use to communicate their findings to other researchers and to the wider community. This makes it easier for others to understand the research and its implications.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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What is a Theoretical Framework? | A Step-by-Step Guide

Published on 14 February 2020 by Shona McCombes . Revised on 10 October 2022.

A theoretical framework is a foundational review of existing theories that serves as a roadmap for developing the arguments you will use in your own work.

Theories are developed by researchers to explain phenomena, draw connections, and make predictions. In a theoretical framework, you explain the existing theories that support your research, showing that your work is grounded in established ideas.

In other words, your theoretical framework justifies and contextualises your later research, and it’s a crucial first step for your research paper , thesis, or dissertation . A well-rounded theoretical framework sets you up for success later on in your research and writing process.

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Table of contents

Why do you need a theoretical framework, how to write a theoretical framework, structuring your theoretical framework, example of a theoretical framework, frequently asked questions about theoretical frameworks.

Before you start your own research, it’s crucial to familiarise yourself with the theories and models that other researchers have already developed. Your theoretical framework is your opportunity to present and explain what you’ve learned, situated within your future research topic.

There’s a good chance that many different theories about your topic already exist, especially if the topic is broad. In your theoretical framework, you will evaluate, compare, and select the most relevant ones.

By “framing” your research within a clearly defined field, you make the reader aware of the assumptions that inform your approach, showing the rationale behind your choices for later sections, like methodology and discussion . This part of your dissertation lays the foundations that will support your analysis, helping you interpret your results and make broader generalisations .

• In literature , a scholar using postmodernist literary theory would analyse The Great Gatsby differently than a scholar using Marxist literary theory.
• In psychology , a behaviourist approach to depression would involve different research methods and assumptions than a psychoanalytic approach.
• In economics , wealth inequality would be explained and interpreted differently based on a classical economics approach than based on a Keynesian economics one.

Prevent plagiarism, run a free check.

To create your own theoretical framework, you can follow these three steps:

• Identifying your key concepts
• Evaluating and explaining relevant theories
• Showing how your research fits into existing research

1. Identify your key concepts

The first step is to pick out the key terms from your problem statement and research questions . Concepts often have multiple definitions, so your theoretical framework should also clearly define what you mean by each term.

To investigate this problem, you have identified and plan to focus on the following problem statement, objective, and research questions:

Problem : Many online customers do not return to make subsequent purchases.

Objective : To increase the quantity of return customers.

Research question : How can the satisfaction of company X’s online customers be improved in order to increase the quantity of return customers?

2. Evaluate and explain relevant theories

By conducting a thorough literature review , you can determine how other researchers have defined these key concepts and drawn connections between them. As you write your theoretical framework, your aim is to compare and critically evaluate the approaches that different authors have taken.

After discussing different models and theories, you can establish the definitions that best fit your research and justify why. You can even combine theories from different fields to build your own unique framework if this better suits your topic.

Make sure to at least briefly mention each of the most important theories related to your key concepts. If there is a well-established theory that you don’t want to apply to your own research, explain why it isn’t suitable for your purposes.

3. Show how your research fits into existing research

Apart from summarising and discussing existing theories, your theoretical framework should show how your project will make use of these ideas and take them a step further.

You might aim to do one or more of the following:

• Test whether a theory holds in a specific, previously unexamined context
• Use an existing theory as a basis for interpreting your results
• Critique or challenge a theory
• Combine different theories in a new or unique way

A theoretical framework can sometimes be integrated into a literature review chapter , but it can also be included as its own chapter or section in your dissertation. As a rule of thumb, if your research involves dealing with a lot of complex theories, it’s a good idea to include a separate theoretical framework chapter.

There are no fixed rules for structuring your theoretical framework, but it’s best to double-check with your department or institution to make sure they don’t have any formatting guidelines. The most important thing is to create a clear, logical structure. There are a few ways to do this:

• Draw on your research questions, structuring each section around a question or key concept
• Organise by theory cluster
• Organise by date

As in all other parts of your research paper , thesis, or dissertation , make sure to properly cite your sources to avoid plagiarism .

To get a sense of what this part of your thesis or dissertation might look like, take a look at our full example .

While a theoretical framework describes the theoretical underpinnings of your work based on existing research, a conceptual framework allows you to draw your own conclusions, mapping out the variables you may use in your study and the interplay between them.

A literature review and a theoretical framework are not the same thing and cannot be used interchangeably. While a theoretical framework describes the theoretical underpinnings of your work, a literature review critically evaluates existing research relating to your topic. You’ll likely need both in your dissertation .

A theoretical framework can sometimes be integrated into a  literature review chapter , but it can also be included as its own chapter or section in your dissertation . As a rule of thumb, if your research involves dealing with a lot of complex theories, it’s a good idea to include a separate theoretical framework chapter.

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a dissertation , thesis, research paper , or proposal .

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5.5 Developing a theoretical framework

Social work researchers develop theoretical frameworks based on social science theories and empirical literature. A study’s theory describes the theoretical foundations of the research and consists of the big-T theory(ies) that guide the investigation. It provides overarching perspectives, explanations, and predictions about the social problem and research topic.

In deductive research (e.g., quantitative research), researchers create a theoretical framework to explain the thought process behind the study’s research questions and hypotheses. The theoretical framework includes the constructs of interest in the study and the associations the researchers expect to find. These constructs and their relations are based on the broader theory, but likely do not entail all the components of the theory.  The theoretical framework is specific to a particular study or analysis and provides the rationale for the research question(s). In inductive studies such as grounded theory, a theoretical framework can be the final result of the research.  In this case, the theoretical framework is also a combination of concepts and their associations, but it is derived from the data collected during the research. This contrasts to theoretical frameworks in deductive research, which are created before collecting data and derive from theories and other empirical findings.

In Chapter 8, we will develop your quantitative theoretical framework further, identifying associations or causal relations in a research question. Developing a quantitative theoretical framework is also instructive for revising and clarifying your working research question and identifying concepts that serve as keywords for additional literature searching. But first, we will consider identifying your theory. The greater clarity you have with your theoretical perspective, the easier each subsequent step in the research process will be. Getting acquainted with the important theoretical concepts in a new area can be challenging. While social work education provides a broad overview of social theory, you will find much greater fulfillment out of reading about the theories related to your topic area. We discussed some strategies for finding theoretical information in Chapter 3 as part of literature searching. To extend that conversation a bit, some strategies for searching for theories in the literature include:

• Consider searching for these keywords in the title or abstract, specifically
• Looking at the references and cited by links within theoretical articles and textbooks
• Looking at books, edited volumes, and textbooks that discuss theory
• Talking with a scholar on your topic, or asking a professor if they can help connect you to someone
• It is helpful when authors are clear about how they use theory to inform their research project, usually in the introduction and discussion section.
• For example, from the broad umbrella of systems theory, you might pick out family systems theory if you want to understand the effectiveness of a family counseling program.

It’s important to remember that knowledge arises within disciplines, and that disciplines have different theoretical frameworks for explaining the same topic. While it is certainly important for the social work perspective to be a part of your analysis, social workers benefit from searching across disciplines to come to a more comprehensive understanding of the topic. Reaching across disciplines can provide uncommon insights during conceptualization, and once the study is completed, a multidisciplinary researcher will be able to share results in a way that speaks to a variety of audiences. A study by An and colleagues (2015) [1] uses game theory from the discipline of economics to understand problems in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. In order to receive TANF benefits, mothers must cooperate with paternity and child support requirements unless they have “good cause,” as in cases of domestic violence, in which providing that information would put the mother at greater risk of violence. Game theory can help us understand how TANF recipients and caseworkers respond to the incentives in their environment, and highlight why the design of the “good cause” waiver program may not achieve its intended outcome of increasing access to benefits for survivors of family abuse.

Of course, there are natural limits on the depth with which student researchers can and should engage in a search for theory about their topic. At minimum, you should be able to draw connections across studies and be able to assess the relative importance of each theory within the literature. Just because you found one article applying your theory (like game theory, in our example above) does not mean it is important or often used in the domestic violence literature. Indeed, it would be much more common in the family violence literature to find psychological theories of trauma, feminist theories of power and control, and similar theoretical perspectives used to inform research projects rather than game theory, which is equally applicable to survivors of family violence as workers and bosses at a corporation. Consider using the Cited By feature to identify articles, books, and other sources of theoretical information that are seminal or well-cited in the literature. Similarly, by using the name of a theory in the keywords of a search query (along with keywords related to your topic), you can get a sense of how often the theory is used in your topic area. You should have a sense of what theories are commonly used to analyze your topic, even if you end up choosing a different one to inform your project.

Theories that are not cited or used as often are still immensely valuable. As we saw before with TANF and “good cause” waivers, using theories from other disciplines can produce uncommon insights and help you make a new contribution to the social work literature. Given the privileged position that the social work curriculum places on theories developed by white men, students may want to explore Afrocentricity as a social work practice theory (Pellebon, 2007) [2] or abolitionist social work (Jacobs et al., 2021) [3] when deciding on a theoretical framework for their research project that addresses concepts of racial justice. Start with your working question, and explain how each theory helps you answer your question. Some explanations are going to feel right, and some concepts will feel more salient to you than others. Keep in mind that this is an iterative process. Your theoretical framework will likely change as you continue to conceptualize your research project, revise your research question, and design your study.

By trying on many different theoretical explanations for your topic area, you can better clarify your own theoretical framework. Some of you may be fortunate enough to find theories that match perfectly with how you think about your topic, are used often in the literature, and are therefore relatively straightforward to apply. However, many of you may find that a combination of theoretical perspectives is most helpful for you to investigate your project. For example, maybe the group counseling program for which you are evaluating client outcomes draws from both motivational interviewing and cognitive behavioral therapy. In order to understand the change happening in the client population, you would need to know each theory separately as well as how they work in tandem with one another. Because theoretical explanations and even the definitions of concepts are debated by scientists, it may be helpful to find a specific social scientist or group of scientists whose perspective on the topic you find matches with your understanding of the topic. Of course, it is also perfectly acceptable to develop your own theoretical framework, though you should be able to articulate how your framework fills a gap within the literature.

Much like paradigm, theory plays a supporting role for the conceptualization of your research project. Recall the ice float from Figure 5.1. Theoretical explanations support the design and methods you use to answer your research question. In projects that lack a theoretical framework, you may see the biases and errors in reasoning that we discussed in Chapter 1 that get in the way of good social science. That’s because theories mark which concepts are important, provide a framework for understanding them, and measure their interrelationships. If research is missing this foundation, it may instead operate on informal observation, messages from authority, and other forms of unsystematic and unscientific thinking we reviewed in Chapter 1.

Theory-informed inquiry is incredibly helpful for identifying key concepts and how to measure them in your research project, but there is a risk in aligning research too closely with theory. The theory-ladenness of facts and observations produced by social science research means that we may be making our ideas real through research. This is a potential source of confirmation bias in social science. Moreover, as Tan (2016) [4] demonstrates, social science often proceeds by adopting as true the perspective of Western and Global North countries, and cross-cultural research is often when ethnocentric and biased ideas are most visible . In her example, a researcher from the West studying teacher-centric classrooms in China that rely partially on rote memorization may view them as less advanced than student-centered classrooms developed in a Western country simply because of Western philosophical assumptions about the importance of individualism and self-determination. Developing a clear theoretical framework is a way to guard against biased research, and it will establish a firm foundation on which you will develop the design and methods for your study.

Key Takeaways

• Just as empirical evidence is important for conceptualizing a research project, so too are the key concepts and relationships identified by social work theory.
• Using theory your theory textbook will provide you with a sense of the broad theoretical perspectives in social work that might be relevant to your project.
• Try to find small-t theories that are more specific to your topic area and relevant to your working question.

TRACK 1 (IF YOU ARE CREATING A RESEARCH PROPOSAL FOR THIS CLASS):

In Chapter 2, you developed a concept map for your proposal.

• Take a moment to revisit your concept map now as your theoretical framework is taking shape. Make any updates to the key concepts and relationships in your concept map.

If you need a refresher, we have embedded a short how-to video from the University of Guelph Library (CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0) that we also used in Chapter 2.

TRACK 2 (IF YOU AREN’T CREATING A RESEARCH PROPOSAL FOR THIS CLASS):

You are interested in researching bullying among school-aged children, and how this impacts students’ academic success.

• Find two theoretical frameworks that have been used in published articles on this topic. Identify similarities and differences between the frameworks.

5.6 Designing your project using theory and paradigm

Learning Objectives

Learners will be able to…

• Apply the assumptions of each paradigm to your project
• Summarize what aspects of your project stem from positivist, constructivist, or critical assumptions

In the previous sections, we reviewed the major paradigms and theories in social work research. In this section, we will provide an example of how to apply theory and paradigm in research. This process is depicted in Figure 5.2 below with some quick summary questions for each stage. Some questions in the figure below have example answers like designs (i.e., experimental, survey) and data analysis approaches (i.e., discourse analysis). These examples are arbitrary. There are a lot of options that are not listed. So, don’t feel like you have to memorize them or use them in your study.

This diagram (taken from an archived Open University (UK) course entitled E89 ​- Educational Inquiry ) ​ shows one way to visualize the research design process. While research is far from linear, in general, this is how research projects progress sequentially. Researchers begin with a working question, and through engaging with the literature, develop and refine those questions into research questions (a process we will finalize in Chapter 9). But in order to get to the part where you gather your sample, measure your participants, and analyze your data, you need to start with paradigm. Based on your work in section 5.3, you should have a sense of which paradigm or paradigms are best suited to answering your question. The approach taken will often reflect the nature of the research question; the kind of data it is possible to collect; and work previously done in the area under consideration. When evaluating paradigm and theory, it is important to look at what other authors have done previously and the framework used by studies that are similar to the one you are thinking of conducting.

Once you situate your project in a research paradigm, it becomes possible to start making concrete choices about methods. Depending on the project, this will involve choices about things like:

• What is my final research question?
• What are the key variables and concepts under investigation, and how will I measure them?
• How do I find a representative sample of people who experience the topic I’m studying?
• What design is most appropriate for my research question?
• How will I collect and analyze data?
• How do I determine whether my results describe real patterns in the world or are the result of bias or error?

The data collection phase can begin once these decisions are made. It can be very tempting to start collecting data as soon as possible in the research process as this gives a sense of progress. However, it is usually worth getting things exactly right before collecting data as an error found in your approach further down the line can be harder to correct or recalibrate around.

Designing a study using paradigm and theory: An example

Paradigm and theory have the potential to turn some people off since there is a lot of abstract terminology and thinking about real-world social work practice contexts. In this section, I’ll use an example from my own research, and I hope it will illustrate a few things. First, it will show that paradigms are really just philosophical statements about things you already understand and think about normally. It will also show that no project neatly sits in one paradigm and that a social work researcher should use whichever paradigm or combination of paradigms suit their question the best. Finally, I hope it is one example of how to be a pragmatist and strategically use the strengths of different theories and paradigms to answering a research question. We will pick up the discussion of mixed methods in the next chapter.

Thinking as an expert: Positivism

In my undergraduate research methods class, I used an open textbook much like this one and wanted to study whether it improved student learning. You can read a copy of the article we wrote on based on our study . We’ll learn more about the specifics of experiments and evaluation research in Chapter 13, but you know enough to understand what evaluating an intervention might look like. My first thought was to conduct an experiment, which placed me firmly within the positivist or “expert” paradigm.

Experiments focus on isolating the relationship between cause and effect. For my study, this meant studying an open textbook (the cause, or intervention) and final grades (the effect, or outcome). Notice that my position as “expert” lets me assume many things in this process. First, it assumes that I can distill the many dimensions of student learning into one number—the final grade. Second, as the “expert,” I’ve determined what the intervention is: indeed, I created the book I was studying, and applied a theory from experts in the field that explains how and why it should impact student learning.

Theory is part of applying all paradigms, but I’ll discuss its impact within positivism first. Theories grounded in positivism help explain why one thing causes another. More specifically, these theories isolate a causal relationship between two (or more) concepts while holding constant the effects of other variables that might confound the relationship between the key variables. That is why experimental design is so common in positivist research. The researcher isolates the environment from anything that might impact or bias the cause and effect relationship they want to investigate.

But in order for one thing to lead to change in something else, there must be some logical, rational reason why it would do so. In open education, there are a few hypotheses (though no full-fledged theories) on why students might perform better using open textbooks. The most common is the access hypothesis , which states that students who cannot afford expensive textbooks or wouldn’t buy them anyway can access open textbooks because they are free, which will improve their grades. It’s important to note that I held this theory prior to starting the experiment, as in positivist research you spell out your hypotheses in advance and design an experiment to support or refute that hypothesis.

Notice that the hypothesis here applies not only to the people in my experiment, but to any student in higher education. Positivism seeks generalizable truth, or what is true for everyone. The results of my study should provide evidence that  anyone  who uses an open textbook would achieve similar outcomes. Of course, there were a number of limitations as it was difficult to tightly control the study. I could not randomly assign students or prevent them from sharing resources with one another, for example. So, while this study had many positivist elements, it was far from a perfect positivist study because I was forced to adapt to the pragmatic limitations of my research context (e.g., I cannot randomly assign students to classes) that made it difficult to establish an objective, generalizable truth.

Thinking like an empathizer: constructivism

One of the things that did not sit right with me about the study was the reliance on final grades to signify everything that was going on with students. I added another quantitative measure that measured research knowledge, but this was still too simplistic. I wanted to understand how students used the book and what they thought about it. I could create survey questions that ask about these things, but to get at the subjective truths here, I thought it best to use focus groups in which students would talk to one another with a researcher moderating the discussion and guiding it using predetermined questions. You will learn more about focus groups in Chapter 18.

Researchers spoke with small groups of students during the last class of the semester. They prompted people to talk about aspects of the textbook they liked and didn’t like, compare it to textbooks from other classes, describe how they used it, and so forth. It was this focus on  understanding and subjective experience that brought us into the constructivist paradigm. Alongside other researchers, I created the focus group questions but encouraged researchers who moderated the focus groups to allow the conversation to flow organically.

We originally started out with the assumption, for which there is support in the literature, that students would be angry with the high-cost textbook that we used prior to the free one, and this cost shock might play a role in students’ negative attitudes about research. But unlike the hypotheses in positivism, these are merely a place to start and are open to revision throughout the research process. This is because the researchers are not the experts, the participants are! Just like your clients are the experts on their lives, so were the students in my study. Our job as researchers was to create a group in which they would reveal their informed thoughts about the issue, coming to consensus around a few key themes.

When we initially analyzed the focus groups, we uncovered themes that seemed to fit the data. But the overall picture was murky. How were themes related to each other? And how could we distill these themes and relationships into something meaningful? We went back to the data again. We could do this because there isn’t one truth, as in positivism, but multiple truths and multiple ways of interpreting the data. When we looked again, we focused on some of the effects of having a textbook customized to the course. It was that customization process that helped make the language more approachable, engaging, and relevant to social work practice.

Ultimately, our data revealed differences in how students perceived a free textbook versus a free textbook that is customized to the class. When we went to interpret this finding, the remix  hypothesis of open textbook was helpful in understanding that relationship. It states that the more faculty incorporate editing and creating into the course, the better student learning will be. Our study helped flesh out that theory by discussing the customization process and how students made sense of a customized resource.

In this way, theoretical analysis operates differently in constructivist research. While positivist research tests existing theories, constructivist research creates theories based on the stories of research participants. However, it is difficult to say if this theory was totally emergent in the dataset or if my prior knowledge of the remix hypothesis influenced my thinking about the data. Constructivist researchers are encouraged to put a box around their previous experiences and beliefs, acknowledging them, but trying to approach the data with fresh eyes. Constructivists know that this is never perfectly possible, though, as we are always influenced by our previous experiences when interpreting data and conducting scientific research projects.

Thinking like an activist: Critical

Although adding focus groups helped ease my concern about reducing student learning down to just final grades by providing a more rich set of conversations to analyze. However, my role as researcher and “expert” was still an important part of the analysis. As someone who has been out of school for a while, and indeed has taught this course for years, I have lost touch with what it is like to be a student taking research methods for the first time. How could I accurately interpret or understand what students were saying? Perhaps I would overlook things that reflected poorly on my teaching or my book. I brought other faculty researchers on board to help me analyze the data, but this still didn’t feel like enough.

By luck, an undergraduate student approached me about wanting to work together on a research project. I asked her if she would like to collaborate on evaluating the textbook with me. Over the next year, she assisted me with conceptualizing the project, creating research questions, as well as conducting and analyzing the focus groups. Not only would she provide an “insider” perspective on coding the data, steeped in her lived experience as a student, but she would serve as a check on my power through the process.

Including people from the group you are measuring as part of your research team is a common component of critical research. Ultimately, critical theorists would find my study to be inadequate in many ways. I still developed the research question, created the intervention, and wrote up the results for publication, which privileges my voice and role as “expert.” Instead, critical theorists would emphasize the role of students (community members) in identifying research questions, choosing the best intervention to used, and so forth. But collaborating with students as part of a research team did address some of the power imbalances in the research process.

Critical research projects also aim to have an impact on the people and systems involved in research. No students or researchers had profound personal realizations as a result of my study, nor did it lessen the impact of oppressive structures in society. I can claim some small victory that my department switched to using my textbook after the study was complete (changing a system), though this was likely the result of factors other than the study (my advocacy for open textbooks).

Social work research is almost always designed to create change for people or systems. To that end, every social work project is at least somewhat critical. However, the additional steps of conducting research with people rather than on people reveal a depth to the critical paradigm. By bringing students on board the research team, study had student perspectives represented in conceptualization, data collection, and analysis. That said, there was much to critique about this study from a critical perspective. I retained a lot of the power in the research process, and students did not have the ability to determine the research question or purpose of the project. For example, students might likely have said that textbook costs and the quality of their research methods textbook were less important than student debt, racism, or other potential issues experienced by students in my class. Instead of a ground-up research process based in community engagement, my research included some important participation by students on project created and led by faculty.

Designing research is an iterative process

I hope this conversation was useful in applying paradigms to a research project. While my example discusses education research, the same would apply for social work research about social welfare programs, clinical interventions, or other topics. Paradigm and theory are covered at the beginning of the project because these assumptions will structure the rest of the project. Each of the research steps that occur after this chapter (e.g., forming a question, choosing a design) rely upon philosophical and theoretical assumptions. As you continue designing a project, you may find yourself shifting between paradigms. That is normal, as conceptualization is not a linear process. As you move through the next steps of conceptualizing and designing a project, you’ll find philosophies and theories that best match how you want to study your topic.

Viewing theoretical and empirical arguments through this lens is one of the true gifts of the social work approach to research. The multi-paradigmatic perspective is a hallmark of social work research and one that helps us contribute something unique on research teams and in practice.

• Multi-paradigmatic research is a distinguishing hallmark of social work research. Understanding the limitations and strengths of each paradigm will help you justify your research approach and strategically choose elements from one or more paradigms to answer your question.
• Paradigmatic assumptions help you understand the “blind spots” in your research project and how to adjust and address these areas. Keep in mind, it is not necessary to address all of your blind spots, as all projects have limitations.

Post-awareness check (Emotion)

Of the introduced social science paradigms, which would you say aligns with your current perspective on your research topic?

• Sketch out which paradigm applies best to your project. Second, building on your answer to the exercise in section 6.3, identify how the theory you chose and the paradigm in which you find yourself are consistent or are in conflict with one another. For example, if you are using systems theory in a positivist framework, you might talk about how they both rely on a deterministic approach to human behavior with a focus on the status-quo and social order.
• Select one paradigm and one theoretical framework. How does your selected theoretical framework align with your paradigm? How could the theory and paradigm together inform the overall research design?
• An, S., Yoo, J., & Nackerud, L. G. (2015). Using game theory to understand screening for domestic violence under the TANF family violence option.  Advances in Social Work ,  16 (2), 338-357. ↵
• Pellebon, D. A. (2007). An analysis of Afrocentricity as theory for social work practice.  Advances in Social Work ,  8 (1), 169-183. ↵
• Jacobs, L. A., Kim, M. E., Whitfield, D. L., Gartner, R. E., Panichelli, M., Kattari, S. K., ... & Mountz, S. E. (2021). Defund the police: Moving towards an anti-carceral social work.  Journal of Progressive Human Services ,  32 (1), 37-62. ↵
• Tan, C. (2016). Investigator bias and theory-ladenness in cross-cultural research: Insights from Wittgenstein. Current Issues in Comparative Education ,  18 (1), 83-95. ↵

a network of linked concepts that together provide a rationale for a research project or analysis; theoretical frameworks are based in theory and empirical literature

Doctoral Research Methods in Social Work Copyright © by Mavs Open Press. All Rights Reserved.

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7.4: Developing your theoretical framework

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• Page ID 135121

• Matthew DeCarlo, Cory Cummings, & Kate Agnelli
• Open Social Work Education

Learning Objectives

Learners will be able to…

• Differentiate between theories that explain specific parts of the social world versus those that are more broad and sweeping in their conclusions
• Identify the theoretical perspectives that are relevant to your project and inform your thinking about it
• Define key concepts in your working question and develop a theoretical framework for how you understand your topic.

Much like paradigms, theories provide a way of looking at the world and of understanding human interaction. Paradigms are grounded in big assumptions about the world—what is real, how do we create knowledge—whereas theories describe more specific phenomena. Well, we are still oversimplifying a bit. Some theories try to explain the whole world, while others only try to explain a small part. Some theories can be grouped together based on common ideas but retain their own individual and unique features. Our goal is to help you find a theoretical framework that helps you understand your topic more deeply and answer your working question.

Theories: Big and small

In your human behavior and the social environment (HBSE) class, you were introduced to the major theoretical perspectives that are commonly used in social work. These are what we like to call big-T ‘T’heories. When you read about systems theory, you are actually reading a synthesis of decades of distinct, overlapping, and conflicting theories that can be broadly classified within systems theory. For example, within systems theory, some approaches focus more on family systems while others focus on environmental systems, though the core concepts remain similar.

Different theorists define concepts in their own way, and as a result, their theories may explore different relationships with those concepts. For example, Deci and Ryan’s (1985)\(^{34}\) self-determination theory discusses motivation and establishes that it is contingent on meeting one’s needs for autonomy, competency, and relatedness. By contrast, ecological self-determination theory, as written by Abery & Stancliffe (1996),\(^{35}\) argues that self-determination is the amount of control exercised by an individual over aspects of their lives they deem important across the micro, meso, and macro levels. If self-determination were an important concept in your study, you would need to figure out which of the many theories related to self-determination helps you address your working question.

Theories can provide a broad perspective on the key concepts and relationships in the world or more specific and applied concepts and perspectives. Table 7.2 summarizes two commonly used lists of big-T Theoretical perspectives in social work. See if you can locate some of the theories that might inform your project.

Table 7.2: Broad theoretical perspectives in social work

Competing theoretical explanations

Within each area of specialization in social work, there are many other theories that aim to explain more specific types of interactions. For example, within the study of sexual harassment, different theories posit different explanations for why harassment occurs.

One theory, first developed by criminologists, is called routine activities theory. It posits that sexual harassment is most likely to occur when a workplace lacks unified groups and when potentially vulnerable targets and motivated offenders are both present (DeCoster, Estes, & Mueller, 1999).\(^{38}\)

Other theories of sexual harassment, called relational theories, suggest that one’s existing relationships are the key to understanding why and how workplace sexual harassment occurs and how people will respond when it does occur (Morgan, 1999).\(^{39}\) Relational theories focus on the power that different social relationships provide (e.g., married people who have supportive partners at home might be more likely than those who lack support at home to report sexual harassment when it occurs).

Finally, feminist theories of sexual harassment take a different stance. These theories posit that the organization of our current gender system, wherein those who are the most masculine have the most power, best explains the occurrence of workplace sexual harassment (MacKinnon, 1979).\(^{40}\) As you might imagine, which theory a researcher uses to examine the topic of sexual harassment will shape the questions asked about harassment. It will also shape the explanations the researcher provides for why harassment occurs.

For a graduate student beginning their study of a new topic, it may be intimidating to learn that there are so many theories beyond what you’ve learned in your theory classes. What’s worse is that there is no central database of theories on your topic. However, as you review the literature in your area, you will learn more about the theories scientists have created to explain how your topic works in the real world. There are other good sources for theories, in addition to journal articles. Books often contain works of theoretical and philosophical importance that are beyond the scope of an academic journal. Do a search in your university library for books on your topic, and you are likely to find theorists talking about how to make sense of your topic. You don’t necessarily have to agree with the prevailing theories about your topic, but you do need to be aware of them so you can apply theoretical ideas to your project.

Applying big-T theories to your topic

The key to applying theories to your topic is learning the  key concepts  associated with that theory and the  relationships  between those concepts, or  propositions . Again, your HBSE class should have prepared you with some of the most important concepts from the theoretical perspectives listed in Table 7.2. For example, the conflict perspective sees the world as divided into dominant and oppressed groups who engage in conflict over resources. If you were applying these theoretical ideas to your project, you would need to identify which groups in your project are considered dominant or oppressed groups, and which resources they were struggling over. This is a very general example. Challenge yourself to find small-t theories about your topic that will help you understand it in much greater detail and specificity. If you have chosen a topic that is relevant to your life and future practice, you will be doing valuable work shaping your ideas towards social work practice.

Integrating theory into your project can be easy, or it can take a bit more effort. Some people have a strong and explicit theoretical perspective that they carry with them at all times. For me, you’ll probably see my work drawing from exchange and choice, social constructionist, and critical theory. Maybe you have theoretical perspectives you naturally employ, like Afrocentric theory or person-centered practice. If so, that’s a great place to start since you might already be using that theory (even subconsciously) to inform your understanding of your topic. But if you aren’t aware of whether you are using a theoretical perspective when you think about your topic, try writing a paragraph off the top of your head or talking with a friend explaining what you think about that topic. Try matching it with some of the ideas from the broad theoretical perspectives from Table 7.2. This can ground you as you search for more specific theories. Some studies are designed to test whether theories apply the real world while others are designed to create new theories or variations on existing theories. Consider which feels more appropriate for your project and what you want to know.

Another way to easily identify the theories associated with your topic is to look at the concepts in your working question. Are these concepts commonly found in any of the theoretical perspectives in Table 7.2? Take a look at the Payne and Hutchison texts and see if any of those look like the concepts and relationships in your working question or if any of them match with how you think about your topic. Even if they don’t possess the exact same wording, similar theories can help serve as a starting point to finding other theories that can inform your project. Remember, HBSE textbooks will give you not only the broad statements of theories but also sources from specific theorists and sub-theories that might be more applicable to your topic. Skim the references and suggestions for further reading once you find something that applies well.

Choose a theoretical perspective from Hutchison, Payne, or another theory textbook that is relevant to your project. Using their textbooks or other reputable sources, identify :

• At least five important concepts from the theory
• What relationships the theory establishes between these important concepts (e.g., as x increases, the y decreases)
• How you can use this theory to better understand the concepts and variables in your project?

Developing your own theoretical framework

Hutchison’s and Payne’s frameworks are helpful for surveying the whole body of literature relevant to social work, which is why they are so widely used. They are one framework, or way of thinking, about all of the theories social workers will encounter that are relevant to practice. Social work researchers should delve further and develop a theoretical or conceptual framework of their own based on their reading of the literature. In  Chapter 8 , we will develop your theoretical framework further, identifying the cause-and-effect relationships that answer your working question. Developing a theoretical framework is also instructive for revising and clarifying your working question and identifying concepts that serve as keywords for additional literature searching. The greater clarity you have with your theoretical perspective, the easier each subsequent step in the research process will be.

Getting acquainted with the important theoretical concepts in a new area can be challenging. While social work education provides a broad overview of social theory, you will find much greater fulfillment out of reading about the theories related to your topic area. We discussed some strategies for finding theoretical information in  Chapter 3  as part of literature searching. To extend that conversation a bit, some strategies for searching for theories in the literature include:

• Consider searching for these keywords in the title or abstract, specifically
• Looking at the references and cited by links within theoretical articles and textbooks
• Looking at books, edited volumes, and textbooks that discuss theory
• Talking with a scholar on your topic, or asking a professor if they can help connect you to someone
• Nice authors are clear about how they use theory to inform their research project, usually in the introduction and discussion section.
• For example, from the broad umbrella of systems theory, you might pick out family systems theory if you want to understand the effectiveness of a family counseling program.

It’s important to remember that knowledge arises within disciplines, and that disciplines have different theoretical frameworks for explaining the same topic. While it is certainly important for the social work perspective to be a part of your analysis, social workers benefit from searching across disciplines to come to a more comprehensive understanding of the topic. Reaching across disciplines can provide uncommon insights during conceptualization, and once the study is completed, a multidisciplinary researcher will be able to share results in a way that speaks to a variety of audiences. A  study by An and colleagues  (2015)\(^{41}\) uses game theory from the discipline of economics to understand problems in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. In order to receive TANF benefits, mothers must cooperate with paternity and child support requirements unless they have “good cause,” as in cases of domestic violence, in which providing that information would put the mother at greater risk of violence. Game theory can help us understand how TANF recipients and caseworkers respond to the incentives in their environment, and highlight why the design of the “good cause” waiver program may not achieve its intended outcome of increasing access to benefits for survivors of family abuse.

Of course, there are natural limits on the depth with which student researchers can and should engage in a search for theory about their topic. At minimum, you should be able to draw connections across studies and be able to assess the relative importance of each theory within the literature. Just because you found one article applying your theory (like game theory, in our example above) does not mean it is important or often used in the domestic violence literature. Indeed, it would be much more common in the family violence literature to find psychological theories of trauma, feminist theories of power and control, and similar theoretical perspectives used to inform research projects rather than game theory, which is equally applicable to survivors of family violence as workers and bosses at a corporation. Consider using the Cited By feature to identify articles, books, and other sources of theoretical information that are seminal or well-cited in the literature. Similarly, by using the name of a theory in the keywords of a search query (along with keywords related to your topic), you can get a sense of how often the theory is used in your topic area. You should have a sense of what theories are commonly used to analyze your topic, even if you end up choosing a different one to inform your project.

Theories that are not cited or used as often are still immensely valuable. As we saw before with TANF and “good cause” waivers, using theories from other disciplines can produce uncommon insights and help you make a new contribution to the social work literature. Given the privileged position that the social work curriculum places on theories developed by white men, students may want to explore  Afrocentricity as a social work practice theory  (Pellebon, 2007)\(^{42}\) or  abolitionist social work  (Jacobs et al., 2021)\(^{43}\) when deciding on a theoretical framework for their research project that addresses concepts of racial justice. Start with your working question, and explain how each theory helps you answer your question. Some explanations are going to feel right, and some concepts will feel more salient to you than others. Keep in mind that this is an iterative process. Your theoretical framework will likely change as you continue to conceptualize your research project, revise your research question, and design your study.

By trying on many different theoretical explanations for your topic area, you can better clarify your own theoretical framework. Some of you may be fortunate enough to find theories that match perfectly with how you think about your topic, are used often in the literature, and are therefore relatively straightforward to apply. However, many of you may find that a combination of theoretical perspectives is most helpful for you to investigate your project. For example, maybe the group counseling program for which you are evaluating client outcomes draws from both motivational interviewing and cognitive behavioral therapy. In order to understand the change happening in the client population, you would need to know each theory separately as well as how they work in tandem with one another. Because theoretical explanations and even the definitions of concepts are debated by scientists, it may be helpful to find a specific social scientist or group of scientists whose perspective on the topic you find matches with your understanding of the topic. Of course, it is also perfectly acceptable to develop your own theoretical framework, though you should be able to articulate how your framework fills a gap within the literature.

If you are adapting theoretical perspectives in your study, it is important to clarify the original authors’ definitions of each concept. Jabareen (2009)\(^{44}\) offers that  conceptual frameworks  are not merely collections of concepts but, rather, constructs in which each concept plays an integral role.\(^{45}\) A conceptual framework  is a network of linked concepts that together provide a comprehensive understanding of a phenomenon. Each concept in a conceptual framework plays an ontological or epistemological role in the framework, and it is important to assess whether the concepts and relationships in your framework make sense together. As your framework takes shape, you will find yourself integrating and grouping together concepts, thinking about the most important or least important concepts, and how each concept is causally related to others.

Much like paradigm, theory plays a supporting role for the conceptualization of your research project. Recall the ice float from Figure 7.1. Theoretical explanations support the design and methods you use to answer your research question. In student projects that lack a theoretical framework, I often see the biases and errors in reasoning that we discussed in  Chapter 1  that get in the way of good social science. That’s because theories mark which concepts are important, provide a framework for understanding them, and measure their interrelationships. If you are missing this foundation, you will operate on informal observation, messages from authority, and other forms of unsystematic and unscientific thinking we reviewed in  Chapter 1 .

Theory-informed inquiry is incredibly helpful for identifying key concepts and how to measure them in your research project, but there is a risk in aligning research too closely with theory. The theory-ladenness of facts and observations produced by social science research means that we may be making our ideas real through research. This is a potential source of confirmation bias in social science. Moreover, as Tan (2016)\(^{46}\) demonstrates, social science often proceeds by adopting as true the perspective of Western and Global North countries, and  cross-cultural research is often when ethnocentric and biased ideas are most visible . In her example, a researcher from the West studying teacher-centric classrooms in China that rely partially on rote memorization may view them as less advanced than student-centered classrooms developed in a Western country simply because of Western philosophical assumptions about the importance of individualism and self-determination. Developing a clear theoretical framework is a way to guard against biased research, and it will establish a firm foundation on which you will develop the design and methods for your study.

Key Takeaways

• Just as empirical evidence is important for conceptualizing a research project, so too are the key concepts and relationships identified by social work theory.
• Using theory your theory textbook will provide you with a sense of the broad theoretical perspectives in social work that might be relevant to your project.
• Try to find small-t theories that are more specific to your topic area and relevant to your working question.

In  Chapter 2 , you developed a concept map for your proposal. Take a moment to revisit your concept map now as your theoretical framework is taking shape. Make any updates to the key concepts and relationships in your concept map. . If you need a refresher, we have embedded a short how-to video from the  University of Guelph Library  (CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0) that we also used in  Chapter 2 .

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The Hierarchy-of-Hypotheses Approach: A Synthesis Method for Enhancing Theory Development in Ecology and Evolution

Department of Biodiversity Research and Systematic Botany, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

Department of Restoration Ecology, Technical University of Munich, Freising, Germany

Berlin-Brandenburg Institute of Advanced Biodiversity Research (BBIB), Berlin, Germany

Carlos A Aguilar-Trigueros

Institute of Biology, Freie Universität, Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Isabelle Bartram

Institute of Sociology, University of Freiburg, Freiburg

Raul Rennó Braga

Universidade Federal do Paraná, Laboratório de Ecologia e Conservação, Curitiba, Brazil

Gregory P Dietl

Paleontological Research Institution and the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

Martin Enders

Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), Berlin, Germany

David J Gibson

School of Biological Sciences, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, Illinois

Lorena Gómez-Aparicio

Instituto de Recursos Naturales y Agrobiología de Sevilla, CSIC, LINCGlobal, Sevilla, Spain

Pierre Gras

Department of Ecological Dynamics, Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW), also in Berlin, Germany

Department of Conservation Biology, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research—UFZ, Leipzig, Germany

Sophie Lokatis

Christopher j lortie.

Department of Biology, York University, York, Canada, as well as with the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California

Anne-Christine Mupepele

Chair of Nature Conservation and Landscape Ecology, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, and the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, Frankfurt am Main, both in Germany

Stefan Schindler

Environment Agency Austria and University of Vienna's Division of Conservation, Biology, Vegetation, and Landscape Ecology, Vienna, Austria, and his third affiliation is with Community Ecology and Conservation, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Prague, Czech Republic, Finally

Jostein Starrfelt

University of Oslo's Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis and with the Norwegian Scientific Committee for Food and Environment, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, both in Oslo, Norway

Alexis D Synodinos

Department of Plant Ecology and Nature Conservation, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

Centre for Biodiversity Theory and Modelling, Theoretical, and Experimental Ecology Station, CNRS, Moulis, France

Jonathan M Jeschke

Associated data.

In the current era of Big Data, existing synthesis tools such as formal meta-analyses are critical means to handle the deluge of information. However, there is a need for complementary tools that help to (a) organize evidence, (b) organize theory, and (c) closely connect evidence to theory. We present the hierarchy-of-hypotheses (HoH) approach to address these issues. In an HoH, hypotheses are conceptually and visually structured in a hierarchically nested way where the lower branches can be directly connected to empirical results. Used for organizing evidence, this tool allows researchers to conceptually connect empirical results derived through diverse approaches and to reveal under which circumstances hypotheses are applicable. Used for organizing theory, it allows researchers to uncover mechanistic components of hypotheses and previously neglected conceptual connections. In the present article, we offer guidance on how to build an HoH, provide examples from population and evolutionary biology and propose terminological clarifications.

In many disciplines, the volume of evidence published in scientific journals is steadily increasing. In principle, this increase should make it possible to describe and explain complex systems in much greater detail than ever before. However, an increase in available information does not necessarily correspond to an increase in knowledge and understanding (Jeschke et al. 2019 ). Publishing results in scientific journals and depositing data in public archives does not guarantee their practical application, reuse, or the advancement of theory. We suggest that this situation can be improved by the development, establishment, and regular application of methods that have the explicit aim of linking evidence and theory.

An important step toward more efficiently exploiting results from case studies is synthesis (for this and other key terms, see box 1 ). There is a wealth of methods available for statistically combining the results of multiple studies (Pullin et al. 2016 , Dicks et al. 2017 ). These methods enable the synthesis of research results stemming from different studies that address a common question (Koricheva et al. 2013 ). In the environmental sciences, evidence synthesis has increased both in frequency and importance (Lortie 2014 ), seeking to make empirical evidence readily available and more suitable as a basis for decision-making (e.g., evidence-based decision making; Sutherland 2006 , Diefenderfer et al. 2016 , Pullin et al. 2016 , Cook et al. 2017 , Dicks et al. 2017 ). Moreover, methodological guidelines have been developed, and web portals implemented to collect and synthesize the results of primary studies. Prime examples are the platforms www.conservationevidence.com and www.environmentalevidence.org , alongside the European Union–funded projects EKLIPSE ( www.eklipse-mechanism.eu ) and BiodiversityKnowledge (Nesshöver et al. 2016 ). These initiatives have promoted significant advances in the organization and assessment of evidence and the implementation of synthesis, thus allowing for a comprehensive representation of applied knowledge in environmental sciences.

Box 1. Glossary.

Evidence. Available body of data and information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid (Howick 2011 , Mupepele et al. 2016 ). These data and information can, for example, stem from an empirical observation, model output, or simulation.

Hypothesis. An assumption that (a) is based on a formalized or nonformalized theoretical model of the real world and (b) can deliver one or more testable predictions (after Giere et al. 2005 ).

Mechanistic hypothesis . Narrowed version of an overarching hypothesis, resulting from specialization or decomposition of the unspecified hypothesis with respect to assumed underlying causes.

Operational hypothesis. Narrowed version of an overarching hypothesis, accounting for a specific study design. Operational hypotheses explicate which method (e.g., which study system or research approach) is used to study the overarching hypothesis.

Overarching hypothesis. Unspecified assumption derived from a general idea, concept or major principle (i.e., from a general ­theoretical model).

Prediction. Statement about how data (i.e., measured outcome of an experiment or observation) should look if the underlying hypothesis is true.

Synthesis. Process of identifying, compiling and combining relevant knowledge from multiple sources.

Theory. A high-level—that is, general—system of conceptual constructs or devices to explain and understand ecological, evolutionary or other phenomena and systems (adapted from Pickett et al. 2007 ). Theory can consist of a worked out, integrated body of mechanistic rules or even natural laws, but it may also consist of a loose collection of conceptual frameworks, ideas and hypotheses.

Fostering evidence-based decision-making is crucial to solving specific applied problems. However, findings resulting from these applied approaches for evidence synthesis are usually not reconnected to a broader body of theory. Therefore, they do not consistently contribute to a structured or targeted advancement of theory—for example, by assessing the usefulness of ideas. It is a missed opportunity to not feed this synthesized evidence back into theory. A similar lack of connection to theory has been observed for studies addressing basic research questions (e.g., Jeltsch et al. 2013 , Scheiner 2013 ). Evidence feeding back into theory, subsequently leading to further theory development, would become a more appealing, simpler and, therefore, more common process if there were well described and widely accepted methods. A positive example in this respect is structural equation modeling, especially if combined with metamodels (Grace et al. 2010 ). With this technique, theoretical knowledge directly feeds into mathematical models, and empirical data are then used to select the model best matching the observations.

In the present article, we provide a detailed description of a relatively new synthesis method—the hierarchy-of-hypotheses (HoH) approach (Jeschke et al. 2012 , Heger et al. 2013 )—that is complementary to existing knowledge synthesis tools. This approach offers the opportunity to organize evidence and ideas, and to create and display links between single study results and theory. We suggest that the representation of broad ideas as nested hierarchies of hypotheses can be powerful and can be used to more efficiently connect single studies to a body of theory. Empirical studies usually formulate very specific hypotheses, derive predictions from these about expected data, and test these predictions in experiments or observations. With an HoH, it can be made explicit which broader ideas these specific hypotheses are linked to. The specific hypotheses can be characterized and visualized as subhypotheses of a broader idea or theory. Therefore, it becomes clear that the single study, although necessarily limited in its scope, is testing an important aspect of a broader idea or theory. Similarly, an HoH can be used to organize a body of literature that is too heterogeneous for statistical meta-analysis. It can be linked with a systematic review of existing studies, so that the studies and their findings are organized and hierarchically structured, thus visualizing which aspects of an overarching question or hypothesis each study is addressing. Alternatively, the HoH approach can be used to refine a broad idea on theoretical grounds and to identify different possibilities of how an idea, concept, or hypothesis can become more specific, less ambiguous, and better structured. Taken together, the approach can help to strengthen the theoretical foundations of a research field.

In this context, it is important to clarify what is meant by hypothesis . In the present article, we apply the terminology offered by the philosopher of science Ronald Giere and colleagues (Giere et al. 2005 , see also Griesemer 2018 ). Accordingly, a hypothesis provides the connection of the (formalized or nonformalized) theoretical model that a researcher has, describing how a specific part of the world works in theory, to the real world by asserting that the model fits that part of the world in some specified aspect. A hypothesis needs to be testable, thus allowing the investigation of whether the theoretical model actually fits the real world. This is done by deriving one or more predictions from the hypothesis that state how data (gathered in an observation or experiment) should look if the hypothesis is true.

The HoH approach has already been introduced as a tool for synthesis in invasion ecology (Jeschke et al. 2012 , Heger et al. 2013 , Heger and Jeschke 2014 , Jeschke and Heger 2018a ). So far, however, explicit and consistent guidance on how to build a hierarchy of hypotheses has not been formally articulated. The primary objective of this publication therefore is to offer a concrete, consistent, and refined description for those who want to use this tool or want to adopt it to their discipline. Furthermore, we want to stimulate methodological discussions about its further development and improvement. In the following, we outline the main ideas behind the HoH approach and the history of its development, present a primer for creating HoHs, provide examples for applications within and outside of invasion ecology, and discuss its strengths and limitations.

The hierarchy-of-hypotheses approach

The basic tenet behind the HoH approach is that complexity can often be handled by hierarchically structuring the topic under study (Heger and Jeschke 2018c ). The approach has been developed to clarify the link between big ideas, and experiments or surveys designed to test them. Usually, experiments and surveys actually test predictions derived from smaller, more specific ideas that represent an aspect or one manifestation of the big idea. Different studies all addressing a joint major hypothesis consequently often each address different versions of it. This diversity makes it hard to reconcile their results. The HoH approach addresses this challenge by dividing the major hypothesis into more specific formulations or subhypotheses. These can be further divided until the level of refinement allows for direct empirical testing. The result is a tree that visually depicts different ways in which a major hypothesis can be formulated. The empirical studies can then be explicitly linked to the branch of the tree they intend to address, thus making a conceptual and visual connection to the major hypothesis. Hierarchical nestedness therefore allows one to structure and display relationships between different versions of an idea, and to conceptually collate empirical tests addressing the same overall question with divergent approaches. A hierarchical arrangement of hypotheses has also been suggested by Pickett and colleagues ( 2007 ) in the context of the method of pairwise alternative hypothesis testing (or strong inference, Platt 1964 ). However, we are not aware of studies that picked up on or further developed this idea.

The HoH approach in its first version (Jeschke et al. 2012 , Heger et al. 2013 , Heger and Jeschke 2014 ) was not a formalized method with a clear set of rules on how to proceed. It emerged and evolved during a literature synthesis project through dealing with the problem of how to merge results of a set of highly diverse studies without losing significant information on what precisely these studies were addressing. In that first iteration of the HoH method, the branches of the hierarchy were selected by the respective author team, on the basis of expert knowledge and assessment of published data. Therefore, pragmatic questions guided the creation of the HoH (e.g., which kind of branching helps group studies in a way that enhances interpretation? ). Through further work on the approach, helpful discussions with colleagues, and critical comments (Farji-Brener and Amador-Vargas 2018 , Griesemer 2018 , Scheiner and Fox 2018 ), suggestions for its refinement were formulated (Heger and Jeschke 2018b , 2018c ). The present article amounts to a further step in the methodological development and refinement of the HoH approach, including terminological clarifications and practical suggestions.

A primer for building a hierarchy of hypotheses

With the methodological guidance provided in the following, we take the initial steps toward formalizing the application of the HoH approach. However, we advocate that its usage should not be confined by rules that are too strict. Although we appreciate the advantages of strict methodological guidelines, such as those provided by The Collaboration for Environmental Evidence ( 2018 ) for synthesizing evidence in systematic reviews, we believe that when it comes to conceptual work and theory development, room is needed for creativity and methodological flexibility.

Applying the HoH approach involves four steps (figure  1 ). We distinguish two basic aims for creating an HoH: organizing evidence and organizing theory. These basic aims reflect the distinction between empirical and theoretical modeling approaches in Griesemer ( 2013 ). Creating and displaying links between evidence and theory can be part of the process in either case. In the first case (i.e., if the aim is to organize evidence), the process starts with a diverse set of empirical results and the question of how these can be grouped to enhance their joint interpretation or further analysis. In the second case (i.e., if the aim is to organize theory), the process of creating the hierarchy starts with decomposing an overarching hypothesis. An HoH allows one to make the meaning of this overarching hypothesis more explicit by formulating its components as separate subhypotheses from which testable, specific predictions can be derived.

Workflow for the creation of a hierarchy of hypotheses. For a detailed explanation, see the main text.

The starting point for an HoH-based analysis in both cases, for organizing evidence as well as for organizing theory, is the identification of a focal hypothesis. This starting point is followed by the compilation of information (step 1 in figure  1 ). Which information needs to be compiled depends on whether the aim is structuring and synthesizing empirical evidence provided by a set of studies (e.g., Jeschke and Heger 2018a and example 1 below) or whether the research interest is more in the theoretical structure and subdivision of the overarching hypothesis (see examples 2 and 3 below). The necessary information needs to be gathered by means of a literature review guided by expert knowledge. Especially if the aim is to organize evidence, we recommend applying a standardized procedure (e.g., PRISMA, Moher et al. 2015 , or ROSES, Haddaway et al. 2018 ) and recording the performed steps.

The next step is to create the hierarchy (step 2 in figure  1 ). If the aim is to organize evidence, step 1 will have led to the compilation of a set of studies empirically addressing the overarching hypothesis or a sufficiently homogeneous overarching theoretical framework. In step 2, these studies will need to be grouped. Depending on the aim of the study, it can be helpful to group the empirical tests of the overarching hypothesis according to study system (e.g., habitat, taxonomic group) or research approach (e.g., measured response variable). For example, in tests of the biotic resistance hypothesis in invasion ecology, which posits that an ecosystem with high biodiversity is more resistant against nonnative species than an ecosystem with lower biodiversity, Jeschke and colleagues ( 2018a ) grouped empirical tests according to how the tests measured biodiversity and resistance against nonnative species. Some tests measured biodiversity as species richness, others as evenness or functional richness. The groups resulting from such considerations can be interpreted as representing operational hypotheses, because they specify the general hypothesis by accounting for diverse research approaches—that is, options for measuring the hypothesized effect (see also Griesemer 2018 , Heger and Jeschke 2018c , as well as figure  2 a and example 1 below). In such cases, we recommend displaying all resulting subhypotheses, if feasible.

Three different types of branching in a hierarchy of hypotheses. The branching example shown in (a) is inspired by example 1 in the main text, (b) by example 2 (see also figure  3 b), and (c) by example 3 (see also figure  4 ).

If the aim is to organize theory, the overarching hypothesis is split into independent components on the basis of conceptual considerations (figure  2 b and  2 c). This splitting of the overarching hypothesis can be done by creating branches according to which factors could have caused the respective process or pattern (see example 2 below, figure  2 b).

Broad, overarching hypotheses often consist of several complementary partial arguments that are necessary elements. Consider the question why species often are well adapted to their biotic environment. A common hypothesis suggests that enduring interaction with enemies drives evolutionary changes, thus leading to adaptations of prey to their enemies (see example 3). This hypothesis presupposes that species face increasing risks from enemies but also that species’ traits evolve in response to the changed risk (figure  2 c and example 3 below). Decomposing overarching hypotheses into their partial arguments by formulating separate mechanistic hypotheses can enhance conceptual clarity and elucidate that sometimes, studies combined under one header are in fact addressing very different things.

For any type of branching, it is critical to identify components or groups (i.e., branches) that are mutually exclusive and not overlapping, so that an unambiguous assignment of single cases or observations into a box (i.e., subhypothesis) can be possible. If this is not feasible, it may be necessary to use conceptual maps, networks or Venn diagrams rather than hierarchical structures (figure  1 , step 2; also see supplemental table S1). Therefore, care should be taken not to impose a hierarchical structure in cases where it is not helpful.

For many applications, the process of building an HoH can stop at this step, and a publication of the results can be considered (step 4). The resulting HoH can, for example, show the connection of a planned study to a body of theory, explicate and visualize the complexity of ideas implicitly included in a major hypothesis, or develop a research program around an overarching idea.

If the aim is to identify research gaps, or to assess the generality or range of applicability of a major hypothesis, however, a further step must be taken (figure  1 , step 3a): The HoH needs to be linked to empirical data. In previous studies (e.g., Jeschke and Heger 2018a ), this step was done by assigning empirical studies to the subhypotheses they addressed and assessing the level of supporting evidence for the predictions derived from each hypothesis or subhypothesis. This assignment of studies to subhypotheses can be done either by using expert judgment or by applying machine learning algorithms (for further details, see Heger and Jeschke 2014 , Jeschke and Heger 2018a , Ryo et al. 2019 ). Depending on the research question, the available resources and the structure of the data, the level of evidence can be assessed for each subhypothesis as well as for the higher-level hypotheses and can then be compared across subhypotheses. Such a comparison can provide information on the generality of an overarching hypothesis (i.e., its unifying power and breadth of applicability) or on the range of conditions under which a mechanism applies (see supplemental table S2 for examples). Before an HoH organizing theory is connected to empirical evidence, it will be necessary in most cases to include operational hypotheses at the lower levels, specifying, for example, different possible experimental approaches.

The hierarchical approach can additionally be used to connect the HoH developed in step 2 to a related body of theory. For example, Heger and colleagues ( 2013 ) suggested that the existing HoH on the enemy release hypothesis (see example 1 below) was conceptually connected to another well-known hypothesis—the novel weapons hypothesis. As a common overarching hypothesis addressing the question why species can successfully establish and spread outside of their native range, they suggested the “lack of eco-evolutionary experience hypothesis”; the enemy release and the novel weapons hypotheses are considered subhypotheses of this overarching hypothesis. This optional step can therefore help to create missing links within a discipline or even across disciplines.

Performing this step requires the study of the related body of theory, looking for conceptual overlaps and overarching topics. It may turn out that hypotheses, concepts, and ideas exist that are conceptually linked to the focal overarching hypothesis but that these links are nonhierarchical. In these cases, it can be useful to build hypothesis networks and apply clustering techniques to identify underlying structures (see, e.g., Enders et al. 2020 ). This step can also be applied in cases in which the HoH has been built to organize evidence.

Once the HoH is finalized, it can be published in order to enter the public domain and facilitate the advancement of the methodology and theory development. For the future, we envision a platform for the publication of HoHs to make the structured representations of research topics available not only via the common path of journal publications. The webpage www.hi-knowledge.org (Jeschke et al. 2018b ) is a first step in this direction and is planned to allow for the upload of results in the future.

Application of the HoH approach: Three examples

We will now exemplify the process of creating an HoH. The first example starts with a diverse set of empirical tests addressing one overarching hypothesis (i.e., with the aim to organize evidence), whereas the second and third examples start with conceptual considerations on how different aspects are linked to one overarching hypothesis (in the present article, the aim is to organize theory).

Example 1: the enemy release hypothesis as a hierarchy

The first published study showing a detailed version of an HoH focused on the enemy release hypothesis (Heger and Jeschke 2014 ). This is a prominent hypothesis in invasion biology (Enders et al. 2018 ). With respect to the research question of why certain species become invasive—that is, why they establish and spread in a new range—it posits, “The absence of enemies is a cause of invasion success” (e.g., Keane and Crawley 2002 ). With a systematic literature review, Heger and Jeschke ( 2014 ) identified studies addressing this hypothesis. This review revealed that the hypothesis has been tested in many different ways. After screening the empirical tests with a specific focus on which research approach had been used, the authors decided to use three branching criteria: the indicator for enemy release (actual damage, infestation with enemies or performance of the invader); the type of comparison (alien versus natives, aliens in native versus invaded range or invasive versus noninvasive aliens); and the type of enemies (specialists or generalists). On the basis of these criteria, Heger and Jeschke created a hierarchically organized representation of the hypothesis's multiple aspects. The order in which the three criteria were applied to create the hierarchy in this case was based on practical considerations. Empirical studies providing evidence were then assigned to the respective branch of the corresponding hierarchy to reveal specific subhypotheses that were more and others that were less supported (Heger and Jeschke 2014 ).

In later publications, Heger and Jeschke suggested some optional refinements of the original approach (Heger and Jeschke 2018b , 2018c ). One of the suggestions was to distinguish between mechanistic hypotheses (originally termed working hypotheses) and operational hypotheses as different forms of subhypotheses when building the hierarchy. Mechanistic hypotheses serve the purpose of refining the broad, overarching idea in a conceptual sense (figure  2 b and  2 c), whereas operational hypotheses refine the hypotheses by accounting for the diversity of study approaches (figure  2 a).

The enemy release hypothesis example indicates that it can be useful to apply different types of branching criteria within one study. Heger and Jeschke ( 2014 ) looked for helpful ways of grouping diverse empirical tests. Some of the branches they decided to create were based on differences in the research methods, such as the distinction between comparisons of aliens versus natives, and comparisons of aliens in their native versus the invaded range (figure  2 a). Other branches explicate complementary partial arguments contained in the major hypothesis: Studies in which the researchers asked whether aliens are confronted with fewer enemies were separated from those in which they asked whether aliens that are released show enhanced performance.

In this example, the HoH approach was used to organize evidence and therefore to expose the variety of manifestations of the enemy release hypothesis and to display the level of evidence for each branch of the HoH (see Heger and Jeschke 2018b and supplemental table S2 for an interpretation of the results).

Example 2: illustrating the potential drivers of the snowshoe hare–canadian lynx population cycles

Understanding and predicting the spatiotemporal dynamics of populations is one of ecology's central goals (Sutherland et al. 2013 ), and population ecology has a long tradition of trying to understand causes for observed patterns in population dynamics. However, research efforts do not always produce clear conclusions, and often lead to competing explanatory hypotheses. A good example, which has been popularized through textbooks, is the 8–11-year synchronized population cycles of the snowshoe hare ( Lepus americanus ) and the Canadian lynx ( Lynx canadensis ; figure  3 a). From eighteenth- to nineteenth-century fur trapping records across the North American boreal and northern temperate forests, it has been known that predator (lynx) and prey (hare) exhibit broadly synchronous population cycles. Research since the late 1930s (MacLulich 1937 , Elton and Nicholson 1942 ) has tried to answer the question how these patterns are produced. A linear food chain of producer (vegetation)—primary consumer or prey (snowshoe hares)—secondary consumer or predator (Canadian lynx) proved too simplistic as an explanation (Stenseth et al. 1997 ). Instead, multiple drivers could have been responsible, resulting in the development of multiple competing explanations (Oli et al. 2020 ).

(a) The population cycle of snowshoe hare and Canadian lynx and (b) a hierarchy of hypotheses illustrating its potential drivers. The hypotheses (blue boxes) branch from the overarching hypothesis into more and more precise mechanistic hypotheses and are confronted with empirical tests (arrows leading to grey boxes) at lower levels of the hierarchy. The broken lines indicate where the hierarchy may be extended. Sources: The figure is based on the summary of snowshoe hare–Canadian lynx research (Krebs et al. 2001 , Krebs et al. 2018 and references therein). Panel (a) is reprinted with permission from OpenStax Biology, Chapter 45.6 Community Ecology, Rice University Publishers, Creative Commons Attribution License (by 4.0).

In the present article, we created an HoH to organize the current suggestions on what drives the snowshoe hare–lynx cycle (figure  3 b). The aim of this exercise is to visualize conceptual connections rooted in current population ecological theory and, therefore, to enhance understanding of the complexity of involved processes.

A major hypothesis in population ecology is that populations are regulated by the interaction between biotic and abiotic factors. This regulation can either happen through processes coupled with the density of the focal organisms (density-dependent processes) or through density-independent processes, such as variability in environmental conditions or disturbances. This conceptual distinction can be used to branch out multiple mechanistic hypotheses that specify particular hypothetical mechanisms inducing the observed cycles. For example, potential drivers of the hare–lynx cycles include density-dependent mechanisms linked to bottom-up resource limitation and top-down predation, and density-independent mechanisms related to 10-year sun spot cycles. Figure  3 b also summarizes the kind of experiments that have been performed and how they relate to the corresponding mechanistic hypotheses. For example, food supplementation and fertilization experiments were used to test the resource limitation hypothesis and predator exclusion experiments to test the hypothesis that hare cycles are induced by predator abundance. Figure  3 b therefore highlights why it can be useful to apply very different types of experiments to test one broad overarching hypothesis.

The experiments that have been performed suggest that the predator–prey cycles result from an interaction between predation and food supplies combined with other modifying factors including social stress, disease and parasitism (Krebs et al., 2001 , 2018 ). Other experiments can be envisioned to test additional hypotheses, such as snow-removal experiments to test whether an increase in winter snow, induced by changed sun spot activity, causes food shortages and high hare mortality (Krebs et al. 2018 ).

In this example, alternate hypotheses are visually contrasted, and the different experiments that have been done are linked to the nested structure of possible drivers. This allows one to intuitively grasp the conceptual contribution of evidence stemming from each experiment to the overall explanation of the pattern. In a next step, quantitative results from these experiments could be summarized and displayed as well—for example, applying formal meta-analyses to summarize and display evidence stemming from each type of experiment. This example highlights how hierarchically structuring hypotheses can help to visually organize ideas about which drivers potentially cause a pattern in a complex system (for a comparison, see figure 11 in Krebs et al. 2018 ).

Example 3: the escalation hypothesis of evolution

The escalation hypothesis is a prominent hypothesis in evolutionary biology. In response to the question why species often seem to be well adapted to their biotic environment, it states that enemies are predominant agents of natural selection, and that enduring interactions with enemies brings about long-term evolutionary trends in the morphology, behavior, and distribution of organisms. Escalation, however, is an intrinsically costly process that can proceed only as long as resources are both available and accessible. Since the publication of Vermeij's book Evolution and Escalation in 1987, which is usually considered the start of the respective modern research program, escalation has represented anything but a fixed theory in its structure or content. The growth of escalation studies has led to the development of an increasing number of specific subhypotheses derived from Vermeij's original formulation and therefore to an expansion of the theoretical domain of the escalation hypothesis. Escalation has been supported by some tests but questioned by others.

Similar as in example 2, an HoH can contribute to conceptual clarity by structuring the diversity of escalation ideas that have been proposed (figure  4 ; Dietl 2015 ). To create the HoH for the escalation hypothesis, instead of assembling empirical studies that have tested it, Dietl ( 2015 ) went through the conceptual exercise of arranging existing escalation ideas on the basis of expert knowledge.

A hierarchy of hypotheses for the escalation hypothesis in evolutionary biology. The broken lines indicate where the hierarchy may be extended.

In its most generalized formulation—that is, “enemies direct evolution”—the escalation hypothesis can be situated at the top of a branch (figure  4 ) along with other hypotheses positing the importance of interaction-related adaptation, such as Van Valen's ( 1973 ) Red Queen hypothesis and hypotheses derived from Thompson's ( 2005 ) geographic mosaic theory of coevolution. Vermeij's original ( 1987 ) formulation of the hypothesis of escalation is actually composed of two separate testable propositions: “Biological hazards due to competitors and predators have become more severe over the course of time in physically comparable habitats” ­(p. 49 in Vermeij 1987 ) and “traits that enhance the competitive and antipredatory capacities of individual organisms have increased in incidence and in degree of expression over the course of time within physically similar habitats” (p. 49 in Vermeij 1987 ). As is the case with other composite hypotheses, these ideas must be singled out before the overarching idea can be unambiguously tested. This requirement creates a natural branching point in the escalation HoH, the risk and response subhypotheses (figure  4 ).

Other lower-level hypotheses and aspects of the risk and response subhypotheses are possible. The risk side of the HoH can be further branched into subhypotheses suggesting either that the enemies evolved enhanced traits through time (e.g., allowing for greater effectiveness in prey capture) or that interaction intensity has increased through time (e.g., because of greater abundance or power of predators; figure  4 ). The response side of the HoH also can be further branched into several subhypotheses (all addressed by Vermeij 1987 ). In particular, species’ responses could take the form of a trend toward more rapid exploitation of resources through time, an increased emphasis on traits that enable individuals to combat or interfere with competitors, a trend toward reduced detectability of prey through time, a trend of increased mobility (that is, active escape defense) through time, or an increase in the development of armor (or passive defense) through time. Arranging these different options of how escalation can manifest in boxes connected to a hierarchical structure helps to gain an overview. The depiction of subhypotheses in separate boxes does not indicate that the authors believe there is no interaction possible among these factors. For example, the evolution of enhanced traits may lead to an increase in interaction intensity. The presented HoH should be viewed only as one way to organize theory. It puts emphasis on the upward connections of subhypotheses to more general hypotheses. If the focus is more on interactions among different factors, other graphical and conceptual approaches may be more helpful (e.g., causal networks; for an example, see Gurevitch et al. 2011 ).

The HoH shown in figure  4 can be used as a conceptual backbone for further work in this field. Also, it can be related to existing evidence. This HoH will allow identification of data gaps and an understanding of which branches of the tree receive support by empirical work and therefore should be considered important components of escalation theory.

Strengths and limits of the HoH approach

The HoH approach can help to organize theory, to organize evidence, and to conceptualize and visualize connections of evidence to theory. Previously published examples of HoHs (e.g., Jeschke and Heger 2018a ) and example 1 given above demonstrate its usefulness for organizing evidence, for pointing out important differences among subhypotheses and for conceptually and graphically connecting empirical results to a broader theoretical idea. Such an HoH can make the rationale underlying a specific study explicit and can elucidate the conceptual connection of the study to a concrete theoretical background.

Applying the HoH approach can also help disclose knowledge gaps and biases (Braga et al. 2018 ) and can help reveal which research approaches have been used to assess an overarching idea (for examples, see Jeschke and Heger 2018a ; other methods can be used to reach these aims too—e.g., systematic maps; Pullin et al. 2016 , Collaboration for Environmental Evidence 2018 ). On the basis of such information, future research can be focused on especially promising areas or methods.

Besides such descriptive applications, the HoH approach can be combined with evidence assessment techniques (step 3a in figure  1 ). It can help to analyze the level of evidence for subhypotheses and therefore deliver the basis for discussing their usefulness and range of applicability (table S2; Jeschke and Heger 2018). Recent studies demonstrate that this kind of application can be useful for research outside of ecology as well—for example, in biomedical research (Bartram and Jeschke 2019 ) or even in a distant field like company management research (Wu et al. 2019 ).

We did not detail in the present article how the confrontation of hypotheses with evidence in an HoH can be done, but in previous work it was shown that this step can deliver the basis for enhancing theory. For example, the HoH-based literature analyses presented in Jeschke and Heger ( 2018a ) showed that several major hypotheses in invasion biology are only weakly supported by evidence. The authors consequently suggested to reformulate them (Jeschke and Heger 2018b ) and to explicitly assess their range of applicability (Heger and Jeschke 2018a ). Because an HoH visually connects data and theory, the approach motivates one to feed empirical results back into theory and, therefore, use them for improving theory. It is our vision that in the future, theory development in ecology and evolution could largely profit from a regular application of the HoH approach. Steps to improve theory can include highlighting strongly supported subhypotheses, pointing out hypotheses with low unification power and breadth of applicability, shedding light on previously unnoticed connections, and revealing gaps in research.

The examples on the hare–lynx cycles and the escalation hypothesis showed that the HoH approach can also guide theory-driven reasoning in both the ecological and evolutionary domains, respectively. That is, the HoH approach can allow the reconsideration and reorganization of conceptual ideas without directly referring to data. Major hypotheses or research questions are usually composed of several elements, and above, we suggest how these elements can be exposed and visualized (figure  2 b and  2 c). In this way, applying the HoH approach can help to enhance conceptual clarity by displaying different meanings and components of broad concepts. Conceptual clarity is not only useful to avoid miscommunication or misinterpretation of empirical results, but we expect that it will also facilitate theory development by enhancing accurate thinking and argumentation.

In addition, the nested, hierarchical structure invites looking for connections upward: Figure  4 shows the escalation hypothesis as one variant of an even broader hypothesis, positing that “Species interactions direct evolution.” This in turn can enhance the future search for patterns and mechanisms across unconnected study fields. A respective example can be found in Schulz and colleagues ( 2019 ). In that article, the authors used the HoH approach to organize twelve hypotheses each addressing the roles that antagonists play during species invasions. By grouping the hypotheses in a hierarchically nested way, Schulz and colleagues showed their conceptual relatedness, which had not been demonstrated before.

In the future, the HoH approach could also be used for creating interdisciplinary links. There are many research questions that are being addressed in several research areas in parallel, using different approaches and addressing different aspects of the overall question. In an HoH, such connections could be revealed. Heger and colleagues ( 2019 ) suggested a future application of the HoH approach for organizing and structuring research on effects of global change on organisms, communities, and ecosystems. Under the broad header of “ecological novelty,” more specific research questions addressed in various disciplines (e.g., climate change research, biodiversity research, urban ecology, restoration ecology, evolutionary ecology, microbial ecology) could be organized and therefore conceptually connected.

Importantly, the HoH approach can be easily combined with existing synthesis tools. For example, as was outlined above and in figure  1 , a systematic literature review can be used to identify and structure primary studies to be used for building an HoH. Statistical approaches, such as machine learning, can be used to optimize branching with respect to levels of evidence (Ryo et al. 2019 ), and empirical data structured in an HoH can be analyzed with formal meta-analysis—for example, separately for each subhypothesis (Jeschke and Pyšek 2018 ). In future applications, an HoH could also be used to visualize the results of a research-weaving process, in which systematic mapping is combined with bibliometric approaches (Nakagawa et al. 2019 ). Furthermore, HoHs can be linked to a larger network. An example is the website https://hi-knowledge.org/invasion-biology/ (Jeschke et al. 2018b ) where the conceptual connections of 12 major hypotheses of invasion ecology are displayed as a hierarchical network. We believe that the combination of HoH with other knowledge synthesis tools, such as Venn diagrams, ontologies, controlled vocabularies, and systematic maps, can be useful as well and should be explored in the future.

We emphasize, however, that the HoH method is by far no panacea for managing complexity. Not all topics interesting for scientific inquiry can be organized hierarchically, and imposing a hierarchy may even lead to wrong conclusions, thus actually hindering theory development. For example, to focus a conceptual synthesis on one major overarching hypothesis may conceal that other factors not addressed by this single hypothesis have a major effect on underlying processes as well. Evidence assessed with respect to this one hypothesis can in such cases only be used to derive partial explanations, whereas for a more complete understanding of the underlying processes, interactions with other factors need to be considered. Furthermore, displaying interacting aspects of a system as discrete entities within a hierarchy can obfuscate the true dynamics of a system.

In our three examples—the enemy release hypothesis, the hare–lynx cycles, and the escalation hypothesis (figures  3 and  4 )—connections between the different levels of the hierarchies do not necessarily depict causal relationships. Also, the fact that multicausality is ubiquitous in ecological systems is not covered. It has been argued that approaches directly focusing on explicating causal relationships and multicausality could be more helpful for advancing theory (Scheiner and Fox 2018 ). The HoH approach is currently primarily a tool to provide conceptual structure. We suggest that revealing causal networks and multicausalities represent additional objectives and regard them as important aims also for further developing the HoH approach. Combining existing approaches for revealing causal relationships (e.g., Eco Evidence, Norris et al. 2012 , or CADDIS, www.epa.gov/caddis ) with the HoH approach seems to be a promising path forward. Also, a future aim could be to develop a version of the HoH approach with enhanced formalization, allowing different kinds of relationships among subhypotheses to be disclosed (e.g., applying semantic web methods. Such a formalized version of the HoH approach could be used for scrutinizing the logical structure of hypotheses (e.g., compatibility and incompatibility of subhypotheses) and identifying inevitable interdependencies (e.g., likelihood of cooccurrence of evidence along two branches).

The guidelines on how to build an HoH presented above and in figures  1 and  2 will help to increase the reproducibility of the process. Full reproducibility is unlikely to be reached for most applications because researchers need to make individual choices. For example, step 1 involves creative reasoning and may therefore potentially lead to differing results if repeated by different researchers. The process of creating an HoH can therefore lead to a whole set of outcomes. Usually, there will be not one single HoH that is the one “correct” answer to the research questions. Certain steps of the process can be automated using artificial intelligence, such as with the use of decision-tree algorithms to enhance reproducibility (Ryo et al. 2019 ). But even if such techniques are applied, the choice of which information is fed into the algorithms is made by a researcher. We suggest that this ambiguity should not be considered a flaw of the method, but instead an important and necessary concession to creativity, offering the chance to closely match the outcome of the process to the concrete requirements of the research project. Also, it should be noted that other approaches for knowledge synthesis do not necessarily yield reproducible results either, not even formal meta-analysis (de Vrieze 2018 ).

Conclusions

The current emphasis on statistical approaches for synthesizing evidence with the purpose of facilitating decision making in environmental management and nature conservation is undoubtedly important and necessary. However, knowledge and understanding of ecological systems would profit largely if results from empirical studies would in addition, and on a regular basis, be used to improve theory. With this contribution, we present one possibility for creating close links between evidence and theory, and we hope to stimulate future studies that feed results from case studies back into theory. Our goal is to motivate more conceptual work aimed at refining major hypotheses on how complex systems work. Above, we provided examples for how to develop a nuanced representation of major hypotheses, focusing on their mechanistic components.

Ecological systems are highly complex, and therefore, the theories describing them typically need to incorporate complexity. Nested, hierarchical structures in our view represent one possible path forward, because they allow zooming in and out and, therefore, moving between different levels of complexity. We propose that alternative tools such as causal networks should be further developed for application in ecology and evolution as well. Combining complementary conceptual tools would in our view be most promising for an efficient enhancement of knowledge and understanding in ecology.

Supplementary Material

Biaa130_supplemental_file, acknowledgments.

The ideas presented in this article were developed during the workshop “The hierarchy-of-hypotheses approach: Exploring its potential for structuring and analyzing theory, research, and evidence across disciplines,” 19–21 July 2017, and refined during the workshop “Research synthesis based on the hierarchy-of-hypotheses approach,” 10–12 October 2018, both in Hanover, Germany. We thank William Bausman, Adam Clark, Francesco DePrentis, Carsten Dormann, Alexandra Erfmeier, Gordon Fox, Jeremy Fox, James Griesemer, Volker Grimm, Thierry Hanser, Frank Havemann, Yuval Itescu, Marie Kaiser, Julia Koricheva, Peter Kraker, Ingolf Kühn, Andrew Latimer, Chunlong Liu, Bertram Ludäscher, Klaus Mainzer, Elijah Millgram, Bob O'Hara, Masahiro Ryo, Raphael Scholl, Gerhard Schurz, Philip Stephens, Koen van Benthem and Meike Wittman for participating in our lively discussions and Alkistis Elliot-Graves and Birgitta König-Ries for help with refining terminology. Furthermore, we thank Sam Scheiner and five anonymous reviewers for comments that helped to improve the manuscript. The workshops were funded by Volkswagen Foundation (Az 92,807 and 94,246). TH, CAA, ME, PG, ADS, and JMJ received funding from German Federal Ministry of Education and Research within the Collaborative Project “Bridging in Biodiversity Science” (grant no. 01LC1501A). ME additionally received funding from the Foundation of German Business, JMJ from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (grants no. JE 288/9–1 and JE 288/9–2), and IB from German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (grant no. FKZ 01GP1710). CJL was supported by a grant from The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and in-kind synthesis support from the US National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. LGA was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities through project no. CGL2014–56,739-R, and RRB received funding from the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (process no. 152,289/2018–6).

Author Biographical

Tina Heger ( [email protected] ) is affiliated with the Department of Biodiversity Research and Systematic Botany and Alexis D. Synodinos is affiliated with the Department of Plant Ecology and Nature Conservation at the University of Potsdam, in Potsdam, Germany. Tina Heger and Kurt Jax are affiliated with the Department of Restoration Ecology at the Technical University of Munich, in Freising, Germany. Tina Heger, Carlos A. Aguilar-Trigueros, Martin Enders, Pierre Gras, Jonathan M. Jeschke, Sophie Lokatis, and Alexis Synodinos are affiliated with the ­Berlin-Brandenburg Institute of Advanced Biodiversity Research (BBIB), in Berlin, Germany. Carlos Aguilar, Isabelle Bartram, Martin Enders, Jonathan M. Jeschke, and Sophie Lokatis are affiliated with the Institute of Biology at Freie Universität Berlin, in Berlin, Germany. Martin Enders, Jonathan M. Jeschke, and Sophie Lokatis are also affiliated with the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), in Berlin, Germany. Pierre Gras is also affiliated with the Department of Ecological Dynamics at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW), also in Berlin, Germany. Isabelle Bartram is affiliated with the Institute of Sociology, at the University of Freiburg, in Freiburg. Kurt Jax is also affiliated with the Department of Conservation Biology at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research—UFZ, in Leipzig, Germany. Raul R. Braga is located at the Universidade Federal do Paraná, Laboratório de Ecologia e Conservação, in Curitiba, Brazil. Gregory P. Dietl has two affiliations: the Paleontological Research Institution and the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York. David J. Gibson is affiliated with the School of Biological Sciences at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, in Carbondale, Illinois. Lorena Gómez-Aparicio's affiliation is the Instituto de Recursos Naturales y Agrobiología de Sevilla, CSIC, LINCGlobal, in Sevilla, Spain. Christopher J. Lortie is affiliated with the Department of Biology at York University, in York, Canada, as well as with the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, at the University of California Santa Barbara, in Santa Barbara, California. Anne-Christine Mupepele has two affiliations as well: the Chair of Nature Conservation and Landscape Ecology at the University of Freiburg, in Freiburg, and the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, in Frankfurt am Main, both in Germany. Stefan Schindler is working at the Environment Agency Austria and the University of Vienna's Division of Conservation Biology, Vegetation, and Landscape Ecology, in Vienna, Austria, and his third affiliation is with Community Ecology and Conservation, at the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, in Prague, Czech Republic. Finally, Jostein Starrfelt is affiliated with the University of Oslo's Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis and with the Norwegian Scientific Committee for Food and Environment, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, both in Oslo, Norway. Alexis D. Synodinos is affiliated with the Centre for Biodiversity Theory and Modelling, Theoretical, and Experimental Ecology Station, CNRS, in Moulis, France.

Contributor Information

Tina Heger, Department of Biodiversity Research and Systematic Botany, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany. Department of Restoration Ecology, Technical University of Munich, Freising, Germany. Berlin-Brandenburg Institute of Advanced Biodiversity Research (BBIB), Berlin, Germany.

Carlos A Aguilar-Trigueros, Berlin-Brandenburg Institute of Advanced Biodiversity Research (BBIB), Berlin, Germany. Institute of Biology, Freie Universität, Berlin, Berlin, Germany.

Isabelle Bartram, Berlin-Brandenburg Institute of Advanced Biodiversity Research (BBIB), Berlin, Germany. Institute of Biology, Freie Universität, Berlin, Berlin, Germany. Institute of Sociology, University of Freiburg, Freiburg.

Raul Rennó Braga, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Laboratório de Ecologia e Conservação, Curitiba, Brazil.

Gregory P Dietl, Paleontological Research Institution and the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.

Martin Enders, Berlin-Brandenburg Institute of Advanced Biodiversity Research (BBIB), Berlin, Germany. Institute of Biology, Freie Universität, Berlin, Berlin, Germany. Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), Berlin, Germany.

David J Gibson, School of Biological Sciences, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, Illinois.

Lorena Gómez-Aparicio, Instituto de Recursos Naturales y Agrobiología de Sevilla, CSIC, LINCGlobal, Sevilla, Spain.

Pierre Gras, Berlin-Brandenburg Institute of Advanced Biodiversity Research (BBIB), Berlin, Germany. Department of Ecological Dynamics, Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW), also in Berlin, Germany.

Kurt Jax, Department of Restoration Ecology, Technical University of Munich, Freising, Germany. Department of Conservation Biology, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research—UFZ, Leipzig, Germany.

Sophie Lokatis, Berlin-Brandenburg Institute of Advanced Biodiversity Research (BBIB), Berlin, Germany. Institute of Biology, Freie Universität, Berlin, Berlin, Germany. Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), Berlin, Germany.

Christopher J Lortie, Department of Biology, York University, York, Canada, as well as with the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California.

Anne-Christine Mupepele, Chair of Nature Conservation and Landscape Ecology, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, and the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, Frankfurt am Main, both in Germany.

Stefan Schindler, Environment Agency Austria and University of Vienna's Division of Conservation, Biology, Vegetation, and Landscape Ecology, Vienna, Austria, and his third affiliation is with Community Ecology and Conservation, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Prague, Czech Republic, Finally.

Jostein Starrfelt, University of Oslo's Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis and with the Norwegian Scientific Committee for Food and Environment, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, both in Oslo, Norway.

Alexis D Synodinos, Department of Plant Ecology and Nature Conservation, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany. Berlin-Brandenburg Institute of Advanced Biodiversity Research (BBIB), Berlin, Germany. Centre for Biodiversity Theory and Modelling, Theoretical, and Experimental Ecology Station, CNRS, Moulis, France.

Jonathan M Jeschke, Berlin-Brandenburg Institute of Advanced Biodiversity Research (BBIB), Berlin, Germany. Institute of Biology, Freie Universität, Berlin, Berlin, Germany. Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), Berlin, Germany.

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Topic Guide - Developing Your Research Study

• Purpose of Guide
• Flaws to Avoid
• Independent and Dependent Variables
• Glossary of Research Terms
• Reading Research Effectively
• Narrowing a Topic Idea
• Broadening a Topic Idea
• Extending the Timeliness of a Topic Idea
• Academic Writing Style
• Choosing a Title
• Making an Outline
• Paragraph Development
• APA 7th Edition
• Executive Summary
• The C.A.R.S. Model
• Background Information
• The Research Problem/Question
• Theoretical Framework

Importance of Theory

Strategies for developing the theoretical framework, structure and writing style, writing tip, another writing tip, yet another writing tip, still yet another writing tip.

• Citation Tracking
• Content Alert Services
• Evaluating Sources
• Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources
• Tiertiary Sources
• What Is Scholarly vs. Popular?
• Qualitative Methods
• Quantitative Methods
• Using Non-Textual Elements
• Limitations of the Study
• 10. Proofreading Your Paper
• Writing Concisely
• Common Grammar Mistakes
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Footnotes or Endnotes?
• Further Readings
• Annotated Bibliography
• Types of Structured Group Activities
• Group Project Survival Skills
• Multiple Book Review Essay
• Reviewing Collected Works
• Writing a Case Study
• Writing a Research Proposal
• Bibliography

Theories are formulated to explain, predict, and understand phenomena and, in many cases, to challenge and extend existing knowledge within the limits of critical bounding assumptions. The theoretical framework is the structure that can hold or support a theory of a research study. The theoretical framework introduces and describes the theory that explains why the research problem under study exists.

Abend, Gabriel. "The Meaning of Theory." Sociological Theory 26 (June 2008): 173–199; Swanson, Richard A. Theory Building in Applied Disciplines . San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers 2013.

A theoretical framework consists of concepts and, together with their definitions and reference to relevant scholarly literature, existing theory that is used for your particular study. The theoretical framework must demonstrate an understanding of theories and concepts that are relevant to the topic of your research paper and that relate to the broader areas of knowledge being considered.

The theoretical framework is most often not something readily found within the literature . You must review course readings and pertinent research studies for theories and analytic models that are relevant to the research problem you are investigating. The selection of a theory should depend on its appropriateness, ease of application, and explanatory power.

The theoretical framework strengthens the study in the following ways :

• An explicit statement of  theoretical assumptions permits the reader to evaluate them critically.
• The theoretical framework connects the researcher to existing knowledge. Guided by a relevant theory, you are given a basis for your hypotheses and choice of research methods.
• Articulating the theoretical assumptions of a research study forces you to address questions of why and how. It permits you to intellectually transition from simply describing a phenomenon you have observed to generalizing about various aspects of that phenomenon.
• Having a theory helps you identify the limits to those generalizations. A theoretical framework specifies which key variables influence a phenomenon of interest and highlights the need to examine how those key variables might differ and under what circumstances.

By virtue of its applicative nature, good theory in the social sciences is of value precisely because it fulfills one primary purpose: to explain the meaning, nature, and challenges associated with a phenomenon, often experienced but unexplained in the world in which we live, so that we may use that knowledge and understanding to act in more informed and effective ways.

The Conceptual Framework . College of Education. Alabama State University; Corvellec, Hervé, ed. What is Theory?: Answers from the Social and Cultural Sciences . Stockholm: Copenhagen Business School Press, 2013; Asher, Herbert B. Theory-Building and Data Analysis in the Social Sciences . Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1984; Drafting an Argument . Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Ravitch, Sharon M. and Matthew Riggan. Reason and Rigor: How Conceptual Frameworks Guide Research . Second edition. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2017; Trochim, William M.K. Philosophy of Research . Research Methods Knowledge Base. 2006; Jarvis, Peter. The Practitioner-Researcher. Developing Theory from Practice . San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1999.

I.  Developing the Framework

Here are some strategies to develop of an effective theoretical framework:

• Examine your thesis title and research problem . The research problem anchors your entire study and forms the basis from which you construct your theoretical framework.
• Brainstorm about what you consider to be the key variables in your research . Answer the question, "What factors contribute to the presumed effect?"
• Review related literature to find how scholars have addressed your research problem. Identify the assumptions from which the author(s) addressed the problem.
• List  the constructs and variables that might be relevant to your study. Group these variables into independent and dependent categories.
• Review key social science theories that are introduced to you in your course readings and choose the theory that can best explain the relationships between the key variables in your study [note the Writing Tip on this page].
• Discuss the assumptions or propositions of this theory and point out their relevance to your research.

A theoretical framework is used to limit the scope of the relevant data by focusing on specific variables and defining the specific viewpoint [framework] that the researcher will take in analyzing and interpreting the data to be gathered. It also facilitates the understanding of concepts and variables according to given definitions and builds new knowledge by validating or challenging theoretical assumptions.

II.  Purpose

Think of theories as the conceptual basis for understanding, analyzing, and designing ways to investigate relationships within social systems. To that end, the following roles served by a theory can help guide the development of your framework.

• Means by which new research data can be interpreted and coded for future use,
• Response to new problems that have no previously identified solutions strategy,
• Means for identifying and defining research problems,
• Means for prescribing or evaluating solutions to research problems,
• Ways of discerning certain facts among the accumulated knowledge that are important and which facts are not,
• Means of giving old data new interpretations and new meaning,
• Means by which to identify important new issues and prescribe the most critical research questions that need to be answered to maximize understanding of the issue,
• Means of providing members of a professional discipline with a common language and a frame of reference for defining the boundaries of their profession, and
• Means to guide and inform research so that it can, in turn, guide research efforts and improve professional practice.

Adapted from: Torraco, R. J. “Theory-Building Research Methods.” In Swanson R. A. and E. F. Holton III , editors. Human Resource Development Handbook: Linking Research and Practice . (San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 1997): pp. 114-137; Jacard, James and Jacob Jacoby. Theory Construction and Model-Building Skills: A Practical Guide for Social Scientists . New York: Guilford, 2010; Ravitch, Sharon M. and Matthew Riggan. Reason and Rigor: How Conceptual Frameworks Guide Research . Second edition. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2017; Sutton, Robert I. and Barry M. Staw. “What Theory is Not.” Administrative Science Quarterly 40 (September 1995): 371-384.

The theoretical framework may be rooted in a specific theory , in which case, your work is expected to test the validity of that existing theory in relation to specific events, issues, or phenomena. Many social science research papers fit into this rubric. For example, Peripheral Realism Theory, which categorizes perceived differences among nation-states as those that give orders, those that obey, and those that rebel, could be used as a means for understanding conflicted relationships among countries in Africa. A test of this theory could be the following: Does Peripheral Realism Theory help explain intra-state actions, such as, the disputed split between southern and northern Sudan that led to the creation of two nations?

However, you may not always be asked by your professor to test a specific theory in your paper, but to develop your own framework from which your analysis of the research problem is derived . Based upon the above example, it is perhaps easiest to understand the nature and function of a theoretical framework if it is viewed as an answer to two basic questions:

• What is the research problem/question? [e.g., "How should the individual and the state relate during periods of conflict?"]
• Why is your approach a feasible solution? [i.e., justify the application of your choice of a particular theory and explain why alternative constructs were rejected. I could choose instead to test Instrumentalist or Circumstantialists models developed among ethnic conflict theorists that rely upon socio-economic-political factors to explain individual-state relations and to apply this theoretical model to periods of war between nations].

The answers to these questions come from a thorough review of the literature and your course readings [summarized and analyzed in the next section of your paper] and the gaps in the research that emerge from the review process. With this in mind, a complete theoretical framework will likely not emerge until after you have completed a thorough review of the literature .

Just as a research problem in your paper requires contextualization and background information, a theory requires a framework for understanding its application to the topic being investigated. When writing and revising this part of your research paper, keep in mind the following:

• Clearly describe the framework, concepts, models, or specific theories that underpin your study . This includes noting who the key theorists are in the field who have conducted research on the problem you are investigating and, when necessary, the historical context that supports the formulation of that theory. This latter element is particularly important if the theory is relatively unknown or it is borrowed from another discipline.
• Position your theoretical framework within a broader context of related frameworks , concepts, models, or theories . As noted in the example above, there will likely be several concepts, theories, or models that can be used to help develop a framework for understanding the research problem. Therefore, note why the theory you've chosen is the appropriate one.
• The present tense is used when writing about theory. Although the past tense can be used to describe the history of a theory or the role of key theorists, the construction of your theoretical framework is happening now.
• You should make your theoretical assumptions as explicit as possible . Later, your discussion of methodology should be linked back to this theoretical framework.
• Don’t just take what the theory says as a given! Reality is never accurately represented in such a simplistic way; if you imply that it can be, you fundamentally distort a reader's ability to understand the findings that emerge. Given this, always note the limitations of the theoretical framework you've chosen [i.e., what parts of the research problem require further investigation because the theory inadequately explains a certain phenomena].

The Conceptual Framework . College of Education. Alabama State University; Conceptual Framework: What Do You Think is Going On? College of Engineering. University of Michigan; Drafting an Argument . Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Lynham, Susan A. “The General Method of Theory-Building Research in Applied Disciplines.” Advances in Developing Human Resources 4 (August 2002): 221-241; Tavallaei, Mehdi and Mansor Abu Talib. "A General Perspective on the Role of Theory in Qualitative Research." Journal of International Social Research 3 (Spring 2010); Ravitch, Sharon M. and Matthew Riggan. Reason and Rigor: How Conceptual Frameworks Guide Research . Second edition. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2017; Reyes, Victoria. Demystifying the Journal Article . Inside Higher Education; Trochim, William M.K. Philosophy of Research . Research Methods Knowledge Base. 2006; Weick, Karl E. “The Work of Theorizing.” In Theorizing in Social Science: The Context of Discovery . Richard Swedberg, editor. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), pp. 177-194.

Borrowing Theoretical Constructs from Elsewhere

An increasingly important trend in the social and behavioral sciences is to think about and attempt to understand research problems from an interdisciplinary perspective. One way to do this is to not rely exclusively on the theories developed within your particular discipline, but to think about how an issue might be informed by theories developed in other disciplines. For example, if you are a political science student studying the rhetorical strategies used by female incumbents in state legislature campaigns, theories about the use of language could be derived, not only from political science, but linguistics, communication studies, philosophy, psychology, and, in this particular case, feminist studies. Building theoretical frameworks based on the postulates and hypotheses developed in other disciplinary contexts can be both enlightening and an effective way to be more engaged in the research topic.

CohenMiller, A. S. and P. Elizabeth Pate. "A Model for Developing Interdisciplinary Research Theoretical Frameworks." The Qualitative Researcher 24 (2019): 1211-1226; Frodeman, Robert. The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity . New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Don't Undertheorize!

Do not leave the theory hanging out there in the introduction never to be mentioned again. Undertheorizing weakens your paper. The theoretical framework you describe should guide your study throughout the paper. Be sure to always connect theory to the review of pertinent literature and to explain in the discussion part of your paper how the theoretical framework you chose supports analysis of the research problem or, if appropriate, how the theoretical framework was found to be inadequate in explaining the phenomenon you were investigating. In that case, don't be afraid to propose your own theory based on your findings.

What's a Theory? What's a Hypothesis?

The terms theory and hypothesis are often used interchangeably in newspapers and popular magazines and in non-academic settings. However, the difference between theory and hypothesis in scholarly research is important, particularly when using an experimental design. A theory is a well-established principle that has been developed to explain some aspect of the natural world. Theories arise from repeated observation and testing and incorporates facts, laws, predictions, and tested assumptions that are widely accepted [e.g., rational choice theory; grounded theory; critical race theory].

A hypothesis is a specific, testable prediction about what you expect to happen in your study. For example, an experiment designed to look at the relationship between study habits and test anxiety might have a hypothesis that states, "We predict that students with better study habits will suffer less test anxiety." Unless your study is exploratory in nature, your hypothesis should always explain what you expect to happen during the course of your research.

The key distinctions are:

• A theory predicts events in a broad, general context;  a hypothesis makes a specific prediction about a specified set of circumstances.
• A theory has been extensively tested and is generally accepted among scholars; a hypothesis is a speculative guess that has yet to be tested.

Cherry, Kendra. Introduction to Research Methods: Theory and Hypothesis . About.com Psychology; Gezae, Michael et al. Welcome Presentation on Hypothesis . Slideshare presentation.

Be Prepared to Challenge the Validity of an Existing Theory

Theories are meant to be tested and their underlying assumptions challenged; they are not rigid or intransigent, but are meant to set forth general principles for explaining phenomena or predicting outcomes. Given this, testing theoretical assumptions is an important way that knowledge in any discipline develops and grows. If you're asked to apply an existing theory to a research problem, the analysis may include the expectation by your professor that you should offer modifications to the theory based on your research findings. Indications that theoretical assumptions may need to be modified can include the following:

• Your findings suggest that the theory does not explain or account for current conditions or circumstances,
• The study reveals a finding that is significantly incongruent with what the theory attempts to explain or predict, or
• Your analysis reveals that the theory overly generalizes behaviors or actions without taking into consideration specific factors [e.g., factors related to culture, nationality, history, gender, ethnicity, age, geographic location, legal norms or customs , religion, social class, socioeconomic status, etc.].

Philipsen, Kristian. "Theory Building: Using Abductive Search Strategies." In Collaborative Research Design: Working with Business for Meaningful Findings . Per Vagn Freytag and Louise Young, editors. (Singapore: Springer Nature, 2018), pp. 45-71; Shepherd, Dean A. and Roy Suddaby. "Theory Building: A Review and Integration." Journal of Management 43 (2017): 59-86.

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Organizing Academic Research Papers: Theoretical Framework

• Purpose of Guide
• Design Flaws to Avoid
• Glossary of Research Terms
• Narrowing a Topic Idea
• Broadening a Topic Idea
• Extending the Timeliness of a Topic Idea
• Academic Writing Style
• Choosing a Title
• Making an Outline
• Paragraph Development
• Executive Summary
• Background Information
• The Research Problem/Question
• Theoretical Framework
• Citation Tracking
• Content Alert Services
• Evaluating Sources
• Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources
• Tertiary Sources
• What Is Scholarly vs. Popular?
• Qualitative Methods
• Quantitative Methods
• Using Non-Textual Elements
• Limitations of the Study
• Common Grammar Mistakes
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Footnotes or Endnotes?
• Further Readings
• Annotated Bibliography
• Dealing with Nervousness
• Using Visual Aids
• Grading Someone Else's Paper
• How to Manage Group Projects
• Multiple Book Review Essay
• Reviewing Collected Essays
• About Informed Consent
• Writing Field Notes
• Writing a Policy Memo
• Writing a Research Proposal
• Acknowledgements

Theories are formulated to explain, predict, and understand phenomena and, in many cases, to challenge and extend existing knowledge, within the limits of the critical bounding assumptions. The theoretical framework is the structure that can hold or support a theory of a research study. The theoretical framework introduces and describes the theory which explains why the research problem under study exists.

Importance of Theory

A theoretical framework consists of concepts, together with their definitions, and existing theory/theories that are used for your particular study. The theoretical framework must demonstrate an understanding of theories and concepts that are relevant to the topic of your  research paper and that will relate it to the broader fields of knowledge in the class you are taking.

The theoretical framework is not something that is found readily available in the literature . You must review course readings and pertinent research literature for theories and analytic models that are relevant to the research problem you are investigating. The selection of a theory should depend on its appropriateness, ease of application, and explanatory power.

The theoretical framework strengthens the study in the following ways .

• An explicit statement of  theoretical assumptions permits the reader to evaluate them critically.
• The theoretical framework connects the researcher to existing knowledge. Guided by a relevant theory, you are given a basis for your hypotheses and choice of research methods.
• Articulating the theoretical assumptions of a research study forces you to address questions of why and how. It permits you to move from simply describing a phenomenon observed to generalizing about various aspects of that phenomenon.
• Having a theory helps you to identify the limits to those generalizations. A theoretical framework specifies which key variables influence a phenomenon of interest. It alerts you to examine how those key variables might differ and under what circumstances.

By virtue of its application nature, good theory in the social sciences is of value precisely because it fulfills one primary purpose: to explain the meaning, nature, and challenges of a phenomenon, often experienced but unexplained in the world in which we live, so that we may use that knowledge and understanding to act in more informed and effective ways.

The Conceptual Framework. College of Education. Alabama State University; Drafting an Argument . Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Trochim, William M.K. Philosophy of Research. Research Methods Knowledge Base. 2006.

Strategies for Developing the Theoretical Framework

I.  Developing the Framework

Here are some strategies to develop of an effective theoretical framework:

• Examine your thesis title and research problem . The research problem anchors your entire study and forms the basis from which you construct your theoretical framework.
• Brainstorm on what you consider to be the key variables in your research . Answer the question, what factors contribute to the presumed effect?
• Review related literature to find answers to your research question.
• List  the constructs and variables that might be relevant to your study. Group these variables into independent and dependent categories.
• Review the key social science theories that are introduced to you in your course readings and choose the theory or theories that can best explain the relationships between the key variables in your study [note the Writing Tip on this page].
• Discuss the assumptions or propositions of this theory and point out their relevance to your research.

A theoretical framework is used to limit the scope of the relevant data by focusing on specific variables and defining the specific viewpoint (framework) that the researcher will take in analyzing and interpreting the data to be gathered, understanding concepts and variables according to the given definitions, and building knowledge by validating or challenging theoretical assumptions.

II.  Purpose

Think of theories as the conceptual basis for understanding, analyzing, and designing ways to investigate relationships within social systems. To the end, the following roles served by a theory can help guide the development of your framework.*

• Means by which new research data can be interpreted and coded for future use,
• Response to new problems that have no previously identified solutions strategy,
• Means for identifying and defining research problems,
• Means for prescribing or evaluating solutions to research problems,
• Way of telling us that certain facts among the accumulated knowledge are important and which facts are not,
• Means of giving old data new interpretations and new meaning,
• Means by which to identify important new issues and prescribe the most critical research questions that need to be answered to maximize understanding of the issue,
• Means of providing members of a professional discipline with a common language and a frame of reference for defining boundaries of their profession, and
• Means to guide and inform research so that it can, in turn, guide research efforts and improve professional practice.

*Adapted from: Torraco, R. J. “Theory-Building Research Methods.” In Swanson R. A. and E. F. Holton III , editors. Human Resource Development Handbook: Linking Research and Practice . (San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 1997): pp. 114-137; Sutton, Robert I. and Barry M. Staw. “What Theory is Not.” Administrative Science Quarterly 40 (September 1995): 371-384.

Structure and Writing Style

The theoretical framework may be rooted in a specific theory , in which case, you are expected to test the validity of an existing theory in relation to specific events, issues, or phenomena. Many social science research papers fit into this rubric. For example, Peripheral Realism theory, which categorizes perceived differences between nation-states as those that give orders, those that obey, and those that rebel, could be used as a means for understanding conflicted relationships among countries in Africa. A test of this theory could be the following: Does Peripheral Realism theory help explain intra-state actions, such as, the growing split between southern and northern Sudan that may likely lead to the creation of two nations?

However, you may not always be asked by your professor to test a specific theory in your paper, but to develop your own framework from which your analysis of the research problem is derived . Given this, it is perhaps easiest to understand the nature and function of a theoretical framework if it is viewed as the answer to two basic questions:

• What is the research problem/question? [e.g., "How should the individual and the state relate during periods of conflict?"]
• Why is your approach a feasible solution? [I could choose to test Instrumentalist or Circumstantialists models developed among Ethnic Conflict Theorists that rely upon socio-economic-political factors to explain individual-state relations and to apply this theoretical model to periods of war between nations].

The answers to these questions come from a thorough review of the literature and your course readings [summarized and analyzed in the next section of your paper] and the gaps in the research that emerge from the review process. With this in mind, a complete theoretical framework will likely not emerge until after you have completed a thorough review of the literature .

In writing this part of your research paper, keep in mind the following:

• Clearly describe the framework, concepts, models, or specific theories that underpin your study . This includes noting who the key theorists are in the field who have conducted research on the problem you are investigating and, when necessary, the historical context that supports the formulation of that theory. This latter element is particularly important if the theory is relatively unknown or it is borrowed from another discipline.
• Position your theoretical framework within a broader context of related frameworks , concepts, models, or theories . There will likely be several concepts, theories, or models that can be used to help develop a framework for understanding the research problem. Therefore, note why the framework you've chosen is the appropriate one.
• The present tense is used when writing about theory.
• You should make your theoretical assumptions as explicit as possible . Later, your discussion of methodology should be linked back to this theoretical framework.
• Don’t just take what the theory says as a given! Reality is never accurately represented in such a simplistic way; if you imply that it can be, you fundamentally distort a reader's ability to understand the findings that emerge. Given this, always note the limitiations of the theoretical framework you've chosen [i.e., what parts of the research problem require further investigation because the theory does not explain a certain phenomena].

The Conceptual Framework. College of Education. Alabama State University; Conceptual Framework: What Do You Think is Going On? College of Engineering. University of Michigan; Drafting an Argument . Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Lynham, Susan A. “The General Method of Theory-Building Research in Applied Disciplines.” Advances in Developing Human Resources 4 (August 2002): 221-241; Tavallaei, Mehdi and Mansor Abu Talib. A General Perspective on the Role of Theory in Qualitative Research. Journal of International Social Research 3 (Spring 2010); Trochim, William M.K. Philosophy of Research. Research Methods Knowledge Base. 2006.

Writing Tip

Borrowing Theoretical Constructs from Elsewhere

A growing and increasingly important trend in the social sciences is to think about and attempt to understand specific research problems from an interdisciplinary perspective. One way to do this is to not rely exclusively on the theories you've read about in a particular class, but to think about how an issue might be informed by theories developed in other disciplines. For example, if you are a political science student studying the rhetorical strategies used by female incumbants in state legislature campaigns, theories about the use of language could be derived, not only from political science, but linguistics, communication studies, philosophy, psychology, and, in this particular case, feminist studies. Building theoretical frameworks based on the postulates and hypotheses developed in other disciplinary contexts can be both enlightening and an effective way to be fully engaged in the research topic.

Another Writing Tip

Don't Undertheorize!

Never leave the theory hanging out there in the Introduction never to be mentioned again. Undertheorizing weakens your paper. The theoretical framework you introduce should guide your study throughout the paper. Be sure to always connect theory to the analysis and to explain in the discussion part of your paper how the theoretical framework you chose fit the research problem, or if appropriate, was inadequate in explaining the phenomenon you were investigating. In that case, don't be afraid to propose your own theory based on your findings.

Still Another Writing Tip

What's a Theory? What's a Hypothesis?

The terms theory and hypothesis are often used interchangeably in everyday use. However, the difference between them in scholarly research is important, particularly when using an experimental design. A theory is a well-established principle that has been developed to explain some aspect of the natural world. Theories arise from repeated observation and testing and incorporates facts, laws, predictions, and tested hypotheses that are widely accepted [e.g., rational choice theory; grounded theory].

A hypothesis is a specific, testable prediction about what you expect to happen in your study. For example, an experiment designed to look at the relationship between study habits and test anxiety might have a hypothesis that states, "We predict that students with better study habits will suffer less test anxiety." Unless your study is exploratory in nature, your hypothesis should always explain what you expect to happen during the course of your research.

The key distinctions are:

• A theory predicts events in a broad, general context;  a hypothesis makes a specific prediction about a specified set of circumstances.
• A theory has been extensively tested and is generally accepted among scholars; a hypothesis is a speculative guess that has yet to be tested.

Cherry, Kendra. Introduction to Research Methods: Theory and Hypothesis . About.com Psychology; Gezae, Michael et al. Welcome Presentation on Hypothesis . Slideshare presentation.

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Researching and Developing Models, Theories and Approaches for Design and Development

• First Online: 15 November 2023

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• David C. Wynn 3 &
• P. John Clarkson 4  

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This chapter discusses the research-driven development of models, theories and approaches for design and development. It begins by clarifying the types of models, theories and approaches considered. Desirable characteristics for each specific type are then outlined, and research methods for developing and evaluating them are discussed. A framework is introduced to organise these methodological considerations.

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Wynn, D.C., Clarkson, P.J. (2024). Researching and Developing Models, Theories and Approaches for Design and Development. In: The Design and Development Process. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38168-3_5

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Theoretical vs Conceptual Framework

What they are & how they’re different (with examples)

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) | Reviewed By: Eunice Rautenbach (DTech) | March 2023

If you’re new to academic research, sooner or later you’re bound to run into the terms theoretical framework and conceptual framework . These are closely related but distinctly different things (despite some people using them interchangeably) and it’s important to understand what each means. In this post, we’ll unpack both theoretical and conceptual frameworks in plain language along with practical examples , so that you can approach your research with confidence.

Overview: Theoretical vs Conceptual

What is a theoretical framework, example of a theoretical framework, what is a conceptual framework, example of a conceptual framework.

• Theoretical vs conceptual: which one should I use?

A theoretical framework (also sometimes referred to as a foundation of theory) is essentially a set of concepts, definitions, and propositions that together form a structured, comprehensive view of a specific phenomenon.

In other words, a theoretical framework is a collection of existing theories, models and frameworks that provides a foundation of core knowledge – a “lay of the land”, so to speak, from which you can build a research study. For this reason, it’s usually presented fairly early within the literature review section of a dissertation, thesis or research paper .

Let’s look at an example to make the theoretical framework a little more tangible.

If your research aims involve understanding what factors contributed toward people trusting investment brokers, you’d need to first lay down some theory so that it’s crystal clear what exactly you mean by this. For example, you would need to define what you mean by “trust”, as there are many potential definitions of this concept. The same would be true for any other constructs or variables of interest.

You’d also need to identify what existing theories have to say in relation to your research aim. In this case, you could discuss some of the key literature in relation to organisational trust. A quick search on Google Scholar using some well-considered keywords generally provides a good starting point.

Typically, you’ll present your theoretical framework in written form , although sometimes it will make sense to utilise some visuals to show how different theories relate to each other. Your theoretical framework may revolve around just one major theory , or it could comprise a collection of different interrelated theories and models. In some cases, there will be a lot to cover and in some cases, not. Regardless of size, the theoretical framework is a critical ingredient in any study.

Simply put, the theoretical framework is the core foundation of theory that you’ll build your research upon. As we’ve mentioned many times on the blog, good research is developed by standing on the shoulders of giants . It’s extremely unlikely that your research topic will be completely novel and that there’ll be absolutely no existing theory that relates to it. If that’s the case, the most likely explanation is that you just haven’t reviewed enough literature yet! So, make sure that you take the time to review and digest the seminal sources.

Need a helping hand?

A conceptual framework is typically a visual representation (although it can also be written out) of the expected relationships and connections between various concepts, constructs or variables. In other words, a conceptual framework visualises how the researcher views and organises the various concepts and variables within their study. This is typically based on aspects drawn from the theoretical framework, so there is a relationship between the two.

Quite commonly, conceptual frameworks are used to visualise the potential causal relationships and pathways that the researcher expects to find, based on their understanding of both the theoretical literature and the existing empirical research . Therefore, the conceptual framework is often used to develop research questions and hypotheses .

Let’s look at an example of a conceptual framework to make it a little more tangible. You’ll notice that in this specific conceptual framework, the hypotheses are integrated into the visual, helping to connect the rest of the document to the framework.

As you can see, conceptual frameworks often make use of different shapes , lines and arrows to visualise the connections and relationships between different components and/or variables. Ultimately, the conceptual framework provides an opportunity for you to make explicit your understanding of how everything is connected . So, be sure to make use of all the visual aids you can – clean design, well-considered colours and concise text are your friends.

Theoretical framework vs conceptual framework

As you can see, the theoretical framework and the conceptual framework are closely related concepts, but they differ in terms of focus and purpose. The theoretical framework is used to lay down a foundation of theory on which your study will be built, whereas the conceptual framework visualises what you anticipate the relationships between concepts, constructs and variables may be, based on your understanding of the existing literature and the specific context and focus of your research. In other words, they’re different tools for different jobs , but they’re neighbours in the toolbox.

Naturally, the theoretical framework and the conceptual framework are not mutually exclusive . In fact, it’s quite likely that you’ll include both in your dissertation or thesis, especially if your research aims involve investigating relationships between variables. Of course, every research project is different and universities differ in terms of their expectations for dissertations and theses, so it’s always a good idea to have a look at past projects to get a feel for what the norms and expectations are at your specific institution.

Want to learn more about research terminology, methods and techniques? Be sure to check out the rest of the Grad Coach blog . Alternatively, if you’re looking for hands-on help, have a look at our private coaching service , where we hold your hand through the research process, step by step.

Psst… there’s more (for free)

This post is part of our dissertation mini-course, which covers everything you need to get started with your dissertation, thesis or research project. 

19 Comments

Thank you for giving a valuable lesson

good thanks!

VERY INSIGHTFUL

thanks for given very interested understand about both theoritical and conceptual framework

I am researching teacher beliefs about inclusive education but not using a theoretical framework just conceptual frame using teacher beliefs, inclusive education and inclusive practices as my concepts

good, fantastic

great! thanks for the clarification. I am planning to use both for my implementation evaluation of EmONC service at primary health care facility level. its theoretical foundation rooted from the principles of implementation science.

This is a good one…now have a better understanding of Theoretical and Conceptual frameworks. Highly grateful

Very educating and fantastic,good to be part of you guys,I appreciate your enlightened concern.

Thanks for shedding light on these two t opics. Much clearer in my head now.

Simple and clear!

The differences between the two topics was well explained, thank you very much!

Thank you great insight

Superb. Thank you so much.

Hello Gradcoach! I’m excited with your fantastic educational videos which mainly focused on all over research process. I’m a student, I kindly ask and need your support. So, if it’s possible please send me the PDF format of all topic provided here, I put my email below, thank you!

I am really grateful I found this website. This is very helpful for an MPA student like myself.

I’m clear with these two terminologies now. Useful information. I appreciate it. Thank you

I’m well inform about these two concepts in research. Thanks

I found this really helpful. It is well explained. Thank you.

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