Discovering concepts and their relation

A theory-building study might start from a strictly descriptive aim of discovering and describing concepts that might later become relevant for a theory see Figure 8.5. Often the objective of such a study is to build and describe a typol- ogy of a phenomenon of interest in order to get more insight into how the phenomenon looks in different situations, but without an attempt to explain the occurrence of specific types by finding relations with independent factors or to find or explain effects by finding relations with dependent factors. The research objective of such a theory-building study can be specified as follows: The objective of this study is to contribute to the development of theory regarding topic T {specify the object at study} by discovering and describing a phenomenon of interest {specify the phenomenon}.

8.2 Principles of theory-building research

Propositions can be built by exploration and by theory-building research. Because exploration is not research, we think that it is important to define what is distinctive in theory-building research. Research is building and testing statements by analysing evidence drawn from observation. Whereas it is perfectly acceptable in exploration to derive propositions from what practitioners and other people say about the phenomenon whether or not this is based on evidence that is accessible to the researcher, propositions derived from theory- building research should be grounded in observations that can be justifiably seen as indicators or measurements of the concepts of the proposition that is built. ??? Figure 8.5 Not yet known concept

8.1.4 Discovering concepts

In theory-testing, the concepts of a proposition are operationalized in procedures that specify how they can be validly and reliably measured see Appendix 1: “Measurement”. Although it looks as if the criteria of measurement validity and reliability do not apply in theory-building because the concepts emerge from the data, we consider it essential to good theory-building research in comparison to mere exploration that the emerging proposition is proven to be true in the instances of the object of study that are selected for the study. This implies that each concept that emerges from the research must be defined pre- cisely after its “emergence” and that it must be assessed whether the data, on the basis of which the concept was developed, can be con- sidered valid and reliable indicators of the value of that concept in the instances studied. Measurement validity and reliability are, thus, equally important criteria for the quality of theory-building research as they are in any other type of research. The same kind of reasoning as applied here to the measurement of concepts which are discovered and described in the study itself applies to the type of relations between concepts that is discovered in the study. If a proposition is developed in theory-building research, it should be demonstrated that the proposition is true in the instances from which scores were obtained internal validity. This implies that the result of a theory-building study is not only one or more new propositions but also an initial test of them within the study.

8.3 Research strategies in theory-building research

We have described how the type of proposition either deterministic or probabilistic determines which research strategy is preferred in theory-testing Chapter 4. However, the reason why we want to design a theory-building study is precisely because we do not yet have any proposition. How could we make a reasoned choice for one specific research strategy? We think that the most important criteria for this choice are efficiency and convenience. Because the only aim of the study is to generate propositions that need to be tested in further studies anyway, it makes sense to keep the theory-building study as simple and cheap in terms of time and costs as possible, i.e. at the minimum level of investment that is necessary to generate some relevant propos- itions or concepts. This is consistent with our preference for exploration in situations in which propositions need to be formulated. Chapter 8