Concepts
Development of theory is an essential process of describing facts at higher abstraction level. The generalized idea about a class of objects, attributes, processes or occurrences that have given a name is called concept. Such names are being developed for identification of a phenomenon. They may be considered as empirical realities, for example productivity, leadership, motivation, moral, happiness, inflation banana.
Building block of a theory are concepts. It synopsize realism i.e. concepts can be expressed in letters, signs, symbols and words that advance to various objects or events. However, concepts may vary in degree of abstraction and we can put them in steps (ladder of abstraction), representing its different levels.
As the ladder of abstraction moves up, the basic concept becomes wider in scope, more abstract and less open to measurement. There are two levels where scientific researcher operates i.e. abstract level of concepts and empirical level of variables. Objects or events can be observed at empirical level in which we experience reality. Researchers are concerned with the world of observation or can say reality. We name them for its identification, which referred to an abstract level.
Theorists are those who translate the reality’s conceptualization into abstract ideas. Thus it shows that theory deals with abstraction. Ideas are the essence of theory, not things. Concepts that are in isolation could not be theories. A theory begins to construct if we explain how concepts relate to other concepts.
comment closed