The Conceptual and Theoretical Framework
The framework is not a chapter you write because the template has a slot for it. It is the instrument that decides what you read, what you ask in data gathering, and what your findings can be attached to at the end.
Concepts are the building blocks of theory
The supplied teaching source treats the framework as a construction problem rather than a writing task. Its whole account fits in one passage, and almost every sentence in that passage is doing work.
"The big words in a sentence" is a plainer instruction than it first appears. Take the sentence in which you state your research question, strike out everything doing grammatical rather than intellectual work, and what survives is your concept set.
The claim that each concept contains a great deal of meaning is why this matters at master's level. A concept such as capability, engagement or handover is not a word whose meaning is settled. It carries competing definitions, a disciplinary home and an industry usage that may not match either.
That is also why the source describes theory as being created through concepts that are aligned with other concepts. A single concept asserts nothing. Two concepts placed in a stated relationship are a proposition, and a proposition is something the literature can support or unsettle.
Three terms, and what the source does and does not settle
- Concept
- "Key ideas, key words, often the big words in a sentence, a paragraph, in an idea." The source adds that each concept contains a great deal of meaning, and that every discipline and every theory is made up of concepts.
- Conceptual framework
- Not defined anywhere in the supplied material. The source refers to it as something already explored and used, and states only that the key concepts within it direct your search for literature and your reading.
- Theoretical framework
- "Contains the literature review... a discussion, or a review, of the literature in the area of the research project." It is designed by the researcher and it emerges from the conceptual framework.
The direction of travel: concepts first, literature second
The order the source sets out is explicit, and it is the reverse of how most first attempts proceed. Key concepts direct the search for literature; the theoretical framework is then constructed out of what that search returns.
- Research question
- Key concepts
- Conceptual framework
- Literature search and reading
- Theoretical framework
- Questions for data gathering
Read the chain backwards and a common failure explains itself. A researcher who begins by collecting literature has no filter, because the filter is the concept set. Everything looks relevant, the reading pile grows, and the eventual chapter is a summary of what was read rather than a structure built for a purpose.
It is also why the source says the framework is designed. Nothing about it is automatic. You decide which concepts to carry, how they are aligned, and therefore what the resulting structure asserts about the field.
The search-and-reading routine that sits in the middle of the chain — sourcing and scanning, downloading and saving, annotating, writing daily, dating drafts and backing up — is covered separately in Step 3: Checking the Literature. This page deals with what that routine is for.
The seven things the framework does for your project
The source lists seven functions and elaborates on none of them. Reproduced below with what each one commits you to, they stop reading like a list of virtues and start reading like a specification.
THE SEVEN FUNCTIONS THE SOURCE ATTRIBUTES TO THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
| Function, in the source's words | What it commits you to | Where a reader sees it |
|---|---|---|
| Provide the structure for your research project | Deciding which concepts organise the study and in what order they are introduced | The order of the framework's sections, and the shape of the argument that follows |
| Establish your expertise in this area | Reading enough to tell a significant work from a marginal one, and showing that you can | Coverage, currency, and the confidence of the commentary on each source |
| Detail the current state of knowledge in the area | Reporting what the field currently holds, not what you hoped it held | A defensible account of the field as it stood when you wrote |
| Highlight what is known and highlight any gaps in what is known | Naming the gap your project addresses in terms a reader could go and check | The justification for the study, and the hinge between framework and question |
| Detail the theory from which the research has emerged | Attributing your starting position to identifiable published work rather than to intuition | The theory your question inherits, cited |
| Outline the theory to which your research will ultimately contribute | Committing in advance to where the findings will be attached at the end | The target your conclusions have to reach |
| Guide the research in terms of data gathering | Deriving the questions you will actually ask from the reading you have done | Traceability from a claim in the literature to an interview question or survey item |
Column one is the source's list, reproduced in full and in its own order. Columns two and three are synthesis added here; the source states the seven functions without elaborating on any of them.
Functions four and six are a matched pair and should be written as one. The gap you name is the promise you make; the theory you will contribute to is where you will redeem it. A framework that identifies a gap and never says what a finding would add to is only half built.
Function seven is the operational one, and the source states it twice. "Your review of the literature gives you material from which you develop questions to ask in data gathering." If nothing you plan to ask can be traced back to something you read, the framework and the fieldwork have been designed independently of each other.
Extracting a concept set from your own question
The source states the principle and stops. The procedure below is a way of acting on it; it is not the source's, and you should attribute it as your own method if you use it.
Six passes from question to concept set
Write the question in one sentence
The source's own instruction at the question stage. A concept set cannot be extracted from a paragraph of intent. See Step 4: Deciding Your Research Question.
Strike out the connective tissue
Remove articles, qualifiers and verbs of relation. What remains are the candidate concepts — the big words the source refers to. Expect three or four, not ten.
Expand each concept
Write a short paragraph on what the concept carries: its competing meanings, the discipline that owns it, and the way your industry uses it. This is the source's "great deal of meaning" made explicit rather than assumed.
Align the concepts
State the relationship your question assumes between them. The source holds that concepts aligned with other concepts are the means through which theory is created, so the alignment statement is your theory in embryo.
Convert each concept into search terms
Include synonyms and the terms neighbouring disciplines use for the same idea. Key concepts direct your search for literature and your reading — that direction only works if the concepts have been translated into vocabulary.
Revise the set after the first reading pass
Reading changes which concepts matter. The source treats the topic as something that evolves as you discover more; the concept set evolves with it, and each version should be dated.
A worked concept extraction
Take the question: how does distributed team membership affect knowledge transfer on engineering projects? Strike out the connective tissue and three concepts survive: distributed team membership, knowledge transfer, engineering projects.
ONE QUESTION, THREE CONCEPTS, AND WHAT EACH ONE OPENS
| Concept | The meaning it carries | What it has to be pinned down to |
|---|---|---|
| Distributed team membership | Covers everything from a team split across two offices to a team whose members have never met. The relevant work sits in organisational behaviour, information systems and project management, and each uses a different vocabulary for it. | A stated definition and a threshold: what counts as distributed for this study, and what does not |
| Knowledge transfer | Carries at least two distinct meanings — the movement of documented information, and the movement of tacit, undocumented know-how. A study of one is not evidence about the other. | Which of the two the study is about, and what would count as a transfer having occurred |
| Engineering projects | Scopes the study and fixes the population, which the source requires every step of the research to be appropriate to. | A sector, a project type and a size band, or the findings cannot be located by anyone reading them |
The columns are an application of the source's statement that each concept contains a great deal of meaning. The content of the rows is illustrative.
The alignment statement for that set — the theory in embryo — might read: distributed membership imposes a cost on tacit knowledge transfer that documented transfer does not compensate for. Notice what has happened. The question was neutral; the alignment is a proposition, and the proposition is the thing the literature will either support or unsettle.
Notice also how much design has been fixed before a single article has been downloaded. The unit of analysis is the team, the outcome of interest is tacit transfer, and the population is bounded. Scoping work of this kind is developed further in Narrowing and Scoping a Research Topic.
Theoretical framework is not theoretical perspective
The supplied material uses two similar phrases for two different objects and never places them side by side. It is worth getting right, because a reader who knows the difference will notice.
Theoretical framework
- The literature review — a discussion or review of the literature in the area of the research project
- Designed by the researcher; emerges from the conceptual framework
- Built out of concepts and the studies that use them
- Answers: what does the field already hold, and where is the gap?
Theoretical perspective
- "The philosophical framework informing the methodology"
- One of the five basic elements of a research project
- Carries the embedded ontological and epistemological assumptions
- Answers: from what philosophical position is this knowledge being made?
One further terminological point. The supplied source treats the theoretical framework and the literature review as the same object — "the theoretical framework, or literature review". Some texts separate them, using the framework for the theory you have selected and the review for the survey of studies around it. If the text you are following makes that separation, follow it and state which convention you have adopted.
Testing the framework before you write the chapter
The seven functions make a serviceable audit. Run it while the framework is still a set of notes, when changing the concept set is cheap.
The seven-function audit
- Every concept in your research question appears in the framework and is defined there
- The alignment between the concepts is stated, not left for the reader to infer
- The account of the field is current, and you can say how current
- The gap is named in terms a reader could go and check for themselves
- The theory the research emerged from is attributed to identifiable published work
- The theory the research will contribute to is named before any data is collected
- At least some of your data-gathering questions trace back to a specific claim in the literature
- Nothing is in the chapter only because you happened to read it
What happens to the framework at the end of the project is the other half of its purpose. The analysed data is tested against the theory in the literature review, and the findings are knitted into the body of knowledge; see Steps 7-8: Conducting the Research and Theorising the Data.
A second, incompatible definition
What to carry forward
- Concepts are the building blocks of theory. Extract them from the one-sentence question before you start reading.
- The theoretical framework emerges from the conceptual framework, not the other way round — even though the source's own seven-stage model puts them in the opposite order.
- Each concept contains a great deal of meaning. Pin down which meaning you are using, and say so in writing.
- Aligning two concepts turns a topic into a proposition. That proposition is what your literature has to engage with.
- Use the seven functions as an audit, especially the pair that names a gap and names the theory you will contribute to.
- Keep the theoretical framework and the theoretical perspective distinct; the source uses similar words for different things.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between the conceptual framework and the theoretical framework?
In the supplied source the theoretical framework is the literature review — a discussion of the literature in the area of the research project — and it emerges from the conceptual framework, which is the set of key concepts you are working with. The concepts direct your search for literature and your reading; the framework is what you build from what that search returns. The source never defines the conceptual framework itself, which is a genuine gap in the material.
How many concepts should my conceptual framework contain?
The source gives no number. In practice, striking the connective tissue out of a one-sentence research question usually leaves three or four concepts, and a set much larger than that is a sign the question is still carrying more than one project.
Is the theoretical framework the same as the literature review?
The supplied source says yes: it refers to "the theoretical framework, or literature review". Some methods texts separate them, treating the framework as the theory you have selected and the review as the survey of studies around it. Either convention is workable; state which one you are using so a reader knows what to expect in each section.
Do I have to name the theory my research will contribute to before I collect data?
The source lists "outline the theory to which your research will ultimately contribute" as one of the seven things you do in creating the theoretical framework, so yes — it belongs in the framework, which precedes collection. It also makes the analysis stage tractable, because theorising the data means establishing how your findings fit the theory in the field.
My concepts changed once I started reading. Is that a problem?
No. The source treats the topic as something that evolves as you discover more, and describes the research process as ever-changing rather than a fixed set of steps. Date each version of the concept set so the drift is visible and deliberate rather than silent.
References and source attribution
- O'Leary, Z. 2017, The Essential Guide to Doing Your Research Project, 3rd ed., Sage Publications, London.
- Naoum, S. G. 2013, Dissertation Research & Writing for Construction Students, 3rd ed., Routledge.
- Bryman, A. 2016, Social Research Methods, 5th ed., Oxford University Press, Oxford.
- The supplied teaching source: consolidated weekly teaching notes and slide material on developing a research topic, used here as the basis for all statements attributed to "the source".
Suggested questions for Ask KEVOS
- Extract the key concepts from my research question and tell me what each one has to be pinned down to.
- Turn my concept set into a search vocabulary, including the terms other disciplines use.
- Write an alignment statement that turns my concepts into a testable proposition.
- Audit my draft framework against the source's seven functions.
- What is the difference between my theoretical framework and my theoretical perspective, and where does each belong in the document?