In general, there is more to say as to what theory is
not than what theory actually is, but to keep it brief I'll talk about
five categories mentioned in the texts.
What theory is not:
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Referencing existing theories is not the same as explaining the logic that they contain. So only referring to others work is not theory. It happens very easily that one tries to cover the lack of theory up with more and more citations of others without explaining the logic behind it. One has to try to discuss the logical arguments why these theories led to the author's predictions.
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Data are not theory. Data describe which
empirical patterns were observed, and the theory would explain why they were observed. There has to be a
logical reasoning behind the data.
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Lists of variables or constructs. Although they might be an important part of the theory, they do not alone constitute theory. A theory also explains the relation between the two, and why they come about.
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Diagrams. Even though diagrams can be important in the sense that they represent data/findings, but they rarely constitute theory.
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Hypothesis. An important part of a conceptual argument, but does not contain logical arguments about why empirical expectations occur.
Hypothesis link theory and data.
What theory is:
Developing theory is what academic researchers are meant to do. Looking in a dictionary you can find meanings such as: 'a mental view' or 'contemplation', a 'conception or mental scheme of something to be done, or the method of doing it; a systematic statement of rules or principles to be followed', or a 'a mere hypothesis, speculation, conjecture'. Theories in science are universal statements that are meant to encapsulate what we call 'the world'.
When talking about what theory actually is, you usually see five different types of theory, namely;
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Analysis, says what is.
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Explanation, says what is, how, why, when, and where.
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Prediction, says what is and what will be.
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Explanation and prediction, says what is, how, why, when, where, and what will be.
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Design and action, says how to do something.
Journal:
The journal I chose is called "
IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting" and had an impact factor of
1.825.
The article from that journal that I chose was "
Quality Assessment Considering ViewingDistance and Image Resolution"
(Gu, Liu, Zhai,
Yang, & Zhang, 2015).
The journal covers broadcasting technology, which is very much media technology. Its papers subjects are for example; bioengineering, communicationm networking and broadcasting, computing and processing, and more.
As for the article;
The main goal of the article was to investigate the problem of the influence that viewing distance and image quality has on IQA (Image Quality Assessment). They wanted to design a new optimal scale selection (OSS) model.
To summarize the paper, what they acheived was; they indroduced a new dedicated viewing distance-changed image database. They developed an OSS model that dealt with the initial problem and they compared it with a large set of IQA approaches.
I'm not sure how I'm going about doing this, but...
Looking at the types of
theories mentioned above, and looking in the introductionary section of the paper; They make lot of
references to back-up their claims, and also use them to explain what they are trying to do. They do not
predict an outcome of their investigation, so I would personally say that the type of theory it falls under is type 2;
explanation.
For the actual investigation, and method, it would rather fall under typ 5;
design and action. That because they aim to
design a model to solve the initial problem they present.
A limitation on choosing explanation is the lack of
prediction I guess. What does the author think will come out of the investigation? To compare the prediction with the end result can sometimes be interesting. The contrast that is to say. It's benefitial in the sense that it gives a lot of room for references, data, hypothesis, and so on to go in-depth on details about concepts and such regarding the theory surrounding the subject of the paper.
I might have gotten this all wrong, but I guess that's ok since I might get it all cleared out on the post Theme 3 reflection.
