Models of causation | Definition | Key readings |
1 Intervention theory | ‘Hypotheses on which people, consciously or unconsciously, build their program plans and actions’.34 | Weiss.83 Chen.59 |
2. Framework | ‘A structure, overview, outline, system or plan consisting of various descriptive categories; it describes empirical phenomena by fitting them into a set of categories without providing explanations for them’.48 | Durlak and DuPre.84 Nilsen.48 |
3. Middle-range theory | "Theories that lie between the minor but necessary working hypotheses that evolve in abundance during day-to-day research and the all-inclusive systematic efforts to develop a unified theory’.85 | Pawson.86 Astbury and Leeuw.87 |
4. Grand theory | ‘Theory that will explain all the observed uniformities of social behavior, social organization, and social change’.85 | Merton.85 |