Table 1

Four models of causation

Models of causationDefinitionKey readings
1 Intervention theory‘Hypotheses on which people, consciously or unconsciously, build their program plans and actions’.34Weiss.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’.48Durlak 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’.85Pawson.86
Astbury and Leeuw.87
4. Grand theory‘Theory that will explain all the observed uniformities of social behavior, social organization, and social change’.85Merton.85