(clicking)
(swoosh)
- Hey everybody, Dr. Guy
and I'm on fire today.
This is my second video that
I've actually recorded today,
this is a good sign,
especially considering
it's so late in the afternoon,
and I'm so excited you're here,
about this, I don't know if you're
as excited about this as
I am that you're here,
about this video, How to
Choose a Theoretical Framework.
A Theoretical Framework
is the key to quickly
finishing your dissertation.
It's the second key actually,
the first key is writing
an amazing, and let me
say it in a different way,
the first key is undertaking
an amazing literature review,
doing a real literature
review, and I have a video
about that at theDissertationMentor.com,
or, excuse me,
and, it's this late,
number two, the second key,
is having an amazing
theoretical framework.
The thing I want you to know most,
is that you can't simply study
what you think you're gonna study,
without a theoretical framework.
You can't.
It would be like me walking
into this room without glasses.
Now I can do that, I'm
gonna bump into things,
but at the same time,
really to focus everything,
to have, to understand
exactly what you're study
is trying to get at,
what's needed is a lens,
and that lens is a theoretical framework.
You're gonna love this
video because chances are,
if you are writing a
dissertation, you have felt lost
from time to time and
you feel like if there's
just some kind of map
that you could go through,
you would understand what you would do.
And this video is a map towards
doing this aspect of your dissertation.
Now if you've not seen my other videos and
you know, you not feeling solid
about your purpose statement,
your problem statement,
your methodology, things like this,
I reckon stopping this video
and going and signing up
for my other videos at
theDissertationMentor.com
or if you're seeing this somewhere else,
look for evidence of
some other videos by me.
And see what's possible,
because there's some other
videos that can benefit you first.
If you don't know me, I'm Dr.
Guy and the number one thing
I like to do with my time
is spend time with my family
and my beautiful bride and
the reason I bring this up
is to say that if you're watching this,
you're probably taking away from life
to work on your dissertation.
And so, it makes me a
little emotional to say that
I feel like you making
any progress on this
is giving you back a
major piece of your life
and so, or allowing you to
move on to the next stage.
So that's why you're here,
is watching this video.
It's gonna be so tempting
to skip something,
to fast forward, and what's
gonna keep you from doing that,
is that if you watch this
video and you follow the steps
that I talk about, you
are gonna make progress
and I'm so happy that you're here.
I can say this because I've
got lots of experience,
I'm not gonna sort it out in ten minutes
but just to say I've worked
on many dissertations
and I know what I'm talking about.
So enjoy.
So step one, what is a
theoretical framework?
You know, in general, a study
looks at something specific,
about a specific person,
organization or locale.
It looks at a specific
thing at a specific place,
within a certain context
at a certain time.
And it's very specific
as you can gather from that sentence.
So, but that's not
enough, it's not enough to
have an amazing purpose statement,
like I just talked about
in one of my other videos.
Really what it's all about
is naming a specific lens
that you will be wearing
while you're undergoing your study.
So an example of this, let's
imagine we're doing a study
where the purpose statement
is something like this,
and this is what a great
purpose statement sounds like,
The purpose of this
qualitative case study is
to examine the leadership
approaches of CEOs in
their first five years
in this position at a
publicly held top-ten
Fortune 500 company in
the United States, or at, held at top-ten
Fortune 500 companies, in
the United States in 2015.
So note how specific that is.
We know the who, we know
the what, we know the where,
and we know the how and we know the when.
And just notice that we can really engage
in the study in a number of ways.
We could, we can engage in the study
through a feminist lens,
now I don't know a lot
about the feminist lens, I haven't used it
in many studies myself,
but to say that I imagine
we're talking about power,
we're talking about dominance,
we're talking about gender
issues of many kinds,
there's many different
frameworks within a feminist
theory, a feminist lens.
But to say that imagine, I
think what the flavor of this
study, if we were studying
through a feminist lens,
like what would be, what would the study,
probably, what would
the results of the study
probably feel like as we were seeing them?
I think about a minority discourse lens
or a Critical Race Theory, you know,
dealing with aggression and
power and white privilege,
think about how that
would change the flavor
of this same study.
It's totally a different lens.
Think about Ken Wilder's
All Quadrants All Levels
(AQAL) lens.
If you don't know what that
is, basically it just is,
it's pretty complicated.
Just say that if there's four ways,
it's actually quite simple actually
if you kinda think of it,
but it's four ways of looking at something
and then it can get more
complex if you wish it to,
but to say that, you
know, if you were looking
at something in four
different ways, you know,
something about the personal, inside me,
the external, outside me, the
outside us, the inside us,
those all have different flavors to them.
So just to say that
whatever lens you do choose,
is gonna have a massive
impact upon what types
of questions or what types
of things you're doing
to collect data and it's
a horrible way for me
to put that, things, things we're doing.
Let me put it this way, let's
say you're doing an interview,
how do you know what questions to ask?
Do you just make them up?
Well the theoretical lens of
your study is gonna probably
help define what you're
asking your participants,
if you're asking your
participants anything.
If you're looking at
data, like just raw data
some like data points
in a table of numbers,
how do you choose which
numbers to look at?
Again, a theoretical framework
defines that for you.
This is a great example.
So I mean we talked about, for example,
you know, let's say
we're doing a study about
looking at the leadership
approaches of CEOs
in the first five years of their work at
Fortune 500 companies, top
ten Fortune 500 companies.
We could choose a theoretical lens like
Bass's Full Range of Leadership Model
and if you don't know the
model it's no problem,
but just to say is that
when we look at something
through that model what
we get, the output of that
is we see three things,
we see three options,
and non-exclusive options
always, kind of varying degrees
of transformational,
transactional and Laissez-Faire
styles of leadership.
So we look through this
study through that lens,
we get narrowed down to some very specific
types of ways of seeing this study.
The results of this study,
the data of this study.
Another example, the same study,
but we are utilizing the
Critical Race Theory,
theoretical framework, and I'm
really oversimplifying here,
but some of the outputs
of that are issues around
the issues of storytelling,
about white privilege and microaggression.
And whether or not you
know what each one of those
mean, it doesn't necessarily
matter at this point,
but just to say that if
you're using this type
of theoretical framework,
notice again the output changes,
it's the same study, but
the output changes depending
on what theoretical framework you use.
Here's a final one.
I mentioned the AQAL theory,
and you know, again, you look at the
I, the it, the we, the
it's things, and quadrants.
Things ...
It's late in the day, right?
The output becomes these
four different things,
so I'm on a roll here guys,
so just to say your theoretical framework,
really defines what the
output is of your study.
So the next step then is to really, truly
engage in a lit review.
Engaging in a lit review is different
than writing a literature review.
If you see my other video
about how to engage in a lit review,
I go with a many different
steps about what it truly
looks like to delve into the
literature and to live there.
And I highly recommend you check that out.
You have to do lots of reading.
Now a bar that I set for
most of my candidates
is that you collect 25 quotes a week,
that is five quotes times five
sources every single week.
So that way, you know,
by the end of 10 weeks,
you have 250 quotes by the end of 20 weeks
you have 500 quotes and by doing that
you're getting deeper into the literature,
you're cataloging what you're getting,
don't go and do that
without first looking at
my instructions about how to do that.
I highly recommend you take
a look at that video first.
But just to say, is that
when you do that for real,
and you have it you
haven't, what you'll do is
you'll start noticing a
certain theoretical frameworks
are being mentioned in the
research and I want you
to pay special attention to that.
Pay attention to the
theoretical frameworks,
the theories that are
mentioned in the literature.
That's such a critical piece
because that will help you
in deciding which theoretical
framework to utilize.
I want you to make a list of those.
I want you to make a list of
all theoretical frameworks
that are mentioned in the literature
as you are studying them.
And I want you to make sure
you write down the dates
for when that study was
conducted, when, sort of,
let's say the study used
Critical Race Theory,
and the study was done in 2004.
But also I want you to
write down the dates
of when that theory originated
and when that theory
perhaps went out of style.
What's the name of the
chief author who is known
for that framework at that point of time.
So you're writing down
some very key information
about the use of that
theoretical framework.
You need to examine the merits of each.
Here are some questions to
help you through that process.
Which one speaks to you?
You know, which theoretic framework
really matches your world view?
Now I guess some caution
on that is that naturally
not every theoretical framework
that any dissertation writer
will select will be
matching their world view,
in fact it's good sometimes to challenge
your world view.
Yet, I do think that you want to choose
a theoretical framework
that you think works,
and specifically it needs
to be, it should be one
that's newer, not one that's dated.
So many theoretical
frameworks that I've mentioned
don't have a modern,
contemporary application.
They don't have an application today.
And that can lead to some problems,
if you write your dissertation based upon
a 30 or 40 year old model,
that framework is 30 or 40 years old,
that can really cause a problem,
you gonna have to rewrite
a significant portion
of your study, because you've used a model
that is simply outdated.
Is it the most widely used one?
It doesn't have to be
the most widely used,
but again, if it's more widely used,
chances are there's more
material that you could
find about this framework
and does it deter
away from the usual ways of looking at
the issue that you're examining?
Sometimes that's a good
thing, sometimes that's not.
And is it visual?
And here's the thing, in my opinion,
if it's not a visual framework,
if it can't be drawn,
don't select it.
And the reason why is because
visual frameworks tend,
at least in my own brain,
to make a lot more sense
than just textual
paragraph form frameworks.
We should be able to see in some way,
how the different parts
relate to one another.
Now there are some great
frameworks out there
that cannot be drawn.
So I don't wanna lump all those in there.
But I do wanna say, try to
find a theoretical framework
that has some kind of
visual component to it.
Flip through the books about it
and you'll see some pictures,
stop there and see what
they're talking about.
You need to choose one.
You need to choose one that
has clearly defined terms,
that has been extensively used,
and by clearly defined
terms, what I mean is,
that when it lists the parts
of that theoretical framework,
you should be able to understand
what each of the parts are.
You wanna choose a
theoretical framework that has
exceedingly well-defined terms.
And what this means is
that it specifically lists
every single piece of the framework.
Let's say for example, like
with Ken Wilber's AQAL Theory,
there are lots of parts
of that theory but,
in the most basic form,
there are four quadrants in
that theoretical framework
and if you look at the literature,
especially Ken Wilber's stuff,
it's extensively defined.
I mean there's no question about
what each of those pieces are.
You wanna select a framework
that has that level
of specificity.
You wanna make sure it's
well-used in research,
that it's not some weird fringe theory
that really doesn't have any
application for your study,
you wanna make sure it
has a drawing component,
like I mentioned.
And really a theoretical
framework can be as complex
as you want it to be so choose well.
Choose one that will yield the results,
the detail that you're looking for,
the one that will help with
that problem statement.
And solve, and that is, fulfill
your purpose statement too.
But you don't wanna select
one that is so complex
that it's simply not doable
or one that's just not complex
at all and frankly is not
gonna allow you to write
the big dissertation that
you're having to write
to finish off this doctorate.
You do wanna select one that
speaks to your world view.
One that you agree with.
One that either challenges
you or one that fits for you.
One of those.
Not one that you're bored about.
Don't select something that bores you.
Select something that is,
that you're passionate about.
And my greatest hope is
that a book has been written
about your theoretical framework.
And the reason for that is that
if a book has been written about it,
it's probably established enough
that it's something usable,
as long as it fits the other requirements
that we've mentioned.
And you can go back of
course in this video
and take a look at those requirements.
You will return to this
video, I have a feeling.
The final step is to buy
and read about five books,
major books on this theoretical framework.
Now if you cannot find five
major books, then chances are
this is not the theoretical
framework for you.
Or at least there should
be five books that at least
mention it and utilize it.
Why books?
A book is a lot more difficult
to publish than a article.
So if a publisher went
out of it's way to publish
something about this,
chances are it's pretty well established.
What I want you to do is
I want you to read through those books
and answer these five questions.
I'm not gonna read
through these questions,
all of them, but just to say is,
you should be able to
define, very clearly,
what this theoretical framework is,
what are its parts, and
you should be able to
communicate that really
clearly and really simply,
to anyone that asks.
That's the basics of getting
a theoretical framework
and I hope this video served you.
Please, if you liked this
video, hit that like button.
If you think that I've gone wrong,
or if you have some questions
that you would like me to answer,
please to leave something
in the comment field.
If an email brought you here,
you can always reply to that email.
But I would love if you could
engage here in the comments
field below so that way we can
get into a conversation about
this topic because I wanna
serve you in any way that I can.
And I hope this video has served you.
I hope you have a great night.
Best wishes.
