CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS IN RESEARCH

This chapter begins with a discussion of what constitutes a conceptual framework. After establishing a working sense of what a conceptual framework is and a beginning roadmap of its uses, we focus on what it does—or, more precisely, what you do with it. Following this, we discuss how to construct a conceptual framework and provide recommended practices to help you develop one. We also include an example conceptual framework memo that details how a researcher describes their conceptual framework.

What Is a Conceptual Framework?

Conceptual frameworks have historically been a somewhat confusing aspect of quali- tative research design.

Relatively little has been written about them, and various terms,  including conceptual framework, theoretical framework, theory, idea context, logic model, and concept maps, are used somewhat interchangeably and often in unclear ways...Read more