Characteristics Of A Good Theory Analysis

For this section, students were asked to discuss the characteristics of a good theory followed by our own definition of what a theory is. The specific characteristics that students were asked to focus on were: uniqueness, parsimony, generalizability, fecundity, internal consistency, validity, reliability, empirical riskiness, falsifiability, and abstraction. Several of the characteristics are self-explanatory, however, I will go over each of them and provide an example. According to Schmalleger (2012), a theory is a propositional statement that expresses the relationship of two or more concepts (p.13). In our reading this week, students learned that theories can either be macro or micro. By macro, the theory can explain crime, for instance, …show more content…
A theory must be able to explain the relationship between variables in a simplistic form. If a researcher can explain the relationship in a logical manner for one to better understand the relationship and then operationalize it to demonstrate the referenced relationship, the stronger the theory becomes. Validity and reliability are intertwined with one another. Validity is described as the degree to which a research study measures what it intends to measure (Wacker, 1998, p.365). More so, validity is an equivalent to accuracy. Reliability in research is where the assessment tool utilized produces stable and reliable results. For example, if a researcher conducted the same test, more than once over a period of time, producing the same results, the reliability of the results are intact, as well as, the validity of the …show more content…
According Wacker (1998), a good theory must be able to be refuted. For example, if there are two theories in competition with one another, the theory that predicts the unlikely event would be considered to be the superior theory. As described in our “attend” section for this week, it took over 100 years for people to believe that the planetary movements were not of the earth but the sun. “Most academics believe that empirical tests of theory should be risky so that there is a good chance of the theory being refuted” (Wacker, 1998, p.366). For a researcher to present a good theory, is must possess abstraction. Abstraction in its simplest terms means that it is independent of time and space. Wacker (1998) states that abstraction is classified into three levels, which are low, middle and high. These levels build upon one another formulating what Wacker (1998) calls ladder-climbing (p.367). Abstraction allows criminological research to build upon existing theories thus progressing the research to a new level utilizing operations