A Criterial Framework for Concept Evaluation in Social Practice and Scholarship

Peter C. Howie and Richard G. Bagnall

Sociological Methods & Research, 2020, vol. 49, issue 3, 719-741

Abstract: This article responds to the argued lack of clearly articulated, consistent, and agreed criteria that might be used by researchers for determining the adequacy of a given concept for a given task. It does so by describing the development of a framework of such criteria, presenting that framework, and illustratively applying it to the evaluation of the concept of warm-up in psychodrama. The framework comprises eight criteria in three categories: the intrinsic qualities of a concept (the criteria of clarity, comprehensiveness, parsimony, and resonance), the contextualization of a concept (differentiation and connectedness), and its application (epistemic utility and practical utility). Using the framework to evaluate the concept of warm-up in the context of its use in psychodrama suggests its potential to make significant differentiations. It is argued that this framework may contribute to evaluating other concepts in other contexts, although the extent of such generalizability remains to be ascertained.

Keywords: concepts; criterial framework; reconceptualization; terms; conceptual adequacy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0049124118769104 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:somere:v:49:y:2020:i:3:p:719-741

DOI: 10.1177/0049124118769104

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Sociological Methods & Research
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().