Page 44 - alligood 8th edition_Neat

CHAPTER 3 Theory Development Process 25

TABLE 3-2 Concepts: Abstract versus degrees of marital conflict in their relationships from
Concrete low to high.

Abstract Concepts Concrete Concepts
Degree of Marital Conflict
Transport Stretcher, wheelchair, 0 120
hospital bed
Cardiovascular disease Stroke, myocardial infarction Low High
Telemetry Electrocardiogram, Holter monitor
Other continuous concepts that may be used to
Loss of relationship Divorce, widowhood classify couples might include amount of communi-
Nurse competency Cultural, nasogastric tube cation, number of shared activities, or number of
placement, medication children. Examples of continuous concepts used to
administration
classify patients are degree of temperature, level of
Data from Chinn & Kramer, 2011; Hage, 1972; Reynolds, 1971 anxiety, or age. Another example is how nurses con-
ceptualize pain as a continuous concept when they
ask patients to rate their pain on a scale from 0 to 10
Theories may be used as a series of nonvariable to better understand their pain threshold or pain
discrete concepts (and subconcepts) to build typolo- experience.
gies. Typologies are systematic arrangements of con-
cepts within a given category. For example, a typology Degree of Pain
on marital status could be partitioned into marital 0 10
statuses in which a population is classified as married,
divorced, widowed, or single. These discrete catego- Low High
ries could be partitioned further to permit the classi-
fication of an additional variable in this typology. A Continuous concepts are not expressed in either/
typology of marital status and gender is shown in or terms but in degrees on a continuum. The use of
Table 3-3. The participants are either one gender or variable concepts on a continuum tends to focus on
the other since there are no degrees of how much they one dimension but does so without assuming that a
are in this discrete category. Taking the illustration single dimension captures all of the reality of the
further, the typology could be partitioned adding the phenomenon. Additional dimensions may be de-
discrete concept of children. Participants would be vised to measure further aspects of the phenome-
classified for gender, marital status, and as having or non. Instruments may measure a concept and have
not having children. subscales that measure discrete concepts related to
A continuous concept, on the other hand, permits the overall concept. Variable concepts such as ratio
classification of dimensions or gradations of a phe- of professional to nonprofessional staff, communica-
nomenon, indicating degree of marital conflict. Mari- tion flow, or ratio of registered nurses to patients,
tal couples may be classified with a range representing is used to characterize health care organizations.
Although nonvariable concepts are useful in classi-
fying phenomena in theory development, Hage
TABLE 3-3 Typology of Marital Status (1972) notes several major breakthroughs in disci-
and Gender plines as the focus shifts from nonvariable to vari-
Marital Status able concepts, because variable concepts permit the
scoring of the phenomenon’s full range of variation.
Participants Single Married Divorced Widowed The development of concepts, then, permits descrip-
Male 15 75 23 6 tion and classification of phenomena (Hage, 1972). The
Female 25 72 41 13 labeled concept specifies boundaries for selecting phe-
nomena to observe and for reasoning about the phenom-
Total 40 147 64 19
ena of interest. New concepts may focus attention on new