Theoretical Framework in the preparation of the Research Report: about its content

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In these final weeks of the year, I have had to teach about the guidelines for preparing a draft of the Research Report, in particular under a quantitative approach and with a documentary research design.

With a view to completing what was indicated in the classes, I published some notes a few days ago, in Spanish you can check it in the link Marco Teórico en un Borrador de Informe de Investigación: Notas sobre su contenido that stays alive and can continue to receive voting thanks to the service of Steem-bounty/forever

Considering that it has utility and that it remains within one of my lines of publication, the one that aims to share material of academic utility, I decided to translate it to give it greater diffusion.


Source of pic


When we work on the preparation of a research report, following the structure that is common to the quantitative approach and that for administrative reasons is often found in different instances, we find an order of its content that corresponds to some extent with the following list of sections:

  • Preliminaries (Cover, Indices, etc.)
  • Introduction
  • Chapters
    • Problem research
    • Theoretical framework
    • Methodological framework
    • Results and Analysis
  • Conclusions
  • References
  • Annexes

In the work, I think that one of the chapters that takes us the most pages to write is that of the Theoretical Framework, but this is justified in that we have to provide the reader with all the indications of the knowledge that we consider necessary so that he can then follow our reasoning and analysis of the results and thus the conclusion we generate is a logical consequence of the work done.

Well, as you read, the contents of this chapter of the work are the product of the approach to the Research Problem and the Research Objectives that were formulated accordingly. This requires a little more explanation, but I prefer to do it in another post, for now I will focus on what corresponds to the content that could be expected in a Theoretical Framework when we are in the Draft phase of the work.

It is clear and easy to understand that the Draft and Final Investigation Report have differences, including what corresponds to their extension, the use of tenses and (especially in our case) in the amount of material written up.

Well, in the Final Report it is expected to have the Theoretical Framework fully written, explained and exemplified as the case is necessary for the reader, but in the draft we work with a schematized content to indicate to our reader what is expected to be developed.

I will take the opportunity to explain a image of the presentation of Cecilia Evangelina Bianciotto (in Spanish) to show how to make a content scheme:


Source

Basically it corresponds to the elaboration of a list of the contents, giving the order in which the ideas will be presented, visually it looks a lot like an index of contents, but in this case it is more about using the different sources and the indentations to mark the subordination or hierarchy of the inmates that we are going to work to give our reader the information he will need to understand the conclusions of our work.

Fine, but is this all that goes into the Draft Theoretical Framework? Well, no!

The schematization of knowledge corresponds only to one part, it happens that it is usually one of the things that less students capture me and I prefer that they see it first. We will now ask in what order are the contents of this chapter of Theoretical Framework:

  • Background
  • Theoretical Bases
  • Legal framework

Background

What we call background refers to research papers or professional research products that are prior to ours and have provided some inspiration or guidance for the performance of the work in progress, that is, everything we consider to have given us indications about the state of knowledge, about its forms of study, the approach to the topic in a concrete reality or guidelines for the implementation of techniques and instruments to study the problem area we are considering.

In this background, we must make clear for each of them a minimum of things:

  • Author
  • Disclosure Date
  • Title
  • Type or level of work or professional product
  • Institution before which the work was presented or the one that supports the contents.
  • Objective set
  • Results achieved
  • Usefulness or meaning you have in our work

In the previous list, the last of the points is not considered mandatory by several authors, but I recommend it to make it clear that no antecedent is used only as filler or to give popularity.

One detail, before they ask you, there is no fixed or predefined amount of research background for a job, they will depend on the area in which you work, the research problem and the objectives that were marked, so you may well having only two or many more (of course, exaggerating with eight or more is not sensible, the time to do the research is not so long)

Theoretical Bases

This is where it is appropriate to present to our reader the outline of the topics and sub-themes that we will then develop in the final delivery.

It should be mentioned that the image that was given before only corresponds to one of the two ways of doing this work:

  • Brief Scheme
  • Extensive Scheme

A content scheme like the one in the previous example can be made and it would be what is designated as a Short Scheme, the titles and sub-titles are simply placed in the order that corresponds according to our specific objectives.

In the Extensive form, the order is followed in any way according to our specific objectives and the titles and subtitles are given, but after each of them a short paragraph is placed explaining which author, theoretical current, school of thought or source goes to be used for further development.

For drafts, I prefer the extensive form, because it allows us to better locate and guide what is being done.

Legal framework

In certain works it is necessary to indicate to our reader the regulatory frameworks of what we are talking about, so, there is a specific section to indicate this. In this section of the chapter we go from the major to minor legal bodies, that is, we follow the order or precedence of the laws to be able to cite them.

In the draft, it is enough to indicate the legal body and the articles in particular that are going to be treated, it will be later in the delivery of the Final Report that it will have to be cited and explain step by step the implications of what we cite.

By way of closing this post

These final words are already part of the expected content, they are simply to thank my readers and readers for the patience in reading a topic that may seem quite arid for people.



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8 comments
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@pedrobrito2004, In my opinion this piece is very effective and Educational one. Your Experience and your Knowledge is producing value. Stay blessed.

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Thanks for the comment and the words of support.

Well, as is my work area, I usually have enough notes on these topics, so I suppose that in the future I will continue to share on these topics.

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Hi, @pedrobrito2004.

You reminded me when I did my degree thesis to become an engineer. I remember that my classmates had their theses that reached 400 pages and mine scarcely 60.

One of the most annoying parts was to comply with the visual aspect: font size (content, title, quotes, footnotes), spacing, centimeters to the right, left, up and down. Wow, an odyssey. Nowadays it is very simple with the use of word processing software.

The most chaotic thing about all this is that generally, the theoretical and methodological framework was totally subjective and subject to the institution where you studied. In other words, it depended on where you studied the way in which a thesis was developed. The one I liked the most was the one explained by UPEL (the pedagogic), I'm sure you know it very well.

By the way, I didn't know there was a Steem-bounty/forever (sounds awesome!).

Thanks for sharing, professor :D

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Hello, it is true that the formatting rules for diagramming and layout of the contents of a work are quite diverse, ultimately depending on the peculiarities of the educational institution.

I know the methodology material of the UPEL (Venezuela) and seriously that it was one of the ones that served me most in the old 90s to give meaning and order to the methodology classes.

I see what you say about the number of pages in a job and it is true, sometimes "Large number of pages" is confused with good content quality, but that is not always the case, after all, the economy of language is a of the virtues of scientific language. Everything must be made clear, but trying to use the minimum amount of words.

The FOREVER reward seemed like a good idea, I found out about it almost by chance, it seems to me that it is designed for those posts that are of type manuals, tutorials or other things that do not lose their usefulness or value in just 7 days, so it would be worth keeping the possibility of collecting reward and support beyond that limit, I suggest you try it to see.

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