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Mastering the Art of Concept Formation: A Guide to Understanding and Defining Concepts

Understand the essence of concepts, their importance in research, and the pitfalls to avoid. Explore Sartori's rules, common mistakes, and engage in group work to define and analyze various concepts.

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Mastering the Art of Concept Formation: A Guide to Understanding and Defining Concepts

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  1. The art of concept formation

  2. As we are … prisoners of the words we pick, we had better pick them well Giovanni Sartori

  3. What is a concept? • Definition: „‚thebasicunitofthinking‘, such that ‚wehave a conceptof A (orof A-ness) whenweareabletodistinguish A fromwhateveris not A‘“ (Mair 2009: 179) • Conceptsconsistof (Gerring 1999: 357-8) • Extension (referents, denotation): casestobedefined • Intension (definition, connotation): attributesdefiningthesecases • Label

  4. What do we need concepts for? • Link the real world with the world of language • Help us to communicate • Help us categorise and to understand the world around us • Help us to see whether like is compared with like • Defining one‘ s concepts is therefore an essential part of the research process

  5. Concepts and the Research Process • Where is concept formation situated? • At at the very beginning (especially in quantitative studies) • First „what is?“ or „of what is this an instance?“ before „how much?“ • But: concept formation is a constant process • especially In qualitative research (with aim to sharpen concepts) (retroduction) • Within the research community in general: concepts are constantly defined and redefined

  6. Concepts are …(Hoover/Donovan 2008: 15) • … tentative (potentially contested) • … based on agreement • „… useful only to the degree that they capture or isolate some signficant and definable item in reality“

  7. Whataretheproblemsof non- orill-definedconcepts? • In general • Bad labelling (label already in use, ambiguous, offensive etc.) • Extension too wide (concept not meaningful any more, does not distinguish, remains ambiguous) • Definition to narrow (limit ourselves in what we can talk about, investigate) • No clear definition (ambiguity)

  8. Common mistakes with concept formation in term papers • No concept definition at all. No debate about what this study is about • Many concept definitions without priority. „There are many definitions to be found, so we cannot really define this“ • One concept definition, yet not used. Quoting some (lexicon) definition in your „theory“ section, but then disregard what it says

  9. Sartori‘s ladder of abstraction

  10. (Sartori‘s) Rules of Concept Formation • Analyse casesonlyaspartof a wider classofcases (whatisthis a caseof?) • Compareonlywithinclasses (ofcases) • Ifcases do not shareoneclass → moveuptheladderofabstraction • Ifresultsaremeaningles/toogeneral → move down theladderofabstraction • Balloonimage (Mair) • Fordetailedlook: heavy basket (fullofproperties) • foroverview: throwproperties out ofthebasket

  11. Group Work • Discuss the concepts of • Americanization • „queuing“ • Football • Scottish identity • How would you define the concept ? (intension) • What different forms/types /cases exist ? (extension) • What is the concept part of? (Move up the ladder of abstraction) • What can it be compared with (members of the same class)

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