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Theory Building, Enriching, and Fact Gathering: Alternative Purposes of Psychotherapy Research

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Psychotherapy Research

Abstract

In this chapter, I draw distinctions among three classes of research purposes: theory building, enriching, and fact gathering. Theory-building research seeks to test, improve, and extend a particular theory. Enriching research seeks to deepen and enrich people’s appreciation or understanding of a phenomenon. Fact-gathering research seeks to discover facts without explicitly focusing on a unified theory or systematically unpacking the meanings in a phenomenon. Insofar as the distinction concerns the purposes of research, not the methods, any method may be used to advance any of the purposes.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Despite its name, grounded theory research (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Levitt 2015) seldom seems to be theory building in the sense I’m using the term. This point is addressed in Sect. 8.3.2.

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Acknowledgment

I thank Mehdi Farshbaf, Claudia Meystre, Katerine Osatuke, David Rennie, and the Qualitative Research Group at Miami University for comments on drafts of this chapter.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Miami University, Oxford, OH, 45056, USA

    William B. Stiles

  2. Department of Psychology, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC, 28608, USA

    William B. Stiles

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  1. University of Salento, Lecce, Italy, and Sigmund Freud University, Vienna, Austria

    Omar C.G. Gelo

  2. Sigmund Freud University, Vienna, Austria

    Alfred Pritz

  3. Sigmund Freud University, Vienna, Austria

    Bernd Rieken

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Stiles, W.B. (2015). Theory Building, Enriching, and Fact Gathering: Alternative Purposes of Psychotherapy Research. In: Gelo, O., Pritz, A., Rieken, B. (eds) Psychotherapy Research. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-1382-0_8

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