Welcome everybody. If you've watched the previous video, then you already know how to develop concepts based on a literature review. In this video you will use the concepts in order to develop a conceptual framework. This is the next step in turning your research question into a full fledged research proposal. Before we start, please make sure that you have got a pencil and paper at hand. As I will challenge you to make some drawings yourself. Please pause the video if you need to gather these items. So let's get started. By the end of this video, you will be able to explain what a conceptual framework is, explain why a conceptual framework is useful and develop your own conceptual framework. I will first offer a bit of theory and then two examples. Let me start by explaining what a conceptual framework is. In a conceptual framework, and some call it a conceptual model, the interrelations between concepts are visualized in a simplified and structured representation of reality. Hence this is not reality. It selects only a few aspects, some concepts relations and their context. Why is the conceptual framework useful? Practically, a conceptual framework shows the major relationships of the concepts that you want to study. This demarcates your research, setting a boundary of what you will study. The conceptual framework is the linking pin between your literature review and conceptualization on the one hand and the empirical research on the other hand. It is your guide in doing the empirical study. This part of the research is really very important. Let's have a look at an example which I have already presented in the previous video. The research question is as follows. How does community participation affect the outcomes of infrastructure and housing upgrading projects in cities of Vietnam and to what extent does government capacity serve as a precondition to reach high quality community participation? Do you recall the research question? It introduces three main concepts. Community participation, outcomes of infrastructure and housing upgrading projects and the third one government capacity. What relations does the researcher expected to find between the concepts? As you have correctly noted the researcher expects to find two relationships. First, he expects that community participation affects the outcomes of projects in the fields of infrastructure and housing. Second, he expects that government capacity just as a precondition for high quality community participation. Now I'm going to ask you to draw the relations between these concepts. You can use arrows, lines, boxes and different types of shades. Use your imagination in creating your own visualization. Please remember, it should be simple and structured indicating just these three concepts, their relations and their context. You may use words to describe the relations. It's an exercise for yourself. You don't have to submit it and I can give you the following advice. First, please box the concepts. Second, use different types of arrows for different types of relations. You can use a full lined arrow connector for a strong relationship, a dashed arrow connector for a weak relationship and a double arrow connector for a reciprocal relationship. Third, indicate context in which your research takes place. Now, grab your pencil and paper, press pause, draw the conceptual framework and press start when you are done. Did you manage to draw a conceptual framework? Did you use all the concept? Were you're able to link them to each other? Did you indicate the context? Well done. Now let's compare your work to the work of the researcher and here it is. You can read this figure as follows. The researcher expects that community participation influences the outcomes of infrastructure and housing upgrading projects. In cities of Vietnam, with the support of local government capacity, community participation is what we call an independent variable. This variable is supported by the precondition variable of local government capacity and its capacity in local government, it lays the foundation for community participation. It influences the nature of community participation and also has an impact on the success of participation on projects. Let me highlight a couple of things. In the first place, you can see that the researcher boxes the main concepts. Also, the researcher uses a dashed line to indicate the relationships influence and a thick arrow to indicate the relationship affecting. This shows that the researcher expects an indirect effect of local government capacity onto outcomes. I will explain these basic causal relations later. Additionally, the researcher describes the contexts of the research as an encompassing box. Are there differences with the conceptual framework that you have drawn? That's very likely and it doesn't matter that there are many different ways of drawing a conceptual framework. For your own research, you may in fact consider using a framework developed by another author but be aware, always use proper referencing. Just using it without referencing is plagiarism and that's not allowed. Now, let's have a look at an example based on my own research. In this study, I tried to identify to what extent local and global knowledge networks explain the innovation of small firms in Yogyakarta in Indonesia. This causal relationship is likely because firms with more knowledge networks they are likely to have better access to knowledge. As you can see, the slide indicates my research question, my main theories, the concepts and the context. Please, pause the video and try to draw a conceptual framework once again. Good luck. I hope you succeeded. Well now, let's have a look at the conceptual framework that I have used. Based on theory, I learned that other schoolers expect that the networks of firms they only result in innovations if firms also have enough competencies. I also learned from a literature review that firm competences they are likely to affect innovation but this effect differs depending on the size of the firm. As you may see, my conceptual framework includes three different types of causal effects. The first is a direct effect which occurs when we expect that the cause influence a certain outcome without any interference. I may for instance expect that richer people are happier and the direct effect is visualized by a straight arrow. Second, there might be a moderating effect which happens when a variable affects the direction or strength of a relationship between an independent and the dependent variable. For instance, richer people they tend to be happier but this effect may differ between men and women. Third, there may be a mediating effect which takes place when a third variable intervenes in the causal relationship between an independent and a dependent variable. For instance, one may argue that richer people they have better houses and better houses in turn makes them happier. The mediating variable is then the quality of housing. Let's do a small exercise to identify the causal relationships in my conceptual framework. Well done. You are now able to identify direct effects, moderating effects and mediating effects. With this exercise we come to the end of this session. What have you learned? You've learned what a conceptual framework is, why it is important and you've learned how to develop one for your own research. The next step towards a full fledged research proposal is operationalization and measurements and this will be discussed in the next video. This is the end of the third step in the research cycle to design of a conceptual framework. Well done and thank you for watching.
