Middle-Range Theory

Conceptual Overview and Discussion

Merton's functionalist paradigm for analysis is a guide for researchers on how to create a middle-range theory. Data collection and analysis can be either quantitative or qualitative, but Merton is mainly concerned with qualitative analysis. He postulates two types of theory: a substantive theory of specific empirical contexts (i.e., deviance), and the formal theory of social structure and processes (i.e., functionalism). The first step in any research involves empirical observations that are then systematized according to a descriptive protocol that has five steps: locate participants within a pattern of structured social relationships; consider the possible alternatives to this observed pattern (i.e., identify what is excluded from the pattern); recognize participants' emotional and cognitive meanings; [Page 560]distinguish objective behaviors from motivations; and discover obvious behavior patterns that were overlooked by participants. The systematized descriptions were then further systematized by way of the functionalist paradigm for analysis.

Merton's analytic paradigm is relatively more complex than the descriptive protocol. The paradigm specifies the main concepts, procedures, and inferences that researchers are to take into consideration when transforming the organized descriptive data into either formal or middle-range theory. There are 11 of these:

• Item(s) to which functions are imputed. This involves conceptualizing social behavior patterns such as social roles, institutional patterns, social processes, cultural patterns, culturally patterned emotion, social norms, group organization, social structure, and devices for social control, among many possible others.
• Concepts of subjective dispositions. These involve conceptually identifying the emotional and cognitive motives and dispositions, as distinct from their objective consequences, that are imputed by participants within a particular social system.
• Concepts of objective consequences. These are the core concepts of functions and dysfunctions. Functions are observed consequences of social items that facilitate the adaptation or adjustment of a given social or cultural system. Dysfunctions hinder system adaptation and adjustment. Nonfunctions are irrelevant to the system. Merton stresses that functions, dysfunctions, and nonfunctions may also be manifest, coinciding with the intended and recognized aims of the system, or latent, which are neither intended nor recognized.
• Concepts of the unit subserved by the function. This involves consideration of how functional consequences affect a range of individuals, groups, and society as a whole.
• Concepts of functional requirements. This involves conceptual specification of the universal or specific functional requirements that satisfy prerequisites for a particular system's survival.
• Concepts of the mechanisms through which functions are fulfilled. This involves application of concepts that describe concrete social and psychological mechanisms operating to perform a given function, and includes such things as role segmentation, hierarchic ordering of values, social division of labor, rituals, and ceremonial enactments.
• Concepts of functional alternatives. In order to avoid the problem of imputing indispensability to a particular function it is necessary to conceptualize possible alternative, equivalent, or substitutive functions that any item in the system may also fulfill.
• Concepts of structural context. This involves specifying how social items within the entire system are functionally interdependent.
• Concepts of dynamics and change. This involves recognizing functions that do not contribute to system adaptation or maintenance.
• Problems of validation of functional analysis. This requires the clear specification of the procedures of analysis and further elaboration through comparative analyses.
• Problems of the ideological implications of functional analysis. This requires that the analysts recognize and question their ideological biases.

The purpose of the paradigm is to provide a codification guide and minimal set of organizing concepts to generate a middle-range theory that fits with the assumptions of and can be integrated into the postulates of a formal theory. For Merton, middle-range theory must contribute to formal theory.

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