Middle-Range Theory

An idea that is associated with Robert Merton and his Social Theory and Social Structure (1949, 1957, 1968), middle-range theories fall between the working hypotheses of everyday research and unified, general theories of social systems. Merton was critical of the sociological quest for general theories, exemplified by Talcott Parsons's project, because he believed such theories to be too abstract to be empirically testable. However, he did not regard empirical generalizations about the relationship between variables as an adequate alternative. He believed, instead, that sociology should be committed to developing middle-range theories that are both close enough to observed data to ...