Psychological theories

Psychological theories play a vitally important role in guiding research and organizing and making sense of research findings. In spite of the great importance of theory-building and theory testing to the field of psychology, there is no generally accepted conception of what a theory is. Because your dissertation must contribute to psychological theory, you must have a clear understanding of the variety of conceptions of theory, types of theories, and ways of contributing to theory and be able to justify how, exactly, your dissertation study contributes to theory.

Important, ‘different views’ does not mean different authors with different definitions who generally agree on what a theory is (these would have the same ‘view’ although use different words to define). Different views does not mean three different theories, which is another common mistake.  Do not describe different theories; describe different views on what constitutes a theory. It is very different.  And make sure that every point asked for is there, I check carefully.   Another common mistake is giving the relationship between research and practice for Essay 2, instead of theory and practice.  As you can see, all these mistakes can be avoided with careful reading and frequent reading of the questions.