Design of a Conceptual System
Design of a Conceptual System
A conceptual system provides structure for organizing multiple ideas into meaningful wholes. From my initial set of ideas in 1968 and 1971, my conceptual framework was refined to show some unity and relationships among the concepts. The conceptual system consists of individual systems, interpersonal systems, and social systems and concepts that are important for understanding the interactions within and between the systems (Fig. 9-1).
The next step in this process was to review the research literature in the discipline in which the concepts had been studied. For example, the concept of perception has been studied in psychology for many years. The literature indicated that most of the early studies dealt with sensory perception. Around the 1950s, psychologists began to study interpersonal perception, which related to my ideas about interactions. From this research literature, I identified the characteristics of perception and defined the concept for my framework. I continued searching literature for knowledge of each of the concepts in my framework. An update on my conceptual system was published in 1995 (King, 1995).
