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Thanks for the summaries Geoff - really valuable! james James Lamerton General Manager Sunshine Coast Division of General Practice 07 5456 8802 (direct) 07 54568899 (f) 0407 112369 Not everything that can be counted counts: not everything that counts can be counted. NEW! The SCDGP Health Training Online team is now offering: • Certificate IV in Health Administration • Diploma of Practice Management Check out our website for course and enrolment information www.healthtrainingonline.com.au -----Original Message----- From: Realist and Meta-narrative Evidence Synthesis: Evolving Standards [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Geoff Wong Sent: Thursday, 15 December 2011 9:37 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Interim summary - Having a ponder about the definition of "theory" This thread starts off with a question about when social theories become ‘laws’. Contributors questioned the very nature of what a ‘law’ is and its function and posited that even laws might be contingent and transient. For the realist, it was argued that ‘laws’ don’t exist as generative mechanisms, “…contingent and interactive, they're not only dependent on the context, they also operate differently in interaction with other mechanisms…” Which nicely brings us on to the second theme in this thread which was are context and mechanism separable? What consensus there was fell on the side that they are and that it was desirable in a realist analysis to deliberately try to conceptualise ‘things’ into Context, Mechanisms and Outcomes - CMOs. This “thinking device” then allows us to try to work out what might be causing the outcome(s) we are interested in – in other words identify the mechanism(s). Geoff