THE DISTRIBUTION PROBLEM

Once the definition problem has been saved, we are faced with another organizational complication. And it is that not all the theoretical work that we carry out for the investigation must and cannot go within the theoretical chapter, write my essay not only because they would make it more extensive than necessary, but also because it would lose its main function, which is none other than to offer and clarify the conceptual foundations that will support the analysis of the constructed object. Unfortunately there is a tendency to think that every product of the bibliographic review corresponds to the theoretical chapter of the research. In this sense, Dr. Fernando Leal has a proposal related to the design of research projects that can be very useful to solve the question of which content of a conceptual nature should go in the theoretical framework and which in another place. Leal raises an idea that the first time I heard it caused me a lot of confusion: research projects do not have one theoretical framework, but three. This idea is mentioned tangentially in a text on the dissociation between theoretical framework and empirical data (LOYAL, 2009) and then be retaken and explained in depth - with the clarity and precision that characterize this Mexican academic - in a later text (LOYAL, 2017). For this author: […] What we call the theoretical framework [of a research project] is made up of all those general assumptions that are necessary to argue in defense of the research question, the working hypothesis or the test design. ( LOYAL, 2017 , p. 19) Since in his opinion, these are the three essential and fundamental parts of any research project. For there to be a research project, there must be a question, since the primary objective of an investigation is precisely to answer it. Since we can never be sure of the answer to a research question, we do research; and what we investigate is precisely whether this or that answer is correct or at least a good approximation to a correct answer. What research does is to test one or more answers that can be given to the question. […] In this way we guarantee the coherence of a research project: first we ask the question we want to answer, then we choose the answer to the question we want to test in the research, and finally we say how we intend to test it. But the theoretical assumptions used to justify each of these parts in a research project are not the same. If we extrapolate this idea to the broader structure of a graduate or postgraduate thesis, we will see that it can be very useful to organize these different theoretical and empirical assumptions into independent sections that provide organization to the document and screen the theoretical framework of those contents that they are not strictly necessary for the approach to the object of study that, as we saw previously, is its fundamental function within an investigation. In the case of the theoretical and empirical assumptions that we must contribute to support the research question that we pose, these can be located in the chapter of the thesis -generally the first- in which we present the construction and justification of the problem situation. This is where the contents that serve as a background to the study should go, the theoretical and empirical assumptions that we use to demonstrate the existence of a problem and the arguments that we assume to justify the need for their research, which fundamentally come from the review of the literature that we have made to get closer to our subject. Regarding those theoretical assumptions with which we fit the hypotheses, we must bear in mind that these constitute tentative answers to the research question, but they do not emerge spontaneously or in isolation or by art of improvisation, but rather arise from and are connected with the previous history of researching similar topics. As statedLoyal (2008, p. 17), “Previous research always contains many hypotheses, and we rarely need to invent one on our own; what is necessary is to make them more precise ”. The results of the literature review that allow us to formulate and sustain those hypotheses that have already appeared in the previous research and that outline possible answers to the questions posed, can be placed in the section that in many programs is called State of the Question, which aims to locate and distinguish our object of study within the large number of investigations and traditions that have addressed the same object or other similar ones, because at this point it is difficult to find “virgin lands”. Once we map the different approaches and results of previous studies to the same or similar research object, they work or provide the necessary arguments to assume and sustain those tentative responses that could be more feasible and that we will undertake the task of confirming or denying. . Therefore, it is not necessary to reload our theoretical framework by showing that we know the different ways in which our object of study or other similar objects has been or can be understood, or to convert it into an inventory of previous results; These data can be located within the State of the Question as part of the justification of the working hypotheses that we assume for the study. What then remains for the theoretical framework? If we follow the logic posed byLoyal (2017), I suggest that this corresponds exclusively to the theoretical assumptions related to the argumentation of the test design, which in correspondence with the methodological strategy of the research will give rise to the different theoretical and empirical results to which the study reaches. Although the test design is usually associated generally with the methodological approach to the research, we cannot lose sight of the fact that both the research techniques and the instruments that are applied are intended to measure, interpret, explain, correlate observables that constitute the expression less abstract and empirical of indicators, dimensions, concepts and categories of a theoretical type, which if not properly developed could not be studied or empirically operationalized. If we assume that "the theoretical framework constitutes a corpus of concepts of different levels of abstraction articulated among themselves that guide the way of apprehending reality" (SAUTU et al., 2005, p. 34), then precisely those contents that explain, contextualize and develop the different categories and their relationships must be located in it that, once taken to their observable expressions, will guide the study of the constructed object, that is, of the portion of reality that is wants to investigate. Once the problem of distribution has been saved and those contents that do not contribute directly to the theoretical framework as a conceptual guide for the research have been screened, we are in a position to face the last, and no less complicated, problem: the selection of contents that must integrate our theoretical framework according to the research object and the study objectives.