Table 1.

Four models of causation

Models of causation	Definition	Key readings
1 Intervention theory	‘Hypotheses on which people, consciously or unconsciously, build their program plans and actions’.34	Weiss.83 Chen.59
2. Framework	‘A structure, overview, outline, system or plan consisting of various descriptive categories; it describes empirical phenomena by fitting them into a set of categories without providing explanations for them’.48	Durlak and DuPre.84 Nilsen.48
3. Middle-range theory	'Theories that lie between the minor but necessary working hypotheses that evolve in abundance during day-to-day research and the all-inclusive systematic efforts to develop a unified theory’.85	Pawson.86 Astbury and Leeuw.87
4. Grand theory	‘Theory that will explain all the observed uniformities of social behavior, social organization, and social change’.85	Merton.85