According to Bohm & Vogel (2011), a theory is an explanation. It tells who or how things are related to each other. A theory of crime explains why or how a certain thing or certain things are related to criminal behavior. The objective of a theory is to explain the interrelationship of concepts. A theory is comprised of three things which are concepts, definitions of concepts, and propositions. According to Bohm & Vogel (2011), concepts are words or phrases that represent some phenomenon. Definitions are broken down into two sets of definitions which are nominal, and operational. Nominal definitions are pretty much the same as a dictionary definition. These definitions are assigned to concepts to clarify what the concepts mean to a researcher. Operational definitions describe how concepts will be measured when it comes to research. Another name for propositions are called interrelated concepts. It explains how concepts correlate together as one. …show more content…
I for one believe that a theory can be tested but it cannot be proven. All it takes is for one mistake to occur during the testing then the theory is no longer credible. According to Bohm and Vogel (2011), finding negative examples does not condemn the theory, but it does suggest the theory’s explanatory power is limited. It would very hard to prove a theory if the methods shows to have