Concept analysis: Some limitations and possible solutions

Concepts are the basic building blocks of scientific knowl­ edge or theoretical frameworks for any discipline. The strength of the theories that guide a discipline is depend­ ent on the quality of the concept analysis. Thus, the utili­ sation of poorly understood concepts in research and theory development will result in questionable reliability and validity. Concept analysis is associated with the research design of philosophical inquiry. The purpose of philosophical in­ quiry is to perform research using intellectual analysis to clarify meaning. Traditionally, no empirical (qualitative or quantitative) investigations were used to clarify the meaning of concepts. The lack of empirical investigation to clarify concepts, results in certain limitations in the methodology of concept analysis. It seems that methodological innovations for enhancing concept analysis is urgently required. The purpose of this article is to describe the utilisation of qualitative and quan­ titative strategies with literature review in concept analy­ sis as a possible solution to limitations. This article will firstly, describe the limitations in the tra­ ditional Wilsonian methods of concept analysis and will secondly demonstrate how the introduction of qualitative and quantitative methods with literature review can over­ come some of the limitations. An example a research study on quality o f life (Ferrans, 1997:110) will be used to dem­ onstrate how qualitative and quantitative empirical meth­ ods with literature review can enhance the quality of con­ cept analysis. Opsomming Konsepte is die boustene van wetenskaplike kennis of teoretiese raamwerke van ‘n dissipline. Die gehalte van die teorieë van die dissipline is afhanklik van die gehalte van konsepanalise. Dus, sal die gebruik van onduidelike konsepte in navorsing en teorieontwikkeling die geldigheid en betroubaarheid van sodanige navorsing of teorieë beïnvloed. K onsepanalise word met die navorsingsontw erp van filosofiese ondersoek geassosieer. Die doel van filosofiese ondersoeke is om die betekenis aan verskynsels, by wyse van ‘n intellektuele ondersoek, te verleen. Tradisioneel was geen empiriese ondersoek (kwalitatief of kwantitatief) gebruik om betekenis van konsepte te analiseer nie. Die geb rek aan em p irie se o n d e rso ek m e to d es in die ontwikkeling van konsepte lei tot sekere beperkings in die metodologie van konsepanalise. Dit wil dus voorkom dat ‘n vemuwing in die metodologiese benadering van konsepanalise noodsaaklik is. As ‘n moontlike oplossing vir die beperkings in die metodologie van konsepanalise is dit die doel van die artikel is om die gebruik van kwalitatiewe en kwantitatiew e strategies, bykomend tot die tradisionele literatuurondersoek, voor te stel. Hierdie artikel sal eerstens die beperkings in W ilsongebaseerde metodes beskryf en tweedens demonstreer hoe k o n se p a n a lise , by w yse van ‘n k o m b in as ie van k w alita tiew e en kw an tita tiew e m etodes saam m et literatuurstudie die beperkings kan oorkom. ‘n Voorbeeld van ‘n navorsingsprojek oor “kwaliteit van lewe” (Ferrans, 1997:110) sal gebruik word om te demonstreer hoe die gebruik van kwalitatiewe en kwantitatiewe metodes in kombinasie met literatuurstudies gebruik kan word om die gehalte van konsepanalise te bevorder.

Concept analysis is associated with the research design of philosophical inquiry. The purpose of philosophical in quiry is to perform research using intellectual analysis to clarify meaning. Traditionally, no empirical (qualitative or quantitative) investigations were used to clarify the meaning of concepts. The lack of empirical investigation to clarify concepts, results in certain lim itations in the methodology o f concept analysis.
It seem s that m ethodological innovations for enhancing concept analysis is urgently required. The purpose o f this article is to describe the utilisation of qualitative and quan titative strategies with literature review in concept analy sis as a possible solution to limitations. This article will firstly, describe the limitations in the tra ditional W ilsonian methods of concept analysis and will secondly dem onstrate how the introduction of qualitative and quantitative m ethods with literature review can over come some of the limitations. An example a research study on quality o f life (Ferrans, 1997:110) will be used to dem onstrate how qualitative and quantitative em pirical m eth ods with literature review can enhance the quality o f con cept analysis.
K onsepanalise word m et die n av orsingsontw erp van filosofiese ondersoek geassosieer. Die doel van filosofiese ondersoeke is om die betekenis aan verskynsels, by wyse van 'n intellektuele ondersoek, te verleen. Tradisioneel was geen empiriese ondersoek (kwalitatief of kwantitatief) gebruik om betekenis van konsepte te analiseer nie. Die g e b re k aan e m p irie se o n d e rs o e k m e to d e s in die ontwikkeling van konsepte lei tot sekere beperkings in die m etodologie van konsepanalise.
Dit wil dus voorkom dat 'n vemuwing in die metodologiese b enadering van konsepanalise no o d saak lik is. As 'n moontlike oplossing vir die beperkings in die metodologie van konsepanalise is dit die doel van die artikel is om die gebruik van kw alitatiew e en kw antitatiew e strategies, bykom end tot die tradisionele literatuurondersoek, voor te stel.

Introduction
Researchers investigate a phenomenon with the intention of understanding it or to give meaning to the phenomenon. Con cepts as lingual constructions are the m ost elem entary sym bolic construction by which people classify or categorise re ality. Concepts are the carriers o f meaning. One could say that concepts are the symbolic constructions or tools by means o f which people make sense of and attribute m eaning to their worlds (Mouton, 1996:181) We distinguish between two types of meanings, nam ely con-notative and denotative meanings of concepts. Connotative meaning refers to the sense or the attributes o f concepts. The essential attributes or connotations are necessary to give a theoretical definition o f a concept. We also distinguish be tween two further uses of connotations, namely subjective and conventional connotations.
The subjective connotation is the meaning that individuals attach to a word and is closely associated with the individu al's particular m indset and experiences. The conventional connotation is the assumed or accepted meaning of the con cept that has implicitly been agreed upon for the sake of com munication. This im plies that researchers within the same discipline and more specific in the same paradigm tend to share specific conventional connotations (Copi & Cohen, 1994: 181-191;Mouton, 1996: 182).
The denotative meaning o f a concept refers to the reference or the empirical indicators of the concept. The denotations of the concepts are needed to give an operational definition of the concept and to develop an instrum ent to measure the con cepts in reality.
The whole process of unfolding, exploring and understand ing concepts is called concept analysis. The purpose of con cept analysis is to give m eaning, develop, delineate, com pare, classify, correct, refine and validate concepts as well as to develop measuring instruments.
Concepts are the basic building blocks o f scientific knowl edge or theoretical frameworks for any discipline. The strength of the theories that guide a discipline is dependent on the quality of the concept analysis. Thus, the utilisation of poorly understood concepts in research and theory development will result in questionable reliability and validity of the results.
Concept analysis is associated with the research design of philosophical inquiry. The purpose of philosophical inquiry is to perform research using intellectual analysis to clarify meaning (Bum s & Grove, 1993:79). Traditionally, no em pirical (qualitative or quantitative) investigations were used to clarify the meaning of concepts. The lack of empirical in vestigation to clarify concepts, results in certain limitations in the methodology of concept analysis.
It seems that m ethodological innovations for enhancing con cept analysis is urgently required. The purpose of this article is to describe the utilisation o f qualitative and quantitative strategies with literature reviews in concept analysis as a pos sible solution to limitations. This article will firstly, describe the limitations in the tradi tional W ilsonian methods (1963/1987) of concept analysis and will secondly demonstrate how the introduction o f quali tative and quantitative methods in combination with litera ture reviews can overcome some of the limitations. An exam ple a research study on quality o f life (Ferrans, 1997:110) will be used to dem onstrate how quantitative and quantita tive empirical methods in com bination with literature review can enhance the quality of concept analysis.
Before describing the limitations in and possible solution for in concept analysis it is important to address the standards for quality concept analysis.

Standards for conceptual analysis
Ideally, concepts used in disciplines should be mature. M a ture concepts are well defined with characteristics/attributes, the boundaries demarcated, the preconditions specified and the outcom es described. The follow ing principles (G ift, 1997:76) could be used as standards/criteria to evaluate the quality o f a concept analysis, namely: • Concepts are clear and distinct, that is, clearly defined and well differentiated from other concepts (epistemological principle).
• Concepts are coherently and systematically related to other concepts (logical principle).
• Concepts are applicable to the world or operationalised (pragm atic principle).
• Concepts are appropriate to their use in context (lin guistic principle).

Lim itations of the Wilsonian methods
In the 1960's W ilson (1963/1987) published a detail approach to concept analysis, describing m ethods to guide the process o f concept analysis. W ilson's work has been extremely influ ential and forms the basis of concept developm ent for many disciplines. The approach of Wilson can be briefly described as follows: • Isolate the conceptual questions from other questions.
• Questions o f concepts are about meaning. The ana lyst should ask, what criteria are being used to deter mine the meaning of the concept. If a research ques tion contains more than one concept, the individual concepts should be isolated and addressed.
• Develop "right answers" as concepts may have m ulti ple meanings and multiple contexts. Researchers must identify the primary uses that are at the "heart" of the concept. This requires the analyst to determine which elem ents are essential to the core meaning o f the con cept and which is not applicable.
• Apply the following techniques in identifying the meaning of the concept by constructing cases from everyday experiences: • M odel cases should refer to examples from real life, which is a true reflection of the concept.
• Related cases should refer to other concepts, which are related to the concept under investigation.
• Borderline cases should refer to those cases where un certainty exists. For example: A boy is warned about electric wires. If the boy touches the electric wire and gets shocked is this "punishm ent?" • Invented cases should be used where our ordinary ex periences does not provide us with instances to clarify the concept.
• Explore the social context, nature or circum stances of the concept by asking who might use the concept, when, why and how. By doing this, the analyst stays sensi tive to the cultural and social milieu in which the con cept under study is used.
• Investigate the underlying anxiety/emotive context of the concept. Wilson suggests that to determine the feel ings, the tone and important insights about the con cept, that the analyst should ask questions such as: Is there a debate about the concept? process or event the researcher wants to investigate. One can study individuals, groups, organisations/institutions, cultural objects, social actions and interventions.

Determine the purpose of the concept analysis
This step helps to focus the attention of the researcher on exactly why is s/he doing the concept analysis. The purpose may be to clarify the m eaning of an existing concept, to de velop a theory or to develop an operational definition and a measuring instrument.
In the exam ple o f the study on quality o f life (Ferrans, 1997:110) the purpose of the study was to develop a concep tual framework on which an instrument to measure QOL could be based. QOL, namely:

Development of the concept
• The ability to live a normal life.
• Ability to live socially useful (social utility).
• Natural capacity (physical and m ental capacity) • Achievem ent of personal goals.
• Satisfaction with life.
After clarifying/analysing each of the six attributes/connota tion individually the researcher came to a conclusion that the connotation, "satisfaction with life" is the best fit to concep tualise QOL. From phase one a theoretical definition o f QOL was form ulated, namely: QOL is a person's sense of well-being that stems from satis faction or dissatisfaction with the areas o f life that are im por tant for him/her.

Phase 2 : Qualitative research
In

Phase 3: Literature review
The researcher (Ferrans, 1997:110) conducted an extensive literature review. M ore than 400 studies, assessing life satis faction, were listed. Based on the literature review, a list of dimensions to assess QOL was developed. The data from the original qualitative analysis (phase 2) and from the literature review were integrated to produce a list o f 32 elements of QOL that represented QOL o f the general population. Three additional elements were identified from the data o f the di alysis patients.
These 35 elements were used as the basis for the developm ent of the Ferrans and Powers (1992) QOL index. Each elem ent was used to develop two items, one to assess the satisfaction with the elem ent and one to assess the importance of the ele ment.
The results of the literature review revealed six meanings of

Phase 4 : Quantitative research
The next task in the concept explication was to cluster re lated elem ents together into domains o f QOL. The research ers (Ferrans, 1997:110) used exploratory factor analysis in phase four to determ ine the nature and num ber o f the do mains. The QOL index was used to collect data from 349 haemodialysis patients that were random ly drawn from the haemodialysis patients in Illinois. The results revealed that four factors fit the data the best, which represent the four ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ Test the practical significance of the concept by creat ing questions o f the concept that have definite yes/no answers.
Choose the meaning o f the concept that represents the most useful meaning of the concept to generate practi cal results.
Conduct an internal dialogue about the concept.
Re-analyse the conceptual questions for relevancy.
Compare the results.
Define the concept.
The methods of W ilson (1963/1987) are based on a philo sophical design, a literature study and intellectual analysis without empirical (qualitative or quantitative) methods. The absence o f empirical methods contributes partly to the lim ita tions in the results o f concept analysis by Wilson-derived meth ods. The limitations in the W ilsonian methods are echoed by G ift (1997: 17/24) in the following statements: An incomplete and vague description of the applica tion of the m ethods is provided.
Lack o f clarity about the suitable concept for the analy sis and how it was chosen, exists.
Failure to integrate the steps and the application of the methods in a cookbook or stepwise procedure is evident.
Lack of rigor is perceived.
The results o f the analysis remains insignificance and without substance. It lacks com prehensiveness, ex ploratory pow er and is superficial. The methods tend to provide a list o f attributes (connotations) o f the con cept only, without a clear understanding o f the phe nomenon.
Limitations in the utilisation of a model and other cases to identify/verify the essential attributes of a concept are evident.
After a critical analysis of the results from the W ilsonianderived methods, M orse and other authors (Gift, 1997:92) did not recommend the continued use o f W ilsonian-derived methods for concept analysis and development. It is apparent that the m ajor problem with the W ilsonian-derived methods is the absence of em pirical methods that could provide trian gulation and rigor to the analysis of concepts.

Possible solutions to the limitations
To overcom e the limitations o f the W ilsonian methods, lit erature combined with quantitative and qualitative approaches can be employed in conducting a concept analysis. This arti cle doesn't condemn the traditional W ilson-derived methods but does rather propose the combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches with literature studies and intellec tual analysis to overcom e the various limitations.
A basic rule of science, namely to integrate a inquiry/study within existing know ledge frameworks is also applicable to concept analysis. To explore existing literature for the m ean ing o f a concept should be one o f the methods in the process o f a concept analysis. Literature can also be used to verify the m eanings/the uses/the boundaries/the preconditions/the out comes of the concept.
Qualitative methods differ markedly from traditional quanti tative approaches in that they require the collection of spe cific data from participants and the inductive analysis of that data. The decision of which qualitative method to use de pends in part on the purpose o f the conceptual inquiry. Phe nomenological methods are well suited for concept identifi cation and concept analysis. Ethnographical studies are help ful to elicit cognitive categories and to develop concepts from the perspectives of informants. Unstructured interviews are analysed to identify the concept o f significance. Using a se mantic technique, for example sentence com pletion, assists to identify the characteristics o f concepts. The boundaries of the concept can be identified by using q-sorts or card sorts. Grounded theory is particularly useful in concept analysis. A combination o f two qualitative methods can be used to obtain the most comprehensive picture o f the phenom enon (Gift, 1997:80).
Q uantitative approaches to concept analysis are generally brought into play only after considerable preliminary work has been done to clarify the concept. Once the research has clearly described internal characteristics of the concept and provided a well-defined theoretical definition, the next step is to employ quantitative methods to validate and refine the concept with a strong emphasis on the epistemological and pragmatic principle. Often a conceptual m ap/model is pro duced and then subjected to deductive quantitative testing. Quantitative techniques like factor analysis, correlations, re gression analysis, discrim inant analysis and a C hronbach's Alpha could be used to enhance validity and reliability of the results (Gift, 1997:86).
The methodology where literature in combination with quali tative and quantitative approaches is employed will be dem onstrated by using an example of a com pleted research project on Quality o f life by Ferrans (1997:110).

Demonstration of the combined research methodologies
Concept analysis is a skill and a list of methods/techniques cannot fully describe a skill. By using the various research methods/techniques in a creative way the researcher can de velop her/his own individual approach in applying the tech niques and methods (Rossouw, 2000:27

Select a concept
The concept to be analysed is normally one of the key con cepts in a research project.

Phase 5 Literature review
Again literature review was conducted to validate the con ceptual framework from the previous phases.

Phase 6 Qualitative research
To confirm the generalisation of the framework to other cul tures another qualitative research was conducted and major differences were reported.

Conclusion
The researchers in the study o f QOL did not use a Wilsonbased method for concept analysis. They used a combination o f qualitative and quantitative approached with literature re view to develop a conceptual framework for QOL. This frame work provided the basis for the developm ent o f the Ferrans and Pow er (1992) QOL Index. Health professionals are using this instrum ent in research and clinical practice in 18 coun tries. It was translated into 9 languages. The concept analysis by using a com bination of methods contributed to a better understanding of the im pact of illness and treatm ent on QOL.
By adding qualitative and quantitative approaches with lit erature review m ost o f the limitations of the W ilson-based m ethods can be overcome.