A conceptual framework is a tool researchers use to guide their inquiry; it is a set of ideas used to structure the research, a sort of map that may include the research question, the literature review, methods and data analysis. Researchers use a conceptual framework to guide their data collection and analysis. If, for example the researcher wanted to know whether boys did better than girls in a certain subject then he might look at literature on the development of both sexes, and on the methods of socialization of boys and girls as this could influence what subjects were of interest. The researcher would then look at existing literature on male and female development and socialization as this would help to clarify what questions she should ask e.g are girls more interested in history when it is concerned with actual people or do boys prefer the history of battles etc. The ways in which boys and girls viewed a subject could influence their progress in that area.
According to sociologists Haralambos and Holborn, a conceptual framework enables the researcher to find links between the existing literature and his own research goals. If, for example, a researcher was looking at why women stay with violent men then she might want to look at theories of identity to establish whether certain personality types are more likely to be battered and why,
According to Smyth, the researcher has to bear in mind that a conceptual framework can overly influence his thought and subsequent actions. If the researcher becomes to bound by the framework then this has to be laid out and acknowledged when he writes up their methodology. The researcher should be prepared to use more than one set of ideas to guide his research, which may mean using two or three theoretical frameworks in conjunction as Smyth eventually did.
Providing the researcher realizes that a conceptual framework will only take them so far in his analysis of the research data, it can be useful. Most research projects start with a hypothesis e.g that violent men are inadequate, the hypothesis is turned into a question and the researcher starts looking at literature on violent and non-violent men, which in turn guides the questions he will need to ask.
When the researcher uses a conceptual framework as a starting point for research there comes a point when he finds that the results of his study move beyond the original question e.g. he finds that violent men are not necessarily inadequate but have little or no self esteem and the man deals with this by blaming his partner or girlfriend for making him feel that way and so he is violent. This is a clear example of research going beyond the original question and framework and adds something new to the existing body of research on violent men.