Critical Evaluation: How do I critically evaluate theory?
In this blogpost, I’m going to teach you how to critically evaluate theory as a social science student. If you want better grades at college or university, whether you’re studying sociology, criminology, social policy or another social science, critical evaluation is a crucial skill in taking your assignments to the next level.
By the end of the blogpost, you will have learned the three key steps involved in critical evaluation: understand, analyze and evaluate.
Step One – Understand
Ensure you understand the theory you’re critically evaluating. This sounds obvious, but you’d be amazed how many students start trying to evaluate a theory they don’t know much about! How can you make sure you know and understand the theory that you’re dealing with?
Begin by going to the college or university library, or your library website. Read up on the theory in one of the general, introductory texts about theory in your area. For sociology students, that might be a book with the title, “Introduction to Sociological Theory”. For criminology students, that might be “Introduction to Criminological Theory”.
These books will give you a great introduction to the theory,. They will provide you with the basic, foundational elements, the key principles and origins of the theory..
Next thing you need to do is to go get hold of the original theory itself. That might be a book or a journal article written by the academic who established that theory. For example, if you want to get to grips with Marxist theory, you might want to go take a look at “The Communist Manifesto”. You’ve read the overviews, you know the framework, now dive into the detail.
Take notes when you’re doing all of this reading. These notes are just for you, they’re to help your understanding of the theory, so write in your own words. This is not for an audience, this is just for you. Use relatable language, if wordy and sophisticated isn’t your style, don’t try and write in that way.
Step Two – Analyze
This is about thinking through the meanings and implications of the theory. Think about what happens when you try to apply it. You need to apply the theory to some real-life scenarios. Think about the specific assignment you’re working on and the issues it engages with. For instance, say you are looking at youth offending, and you’re drawing upon a theory to try and understand why some young people engage in criminality. Here are some phrases you can use to start thinking this through. Feel free to substitute “youth offending” for whatever your assignment is exploring.
(Theory x) would explain a young person’s engagement in offending by drawing upon …
When (Theory X) is applied to youth offending, the following factors emerge as important…
(Theory X) may / may not be applicable to (type of offending – violence / property crimes) because …
In terms of whether (Theory X) is helpful in understanding offending among diverse groups of young people, it can be argued that it includes / excludes …
The shortfalls of (Theory X) in making sense of young people’s offending include …
What (Theory X) doesn’t take into consideration is …
Theory X was developed in (year), as such it could be argued that its relevance to youth offending in 2022 is …
Theory X was developed based upon research carried out in (place) with (participants), therefore, whether it can be applied to (context you’re writing about) is…
Step Three - Evaluate
This is essentially the “So what?” question. To go back to the point I made earlier, when you evaluate, you are making a judgement about the value of this theory in explaining the particular issues you are exploring in your assignment. Think about the following questions:
What contribution does it make to our understanding?
What did it bring to the table? What did it do that previous theory did not?
What are its major strengths and weaknesses?
In what sense is it helpful?
In what sense is it unhelpful?
Does it enhance understandings?
Does it fuel misunderstandings?
One important thing that you must do when evaluating the theory is make a really clear, unambiguous statement that responds to this question, “To what extent is (Theory X) effective in explaining (issue you’re exploring?”. Make sure you actually quantify this: To a large extent? To some extent? Not at all? Word it like this: “Theory X is effective to some extent in that it (summarise its strengths), however, it (summarise its weaknesses)”.
If you include a statement like this in your assignment, you are making it super clear to the person grading it that you have critically evaluated the theory. This is evidence that you have evaluated the theory critically. Speaking as a professor myself, this kind of statement leaps off the page at me and screams FIRST CLASS GRADE!
Now you’re ready to go and implement these steps, so start with step one – which was? Go read up on the theory!
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