Lawful Roles of Facets in Social Theories

TLDR: In this paper, the authors summarize some major substantive fruits for the social sciences of the systematic theory construction built on the foundations and continuing developments made by Louis Guttman, with whom I have been privileged to study and work for over a decade.

Abstract: This chapter is an attempt to summarize some major substantive fruits for the social sciences of the systematic theory construction built on the foundations and continuing developments made by Louis Guttman, with whom I have been privileged to study and work for over a decade. The present chapter surveys results attained to date which, stimulated and guided by the facet-analytic approach, have led to substantive theory construction and the recognition of some laws of human behavior. The class of theories to be discussed is that based on regional hypotheses, where the space to be analyzed portrays a set of variables and their intercorrelations. A brief summary of these and other theories is given in Guttman (1980) as well, of course, as being dealt with in various ways in all of the other contributions to this volume.