What is the difference between phenomenon and trend

Trends tend to encompass entire areas of technology and not just a single brand or item. For example, mobile learning became a trend because any kind of mobile device could be used. While it may seem hard at the beginning to determine the scope of a phenomenon, look at the vendors providing the technology and carefully determine if it is gaining momentum because a group of vendors are all launching a similar technology or because one vendor has developed some buzz and energy around a product and that product is taking off like hot cakes.

The rate of growth of a phenomenon can also provide clues as to fad or trend. Trends evolve slowly over time with course corrections and new approaches to the same concept as the idea grows and matures. The phenomenon that launches a trend, like mobile devices, tend to change over time to meet learning needs and what seems like an overnight hit actually develops over a considerable timeframe. Alternatively, fads spike quickly and dramatically and then fade away just as quickly.

Time is a great device for distinguishing between a fad and a true trend in the field of learning and development. It is not always a bad idea to sit back and wait to see how quickly technology is adopted and how many companies participate in the growing phenomenon. To distinguish between a fad and a trend in the field of learning and development, use these three criteria to examine the technology you are considering adopting.

Up until now, a major trend in all the interviews in our Talking Trends series has been sustainability. Designers across industries are looking at the materials they use, their manufacturing processes, and the conditions of the people who make their products through the lens of sustainability.

As this trend takes deeper root in the broader culture, it will be expressed differently in different industries. Which fads are you happy to see gone? Let us know in the comments or tag us on Instagram or Twitter!

Kristin Crane. Kristin Crane has designed jacquard designs for the home furnishing and residential jobber market for many years, with mills in the US and in China. She writes about pattern and design trends for Design Pool from her home in Providence, Rhode Island. When not writing about fabric, she can be found weaving on her Macomber loom, standing over a vat of indigo dye or hiking along the Rhode Island coast. Trend or Fad? Back to Blog. What is the difference between a trend and a fad?

A hypothesis can be an explanation that relies on just a few key concepts—although this term more commonly refers to a prediction about a new phenomenon based on a theory see Section 4. A theoretical framework can be as broad as a perspective or a specific as a model, but it is the context applied to understanding a phenomenon.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that researchers often use these terms interchangeably. It would not be considered wrong to refer to the drive theory as the drive model or even the drive hypothesis.

And the biopsychosocial model of health psychology—the general idea that health is determined by an interaction of biological, psychological, and social factors—is really more like a perspective as defined here. Keep in mind, however, that the most important distinction remains that between observations and interpretations. Of course, scientific theories are meant to provide accurate explanations or interpretations of phenomena.

But there must be more to it than this explanation. Consider that a theory can be accurate without being very useful. Consider also that a theory can be useful without being entirely accurate. Figure 4. Here we look at three additional purposes of theories: the organization of known phenomena, the prediction of outcomes in new situations, and the generation of new research. One important purpose of scientific theories is to organize phenomena in ways that help people think about them clearly and efficiently.

The drive theory of social facilitation and social inhibition, for example, helps to organize and make sense of a large number of seemingly contradictory results. The multistore model of human memory efficiently summarizes many important phenomena: the limited capacity and short retention time of information that is attended to but not rehearsed, the importance of rehearsing information for long-term retention, the serial-position effect, and so on. Or consider a classic theory of intelligence represented by Figure 4.

According to this theory, intelligence consists of a general mental ability, g, plus a small number of more specific abilities that are influenced by g Neisset et al.

Although there are other theories of intelligence, this one does a good job of summarizing a large number of statistical relationships between tests of various mental abilities. This theory includes the fact that tests of all basic mental abilities tend to be somewhat positively correlated and the fact that certain subsets of mental abilities e. Thus theories are good or useful to the extent that they organize more phenomena with greater clarity and efficiency.

Scientists generally follow the principle of parsimony , also known as Occam's razor , which holds that a theory should include only as many concepts as are necessary to explain or interpret the phenomena of interest.

Simpler, more parsimonious theories organize phenomena more efficiently than more complex, less parsimonious theories. A second purpose of theories is to allow researchers and others to make predictions about what will happen in new situations.

If the student generally performs with no mistakes, she is likely to perform better during competition. If she generally performs with many mistakes, she is likely to perform worse.

In clinical psychology, treatment decisions are often guided by theories. Consider, for example, dissociative identity disorder formerly called multiple personality disorder. The prevailing scientific theory of dissociative identity disorder is that people develop multiple personalities also called alters because they are familiar with this idea from popular portrayals e. A third purpose of theories is to generate new research by raising new questions.

Consider, for example, the theory that people engage in self-injurious behaviour such as cutting because it reduces negative emotions such as sadness, anxiety, and anger. This theory immediately suggests several new and interesting questions. Is there, in fact, a statistical relationship between cutting and the amount of negative emotions experienced?

Is it causal? If so, what is it about cutting that has this effect? Is it the pain, the sight of the injury, or something else? Does cutting affect all negative emotions equally? Notice that a theory does not have to be accurate to serve this purpose. Even an inaccurate theory can generate new and interesting research questions. Of course, if the theory is inaccurate, the answers to the new questions will tend to be inconsistent with the theory.

This new direction will lead researchers to reevaluate the theory and either revise it or abandon it for a new one. And this cycle of revising is how scientific theories become more detailed and accurate over time. At any point in time, researchers are usually considering multiple theories for any set of phenomena.

One reason is that because human behaviour is extremely complex, it is always possible to look at it from different perspectives. For example, a biological theory of sexual orientation might focus on the role of sex hormones during critical periods of brain development, while a sociocultural theory might focus on cultural factors that influence how underlying biological tendencies are expressed.

Both theories go beyond the phenomena to be interpreted, but they do so by proposing somewhat different underlying processes. Different theories of the same set of phenomena can be complementary—with each one supplying one piece of a larger puzzle. A biological theory of sexual orientation and a sociocultural theory of sexual orientation might accurately describe different aspects of the same complex phenomenon. Similarly, social facilitation could be the result of both general physiological arousal and evaluation apprehension.

But different theories of the same phenomena can also be competing in the sense that if one is accurate, the other is probably not. For example, an alternative theory of dissociative identity disorder—the posttraumatic theory—holds that alters are created unconsciously by the patient as a means of coping with sexual abuse or some other traumatic experience. Because the sociocognitive theory and the posttraumatic theories attribute dissociative identity disorder to fundamentally different processes, it seems unlikely that both can be accurate.