every science, including sociology, accumulates knowledge through an interplay between theory and research. first, we need to provide a more detailed account of the theories commonly used in the sociological analysis of social problems. a theory is a set of statements that explains the relationship between phenomena. the key role of theories is to tell us why something occurred. they help us organize the data from research into a meaningful whole. in this section, we will discuss the most general and important theoretical approaches in sociology. in the next section, we will return to the importance of research.