identifying relevant phenomena theories determine the number and kinds of phenomena that are relevant to a study. a theory tells a social scientist what to observe and to ignore. for example, social scientists may study school administration form the open systems perspective. a relevant component in the open systems approach is the external environment that impacts the organization. several subsystems exist within this environment . among the more important are economic, political, productive, distributive, and resource system. social scientists may study the external environment from within all these frameworks. multiple phenomena are associated with each subsystem. social scientists will not know precisely what phenomena to observe until they construct theoretical solutions for each problem area under investigation.