Revision of the definition of theory with a bibliographic approach

Abstract Abstract various definitions has represented for the theory that are accessible through bibliographic approach and content analysis. This difference is visible in the keywords of the definitions. In this paper, the definitions of the theory were extracted from the literature and main keywords, synonyms, and frequency of them were calculated by using content analysis. Content analysis of 125 definitions were identified 9 main keywords and 67 synonyms of keywords. The main keywords found in this content analysis such as concept, explanation, relation, phenomenon, series, hypothesis, systematic, prediction, and method. Finally, a revise definition of theory was represented, that illustrates its concept and the main keywords in the literature. In general, in the definition given in this paper, the theory is presented, the bibliographic and empirical approach is considered, and it refers to the aspects of description, explanation, prediction and control in a process and in a state of leveling in the definition of the theory with the use of vocabulary The key is attention.