Finding Empirical Sources
Your professor may have required you to find empirical sources or empirical data. In the Behavioral Sciences, Sciences, and Engineering these are known as primary sources because they are original studies written by the researchers.
According to LiveScience, empirical data is "Information that is acquired by observation or experimentation and is used to prove or disprove a hypothesis."
Think about your experience with:
- Writing a lab report for science class using the Scientific Method, with a hypothesis, materials, methods, data collected, analysis of the data, and conclusion.
- Creating surveys and polls in a psychology class and analyzing the results.
- Learning about standard deviation, N for number of people, and outliers in statistics class.
- Drug testing by pharmaceutical companies with two groups, one getting the drug and one getting a placebo (the control group).
Empirical articles are usually found in peer-reviewed journals. Words to look for in the title or abstract include:
- Clinical report
- Study
- Survey
- Results
Empirical articles will have sections similar to writing a lab report using the Scientific Method, such as Methods, Anyalysis, and Conclusion.
How to Search Databases for Empirical Articles
Knowing how to search the databases will help yield the results you want. Here is how you search:
1) Be sure you are in the correct database. You want to be in Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection which can be found in EBSCOhost or under P on the alphabet navigation bar.
2) Indicate that you want peer-reviewed/scholarly articles. You can also look for articles within a particular time frame.
3) Add words in your search that indicate you want the article to include empirical research. You can start with your topic AND words like empirical, study, quantitative, qualitative, research, observation, experiment, findings, participant group, longitudinal group, etc. [For example: social media AND study].
4) You may need to add "United States" to your search. This will help exclude studies done outside the United States.
5) Read the abstract to see if the article is indeed an empirical research article. The box below, "Do I Have an Empirical Article?" will help with this.
6) Watch the video to see these in action.
7) If you need assistance, contact a librarian via LibChat or email, or visit the second floor of the library.
Do I Have an Empirical Article?
How can I determine if I have found an Empirical Article?
When looking at an article or the abstract of an article, here are some guidelines to use to decide if an article is an empirical article:
- Is the article published in an academic, scholarly, or professional journal? Popular magazines such as Business Week or Newsweek do not publish empirical articles; academic journals such as Business Communication Quarterly or Journal of Psychology may publish empirical articles. Some professional journals such as JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association publish empirical research. Other professional journals such as Coach & Athletic Director publish articles of professional interest, but they do not usually publish research articles.
- Does the abstract of the article mention a study, an observation, an analysis, or a number of participants or subjects? Was data collected, a survey or questionnaire administered, an assessment or measurement used, or an interview conducted? All of these terms indicate possible methodologies used in empirical research.
- Empirical articles normally contain these sections:
1. Introduction
2. Literature review
3. Methodology
4. Results
5. Discussion
6. Conclusion
7. References
The sections may be combined and may have different headings or no headings at all; however, the information that would fall within these sections should be present in an empirical article. - How long is the article? An empirical article is usually substantial; it is normally three or more pages long.
If you are not sure if an article is an empirical research article, share the article citation with a librarian and we can help!
Know the Difference
Anatomy of a Scholarly Article (focusing mostly on Empirical Articles)
Click on the icon below to watch a short video on the "Anatomy of a Scholarly Article" (from North Carolina State University).
Or you can use this quick interactive site to review the "Anatomy of a Scholarly Article" (from North Carolina State University). Directions: click on the link to activate the interactive site.
