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Empirical Articles/Studies

How to tell what's an empirical article

Step 1:  What's an empirical article?

Learn to recognize an empirical article by watching the video.

Step 2:  Judge for yourself

Open the articles by clicking on the letters.  Decide which ones are empirical and the sort of thing you would want to cite.

Step 3:  Quiz yourself

Check your understanding with this one question quiz.

 

Finding empirical studies

Watch the video to see how easy it is to find empirical articles using PsycINFO. 

For databases that don't have a way to limit by methodology, some strategies:

1) Look through the results, scan the abstract for clues to recognize it's empirical.

2) Try searching with words that describe types of empirical studies (list not exhaustive):

empirical OR qualitative OR quantitative OR "action research" OR "case study" OR "controlled trial" OR "focus group"

3) Enter other terms you'd expect to see in an abstract.  Some suggestions:

findings OR participant* OR investigat*