In your academic and professional life, you will encounter certain scenarios in which you will need to research certain things to ensure their validity. While some of us do this with ease, there are plenty of people who take this matter a lot more seriously. This is where empirical research comes in.
So, what is empirical research?
It is the process of conducting a search for specific answers and drawing a conclusion that is based on verified evidence. If you do not have sufficient and notable resources for this, then your research could not be identified as empirical or factual.
Two Types of Empirical Research
- Qualitative Research – This type of empirical research is used to gather data that is non-numerical to support a specific study. It is often considered by scholars to dig deeper into their subjects’ opinions, meanings, or any other reason for standing with their beliefs. Since they do not rely on any form of numeric data, this research is usually conducted through focus groups, interviews, or any other form of communication that will extract valuable information from a specific subject or subject group.
- Quantitative Research – For this empirical research method, the researchers gather numerical information to quantify numerous behaviors, opinions, or other variables that can be defined through numbers. These are conducted in a structured format, and they are pre-determined so that the process will not be complicated. To get results, researchers often conduct surveys, polls, and other forms of tests that they can use to get significant answers from their audience.
Steps When Conducting an Empirical Research
Now that we have answered “what is empirical research”, it is time to understand the process of doing it.
- Defining the Research Purpose – Every step you take in life should start with a plan, and doing research is no different. You need to determine the purpose of your research to successfully finish it. Start with asking yourself a series of questions like “what do I want to know”, “what issue will I tackle”, and “how much is this going to cost”. If you have a solid ground for the purpose of your research, you will have an easier time completing it.
- Searching for Related Theories and Literature – It is hard to complete empirical research without significant information backing you up, which is why this step is important in the whole process. By finding a supporting theory to assist your findings, plus related literature to get most of your information from, you will get through this research more easily.
- Creating Your Hypothesis – What’s the point of conducting research if you are not hoping for good results, right? Setting up a hypothesis will secure your stand that your research will not go to waste, and you will do this by venturing a guess of what would be the results of your impending efforts.
- Finalizing Your Methodology and Collecting Data – This is the step wherein you will strategize your research, which means you will have to come up with experiments or ways to collect data that will support your hypothesis. After this, it is time to collect the data, and then you will get to move on to the analysis.
- Analyzing Your Data and Establishing Results – This is the most crucial step in the research process. To get substantial results, you need to carefully analyze your data to make sure that you will not miss any important points. This is where you will determine the success of your research, so you need to do this process discreetly.
- Determining the Conclusion – After carefully analyzing the data you gathered, the only thing left to do is to draw your conclusion. This report is the final answer to your hypothesis, and this is where you will get to share your thoughts and opinions to support future researchers that will tackle this topic.
Conducting empirical research requires patience and extreme effort in order for it to succeed. Whether you are doing this in the academic or professional field, you need to do it with proper discretion to maintain your credentials. Thankfully, this article answers the question “what is empirical research” like a breeze, which means you will get to understand everything you need to know about this type of research.