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PSYC 231: Psych Science I: Methods

Empirical Research

  • An empirical article is a scholarly (peer-reviewed) article.
  • An empirical article reports research based on actual data derived from actual observation or experimentation. 
  • The research can be quantitative or qualitative

In general, empirical research, are structured in this way:

  • Abstract
    • The author summarizes the article
  • Introduction
    • Provides a general background of the research topic; there is a literature review (a summary of what other experts have written on this  topic)
  • Methods
    • This section describes how the experiment was designed and conducted
  • Results
    • The author presents the data that was collected during the experiment
  • Discussion
    • The author offers ideas about the importance and implications of the findings and speculates on future directions that similar research might take
  • References
    • Provides a list of  sources used in the article

Evidence Base Practice (EBP)

Annotated Bibliography vs Literature Review

An annotated bibliography is an alphabetized list of sources with comments

literature review is an essay where you analyze, compare, and contrast and provide your own findings of sources on the same topic