Reading Empirical Articles: Some Tips

Elements of and Tips for Reading Empirical Research

Reading and understanding empirical research can be challenging. The information below should help you to recognize the elements in empirical research and better understand what the empirical research is saying.

1. Understand the purpose of each section in empirical research. This will help you know what to expect in each section, and where to find specific information you’re seeking. The major sections in empirical research are typically the Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion.

Section Function Use this to: Abstract Brief summary of the study. Includes Get a general sense of the article. hypotheses, methods, results & Is it what you’re looking for? implications Introduction Introduces phenomenon of interest, Identify the hypotheses, sources provides background research leading to for related-research upon which hypotheses the investigation builds upon Methods Describes the mechanics of the study, Understand the design of the including participants, measures used, & experiment—how was the procedure hypothesis tested? Results Describes what was found in the study & Know what they found whether the hypotheses were disconfirmed or confirmed—uses numbers (statistics) & written explanations Discussion Describes the implications & weaknesses of Understand how the study the study enhances understanding of the phenomenon that was studied

2. Get the core ideas first. Read the abstract, and the first and last few paragraphs of the introduction and discussion section. This will give you a good idea of what to expect from the piece as a whole (phenomenon of interest; hypotheses; main results; implications). Be especially attentive to the hypotheses of the article. What are the authors trying to test? Identify the independent variable (the “cause”) and the dependent variable (the “effect” of interest).

3. Read for detail. Once you feel you have a general sense of the article’s direction, read the introduction and discussion more deeply. What led them to their hypothesis? What did they find? How does this contribute to our understanding of the phenomenon being researched? Note any statements by the authors (or your own thoughts) about how this article changes or augments the original theory.

4. Put yourself in the participants’ shoes. While reading the methods section, imagine yourself being a participant in the study. This will help to make the actual experiment more real to you. Understand how the independent and dependent variables were manipulated and measured in the study.

5. Don’t be scared by the statistics. Empirical research usually first presents the statistics, but then talks about what the statistics or results mean. Focus on extracting the meaning of the results. Also, look at any tables and graphs, which should help to explain the statistics or results.

6. One more read through. A little while after initially reading the article, go back and read through everything again. The empirical research should make more sense to you now.