LibraryFAQ

Empirical articles generally describe a research study in which data was gathered through experimentation and/or observation. You will find them in scholarly journals, also sometimes called peer-reviewed or refereed journals.

To search for empirical articles, use the library databases. There should be an option to limit your search to scholarly journals. You will also want to limit to full-text, so you can read the articles online.

There are some basic criteria you can use to identify empirical articles:

• they feature experiments, case studies, or other original research
• they may include graphs, charts, or data tables
  
• they are divided into sections describing the study's intentions, methods, results, and conclusions