Find Empirical Research Articles

There are techniques that you can use to find empirical research articles in electronic databases. Not all of these techniques will work for every topic because some of them rely on having special features within a database that may not be offered in others. 

Database limiters

Most databases will provide you with an option for limiting your results to articles published in scholarly publications.  In most cases, you can check a box for limiting your results to peer-reviewed, referreed, academic, or scholarly.

Example:

Empirical studies are published in peer-reviewed journals but not every article in a peer-reviewed journal reports empirical research findings.  For this reason, some databases allow you to limit your search further.  Here are examples:

• PsycINFO: under "Intended Audience" select Psychology--Professional & Research and under "Methodology" select EMPIRICAL STUDY.
  
• ERIC: under "Intended Audience" select Researcher and under "Publication Type" select Reports--Research. 

Adding search terms

When there are not any built-in limiters in the database, try using the advanced search and adding terms descriptive of empirical research in order to refine your results. Some of the terms you might include are: experiment, study, findings, results, method, participants.

Example: 

Using these techniques does not guarantee that your results will all be empirical articles. You will need to review each article for elements that make research empirical. See the "How to recognize an empirical research article" tab of this guide.