What is empirical research – 5 examples

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You’ve probably heard people say this phrase before: “seeing is believing”. Well, that’s pretty much what empirical research is based on. It is research based on concrete, practical evidence. No theories or logic. Simply observation determines the conclusion of this kind of research, which makes it very reliable. It helps you gain information through direct or indirect means on the basis of experience, so that no room for assumptions or error can remain. Knowing all about this is must for any assignment writer in the UK.

Following are some really good examples of such research that will help you understand what it is about and how it works, and why this may be one of the most fool-proof methods of research we have.

Does music really help you concentrate better?

Let’s talk about a research conducted where two different subjects are treated in two different ways. For example, if you want to do research on student behaviors, you could get two groups of students and give them something to work on. Now, for each group, you provide different circumstances. For one group, you would play music and see how well they can concentrate, and you’d do the same for the other one. As boring as studying or working on an assignment can get, you might get an unexpected conclusion.

This is a great example of empirical research because it is based purely on observation and experimentation.
No assumptions are being made and nothing is based on theoretical knowledge.

Nap time – is it a scam?

Who doesn’t love a good nap? While we’d all want to disagree with the title, it is not for us to decide. The need for proof and experimentation in this topic makes it another great example for empirical research. While adults would love to volunteer, for this purpose we will get two groups of toddlers, or maybe kindergarteners. One group would get nap time between school hours and the other would not. Don’t worry, this is a one-day experiment, and for this one day, their behaviors would be observed and recorded.

The group with no nap time may or may not turn out to be cranky.
Results may vary due to the fact that human behaviors are subjective and the effects of this will definitely vary from person to person. Nothing is defined or certain.

Color me blue – or maybe red

Have you ever taken quizzes on this particular topic? I vaguely remember Facebook having quizzes related to colors and stuff back in the day, with titles like “What Color Are You?”. They asked you a bunch of questions and then gave results based on your answers. It was pretty cool, despite being quite inaccurate. A lot of us even started to believe it. But there actually are ways to see how color impacts a person. Take the example of an ambient restaurant. We fill two restaurants up with customers, one would have everything red, from the lights to the table cloths, and the other would be blue all around.

Customer behaviors such as patience and talkativeness would be recorded to understand the impact of their respective color on them.
Again, this would be based purely on observation.

Shakespeare versus Iron Man; who will win?

This one might sound fun, especially to those of you in high school. Do you hate writing reports? Imagine if instead of on some boring old novel from centuries before you were born, you could write a report on your favorite comic book character! This one would just be for the sake of proving yourself right, but like that one episode of Boy Meets World where the teacher gives his students a comic to review and they finally do their homework for the first time because it happens to be something that interests them, you could do it too. Get a bunch of kids together and divide them into two groups.

One group would have to write a regular report on a topic that the teacher picks out for them
The second one would get to vote on what they want to write about out from a list of fun, trendy topics given to them by their teacher

The teacher would select topics that the students would both enjoy working on and learn a great deal form. Observations would then be made on things like student participation in class and the number of students that actually do their homework.

A true test of patience

I’m pretty sure that this title brought a different thing to all your minds. Come on, let it all out. We all have things that truly annoy us to no extent, but some things are just universally messed up. I’m sure you’ve seen web shows and independent content creators do this before, several YouTube channels have it as well. Situations where they hire actors to do certain things in public and see how the people around them would react. These are called social experiments, and they are based purely on observation and experimentation.

Get a bunch of good actors and make them act out a scene in any public place. What they act out should be something that could potentially trigger emotion in others.
Make them catch attention. As soon as people start to notice them, they will begin to exhibit different behaviors, which you can then record and do further research on.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adrian Miller has an MSc in Business and Management from the University of Nottingham, and is one of the most competent academic consultants in his field. He likes to read and write poetry in his free time and provides law assignment help on his weekly online blog as well.