empirical research articles definition

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How to Recognize Empirical Journal Articles

Definition of an empirical study:  An empirical research article reports the results of a study that uses data derived from actual observation or experimentation. Empirical research articles are examples of primary research.

Parts of a standard empirical research article:  (articles will not necessary use the exact terms listed below.)

• Abstract  ... A paragraph length description of what the study includes.
• Introduction ...Includes a statement of the hypotheses for the research and a review of other research on the topic.
• Who are participants
• Design of the study
• What the participants did
• What measures were used
• Results ...Describes the outcomes of the measures of the study.
• Discussion ...Contains the interpretations and implications of the study.
• References ...Contains citation information on the material cited in the report. (also called bibliography or works cited)

Characteristics of an Empirical Article:

• Empirical articles will include charts, graphs, or statistical analysis.
• Empirical research articles are usually substantial, maybe from 8-30 pages long.
• There is always a bibliography found at the end of the article.

Type of publications that publish empirical studies:

• Empirical research articles are published in scholarly or academic journals
• These journals are also called “peer-reviewed,” or “refereed” publications.

Examples of such publications include:

• American Educational Research Journal
• Computers & Education
• Journal of Educational Psychology

Databases that contain empirical research:  (selected list only)

• List of other useful databases by subject area

This page is adapted from Eric Karkhoff's  Sociology Research Guide: Identify Empirical Articles page (Cal State Fullerton Pollak Library).

Sample Empirical Articles

Roschelle, J., Feng, M., Murphy, R. F., & Mason, C. A. (2016). Online Mathematics Homework Increases Student Achievement. AERA Open .  ( L INK TO ARTICLE )

Lester, J., Yamanaka, A., & Struthers, B. (2016). Gender microaggressions and learning environments: The role of physical space in teaching pedagogy and communication.  Community College Journal of Research and Practice , 40(11), 909-926. ( LINK TO ARTICLE )

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Identifying Empirical Research Articles

Identifying empirical articles.

• Searching for Empirical Research Articles

What is Empirical Research?

An empirical research article reports the results of a study that uses data derived from actual observation or experimentation. Empirical research articles are examples of primary research. To learn more about the differences between primary and secondary research, see our related guide:

• Primary and Secondary Sources

By the end of this guide, you will be able to:

• Identify common elements of an empirical article
• Use a variety of search strategies to search for empirical articles within the library collection

Look for the  IMRaD  layout in the article to help identify empirical research. Sometimes the sections will be labeled differently, but the content will be similar. 

• I ntroduction: why the article was written, research question or questions, hypothesis, literature review
• M ethods: the overall research design and implementation, description of sample, instruments used, how the authors measured their experiment
• R esults: output of the author's measurements, usually includes statistics of the author's findings
• D iscussion: the author's interpretation and conclusions about the results, limitations of study, suggestions for further research

Parts of an Empirical Research Article

Parts of an empirical article.

The screenshots below identify the basic IMRaD structure of an empirical research article. 

Introduction

The introduction contains a literature review and the study's research hypothesis.

The method section outlines the research design, participants, and measures used.

Results 

The results section contains statistical data (charts, graphs, tables, etc.) and research participant quotes.

The discussion section includes impacts, limitations, future considerations, and research.

Learn the IMRaD Layout: How to Identify an Empirical Article

This short video overviews the IMRaD method for identifying empirical research.

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Empirical research in the social sciences and education.

• What is Empirical Research and How to Read It
• Finding Empirical Research in Library Databases
• Designing Empirical Research
• Ethics, Cultural Responsiveness, and Anti-Racism in Research
• Citing, Writing, and Presenting Your Work

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Introduction: What is Empirical Research?

Empirical research is based on observed and measured phenomena and derives knowledge from actual experience rather than from theory or belief. 

How do you know if a study is empirical? Read the subheadings within the article, book, or report and look for a description of the research "methodology."  Ask yourself: Could I recreate this study and test these results?

Key characteristics to look for:

• Specific research questions to be answered
• Definition of the population, behavior, or phenomena being studied
• Description of the process used to study this population or phenomena, including selection criteria, controls, and testing instruments (such as surveys)

Another hint: some scholarly journals use a specific layout, called the "IMRaD" format, to communicate empirical research findings. Such articles typically have 4 components:

• Introduction: sometimes called "literature review" -- what is currently known about the topic -- usually includes a theoretical framework and/or discussion of previous studies
• Methodology: sometimes called "research design" -- how to recreate the study -- usually describes the population, research process, and analytical tools used in the present study
• Results: sometimes called "findings" -- what was learned through the study -- usually appears as statistical data or as substantial quotations from research participants
• Discussion: sometimes called "conclusion" or "implications" -- why the study is important -- usually describes how the research results influence professional practices or future studies

Reading and Evaluating Scholarly Materials

Reading research can be a challenge. However, the tutorials and videos below can help. They explain what scholarly articles look like, how to read them, and how to evaluate them:

• CRAAP Checklist A frequently-used checklist that helps you examine the currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose of an information source.
• IF I APPLY A newer model of evaluating sources which encourages you to think about your own biases as a reader, as well as concerns about the item you are reading.
• Credo Video: How to Read Scholarly Materials (4 min.)
• Credo Tutorial: How to Read Scholarly Materials
• Credo Tutorial: Evaluating Information
• Credo Video: Evaluating Statistics (4 min.)
• Credo Tutorial: Evaluating for Diverse Points of View
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What is a Literature Review--YouTube

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• The Literature Review:a few steps on conducting it Permission granted from Writing at the University of Toronto
• Six steps for writing a literature review This blog, written by Tanya Golash-Bozal PhD an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California at Merced, offers a very nice and simple advice on how to write a literature review from the point of view of an experience professional.
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• Literature Reviews Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand produced this guide and in my opinion, it is one of the best. NOTE: Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. However, all images and Otago Polytechnic videos are copyrighted.

What Are Empirical Articles?

As a student at the University of La Verne, faculty may instruct you to read and analyze empirical articles when writing a research paper, a senior or master's project, or a doctoral dissertation. How can you recognize an empirical article in an academic discipline? An empirical research article is an article which reports research based on actual observations or experiments. The research may use quantitative research methods, which generate numerical data and seek to establish causal relationships between two or more variables.(1) Empirical research articles may use qualitative research methods, which objectively and critically analyze behaviors, beliefs, feelings, or values with few or no numerical data available for analysis.(2)

How can I determine if I have found an empirical article?

When looking at an article or the abstract of an article, here are some guidelines to use to decide if an article is an empirical article.

• Is the article published in an academic, scholarly, or professional journal? Popular magazines such as Business Week or Newsweek do not publish empirical research articles; academic journals such as Business Communication Quarterly or Journal of Psychology may publish empirical articles. Some professional journals, such as JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association publish empirical research. Other professional journals, such as Coach & Athletic Director publish articles of professional interest, but they do not publish research articles.
• Does the abstract of the article mention a study, an observation, an analysis or a number of participants or subjects? Was data collected, a survey or questionnaire administered, an assessment or measurement used, an interview conducted? All of these terms indicate possible methodologies used in empirical research.
• Introduction -The introduction provides a very brief summary of the research.
• Methodology -The method section describes how the research was conducted, including who the participants were, the design of the study, what the participants did, and what measures were used.
• Results -The results section describes the outcomes of the measures of the study.
• Discussion -The discussion section contains the interpretations and implications of the study.
• Conclusion -
• References -A reference section contains information about the articles and books cited in the report and should be substantial.
• How long is the article? An empirical article is usually substantial; it is normally seven or more pages long.

When in doubt if an article is an empirical research article, share the article citation and abstract with your professor or a librarian so that we can help you become better at recognizing the differences between empirical research and other types of scholarly articles.

How can I search for empirical research articles using the electronic databases available through Wilson Library?

• A quick and somewhat superficial way to look for empirical research is to type your search terms into the database's search boxes, then type STUDY OR STUDIES in the final search box to look for studies on your topic area. Be certain to use the ability to limit your search to scholarly/professional journals if that is available on the database. Evaluate the results of your search using the guidelines above to determine if any of the articles are empirical research articles.
• In EbscoHost databases, such as Education Source , on the Advanced Search page you should see a PUBLICATION TYPE field; highlight the appropriate entry. Empirical research may not be the term used; look for a term that may be a synonym for empirical research. ERIC uses REPORTS-RESEARCH. Also find the field for INTENDED AUDIENCE and highlight RESEARCHER. PsycArticles and Psycinfo include a field for METHODOLOGY where you can highlight EMPIRICAL STUDY. National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts has a field for DOCUMENT TYPE; highlight STUDIES/RESEARCH REPORTS. Then evaluate the articles you find using the guidelines above to determine if an article is empirical.
• In ProQuest databases, such as ProQuest Psychology Journals , on the Advanced Search page look under MORE SEARCH OPTIONS and click on the pull down menu for DOCUMENT TYPE and highlight an appropriate type, such as REPORT or EVIDENCE BASED. Also look for the SOURCE TYPE field and highlight SCHOLARLY JOURNALS. Evaluate the search results using the guidelines to determine if an article is empirical.
• Pub Med Central , Sage Premier , Science Direct , Wiley Interscience , and Wiley Interscience Humanities and Social Sciences consist of scholarly and professional journals which publish primarily empirical articles. After conducting a subject search in these databases, evaluate the items you find by using the guidelines above for deciding if an article is empirical.
• "Quantitative research" A Dictionary of Nursing. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. University of La Verne. 25 August 2009
• "Qualitative analysis" A Dictionary of Public Health. Ed. John M. Last, Oxford University Press, 2007. Oxford Reference Online . Oxford University Press. University of La Verne. 25 August 2009

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Empirical Research

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• Emeka Thaddues Njoku 2  

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The term “empirical” entails gathered data based on experience, observations, or experimentation. In empirical research, knowledge is developed from factual experience as opposed to theoretical assumption and usually involved the use of data sources like datasets or fieldwork, but can also be based on observations within a laboratory setting. Testing hypothesis or answering definite questions is a primary feature of empirical research. Empirical research, in other words, involves the process of employing working hypothesis that are tested through experimentation or observation. Hence, empirical research is a method of uncovering empirical evidence.

Through the process of gathering valid empirical data, scientists from a variety of fields, ranging from the social to the natural sciences, have to carefully design their methods. This helps to ensure quality and accuracy of data collection and treatment. However, any error in empirical data collection process could inevitably render such...

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Bibliography

Bhattacherjee, A. (2012). Social science research: Principles, methods, and practices. Textbooks Collection . Book 3.

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Comte, A., & Bridges, J. H. (Tr.) (1865). A general view of positivism . Trubner and Co. (reissued by Cambridge University Press , 2009).

Dilworth, C. B. (1982). Empirical research in the literature class. English Journal, 71 (3), 95–97.

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Heisenberg, W. (1971). Positivism, metaphysics and religion. In R. N. Nanshen (Ed.), Werner Heisenberg – Physics and beyond – Encounters and conversations , World Perspectives. 42. Translator: Arnold J. Pomerans. New York: Harper and Row.

Hossain, F. M. A. (2014). A critical analysis of empiricism. Open Journal of Philosophy, 2014 (4), 225–230.

Kant, I. (1783). Prolegomena to any future metaphysic (trans: Bennett, J.). Early Modern Texts. www.earlymoderntexts.com

Koch, S. (1992). Psychology’s Bridgman vs. Bridgman’s Bridgman: An essay in reconstruction. Theory and Psychology, 2 (3), 261–290.

Matin, A. (1968). An outline of philosophy . Dhaka: Mullick Brothers.

Mcleod, S. (2008). Psychology as science. http://www.simplypsychology.org/science-psychology.html

Popper, K. (1963). Conjectures and refutations: The growth of scientific knowledge . London: Routledge.

Simmel, G. (1908). The problem areas of sociology in Kurt H. Wolf: The sociology of Georg Simmel . London: The Free Press.

Weber, M. (1991). The nature of social action. In W. G. Runciman (Ed.), Weber: Selections in translation . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Njoku, E.T. (2017). Empirical Research. In: Leeming, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27771-9_200051-1

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• Introductory Video This video covers what empirical research is, what kinds of questions and methods empirical researchers use, and some tips for finding empirical research articles in your discipline.

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An empirical research article is a primary source where the authors reported on experiments or observations that they conducted. Their research includes their observed and measured data that they derived from an actual experiment rather than theory or belief. 

How do you know if you are reading an empirical article? Ask yourself: "What did the authors actually do?" or "How could this study be re-created?"

Key characteristics to look for:

• Specific research questions  to be answered
• Definition of the  population, behavior, or phenomena  being studied
• Description of the  process or methodology  used to study this population or phenomena, including selection criteria, controls, and testing instruments (example: surveys, questionnaires, etc)
• You can readily describe what the  authors actually did 

Layout of Empirical Articles

Scholarly journals sometimes use a specific layout for empirical articles, called the "IMRaD" format, to communicate empirical research findings. There are four main components:

• Introduction : aka "literature review". This section summarizes what is known about the topic at the time of the article's publication. It brings the reader up-to-speed on the research and usually includes a theoretical framework 
• Methodology : aka "research design". This section describes exactly how the study was done. It describes the population, research process, and analytical tools
• Results : aka "findings". This section describes what was learned in the study. It usually contains statistical data or substantial quotes from research participants
• Discussion : aka "conclusion" or "implications". This section explains why the study is important, and also describes the limitations of the study. While research results can influence professional practices and future studies, it's important for the researchers to clarify if specific aspects of the study should limit its use. For example, a study using undergraduate students at a small, western, private college can not be extrapolated to include  all  undergraduates. 
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What is an Empirical Article?

An empirical research article reports research based on actual observation or experiment. The research may use quantitative or qualitative research methods. 

Quantitative Research uses numerical data to try to establish causal relationships between variables (“Based on 100 interactions, A causes B.”) 

Qualitative Research objectively and critically analyzes behaviors, beliefs, feelings, or other values (“People suffering from Illness A tend to be more cautious.”)

How to Identify an Empirical Article

What type of source is your article published in?

Popular Magazines ( Time , People , Psychology Today , WebMD , etc.): usually NOT empirical

Journals (Academic, Scholarly, Peer-reviewed, Professional): sometimes YES

An abstract is a brief summary or overview of the article. Abstracts for empirical research articles:

May describe a study, observation, or analysis 

May mention participants or subjects, data, surveys, questionnaires, assessments, interviews, or other measurements 

Empirical articles (and scholarly articles in general) are usually at least 5 pages (often up to 20 pages long).

Article Sections

Empirical articles may include headings or subheadings for sections such as:

Introduction

Literature Review 

Methodology or Methods

Data & Analysis

Empirical research articles often include some sort of (quantitative and/or qualitative) data. This may be included in the article as charts, tables, graphs, or appendices.

Note: If you are not sure if an article is an empirical research article, share the article citation and abstract with your professor. This can help you to become better at recognizing the differences between empirical research and other types of scholarly articles, and also ensures your article is acceptable for the assignment.

• Empirical Research Printable handout with tips for searching for and identifying empirical research.

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Empirical Research: Definition, Methods, Types and Examples

Content Index

Empirical research: Definition

Empirical research: origin, quantitative research methods, qualitative research methods, steps for conducting empirical research, empirical research methodology cycle, advantages of empirical research, disadvantages of empirical research, why is there a need for empirical research.

Empirical research is defined as any research where conclusions of the study is strictly drawn from concretely empirical evidence, and therefore “verifiable” evidence.

This empirical evidence can be gathered using quantitative market research and  qualitative market research  methods.

For example: A research is being conducted to find out if listening to happy music in the workplace while working may promote creativity? An experiment is conducted by using a music website survey on a set of audience who are exposed to happy music and another set who are not listening to music at all, and the subjects are then observed. The results derived from such a research will give empirical evidence if it does promote creativity or not.

LEARN ABOUT: Behavioral Research

You must have heard the quote” I will not believe it unless I see it”. This came from the ancient empiricists, a fundamental understanding that powered the emergence of medieval science during the renaissance period and laid the foundation of modern science, as we know it today. The word itself has its roots in greek. It is derived from the greek word empeirikos which means “experienced”.

In today’s world, the word empirical refers to collection of data using evidence that is collected through observation or experience or by using calibrated scientific instruments. All of the above origins have one thing in common which is dependence of observation and experiments to collect data and test them to come up with conclusions.

LEARN ABOUT: Causal Research

Types and methodologies of empirical research

Empirical research can be conducted and analysed using qualitative or quantitative methods.

• Quantitative research : Quantitative research methods are used to gather information through numerical data. It is used to quantify opinions, behaviors or other defined variables . These are predetermined and are in a more structured format. Some of the commonly used methods are survey, longitudinal studies, polls, etc
• Qualitative research:   Qualitative research methods are used to gather non numerical data.  It is used to find meanings, opinions, or the underlying reasons from its subjects. These methods are unstructured or semi structured. The sample size for such a research is usually small and it is a conversational type of method to provide more insight or in-depth information about the problem Some of the most popular forms of methods are focus groups, experiments, interviews, etc.

Data collected from these will need to be analysed. Empirical evidence can also be analysed either quantitatively and qualitatively. Using this, the researcher can answer empirical questions which have to be clearly defined and answerable with the findings he has got. The type of research design used will vary depending on the field in which it is going to be used. Many of them might choose to do a collective research involving quantitative and qualitative method to better answer questions which cannot be studied in a laboratory setting.

LEARN ABOUT: Qualitative Research Questions and Questionnaires

Quantitative research methods aid in analyzing the empirical evidence gathered. By using these a researcher can find out if his hypothesis is supported or not.

• Survey research: Survey research generally involves a large audience to collect a large amount of data. This is a quantitative method having a predetermined set of closed questions which are pretty easy to answer. Because of the simplicity of such a method, high responses are achieved. It is one of the most commonly used methods for all kinds of research in today’s world.

Previously, surveys were taken face to face only with maybe a recorder. However, with advancement in technology and for ease, new mediums such as emails , or social media have emerged.

For example: Depletion of energy resources is a growing concern and hence there is a need for awareness about renewable energy. According to recent studies, fossil fuels still account for around 80% of energy consumption in the United States. Even though there is a rise in the use of green energy every year, there are certain parameters because of which the general population is still not opting for green energy. In order to understand why, a survey can be conducted to gather opinions of the general population about green energy and the factors that influence their choice of switching to renewable energy. Such a survey can help institutions or governing bodies to promote appropriate awareness and incentive schemes to push the use of greener energy.

Learn more: Renewable Energy Survey Template Descriptive Research vs Correlational Research

• Experimental research: In experimental research , an experiment is set up and a hypothesis is tested by creating a situation in which one of the variable is manipulated. This is also used to check cause and effect. It is tested to see what happens to the independent variable if the other one is removed or altered. The process for such a method is usually proposing a hypothesis, experimenting on it, analyzing the findings and reporting the findings to understand if it supports the theory or not.

For example: A particular product company is trying to find what is the reason for them to not be able to capture the market. So the organisation makes changes in each one of the processes like manufacturing, marketing, sales and operations. Through the experiment they understand that sales training directly impacts the market coverage for their product. If the person is trained well, then the product will have better coverage.

• Correlational research: Correlational research is used to find relation between two set of variables . Regression analysis is generally used to predict outcomes of such a method. It can be positive, negative or neutral correlation.

LEARN ABOUT: Level of Analysis

For example: Higher educated individuals will get higher paying jobs. This means higher education enables the individual to high paying job and less education will lead to lower paying jobs.

• Longitudinal study: Longitudinal study is used to understand the traits or behavior of a subject under observation after repeatedly testing the subject over a period of time. Data collected from such a method can be qualitative or quantitative in nature.

For example: A research to find out benefits of exercise. The target is asked to exercise everyday for a particular period of time and the results show higher endurance, stamina, and muscle growth. This supports the fact that exercise benefits an individual body.

• Cross sectional: Cross sectional study is an observational type of method, in which a set of audience is observed at a given point in time. In this type, the set of people are chosen in a fashion which depicts similarity in all the variables except the one which is being researched. This type does not enable the researcher to establish a cause and effect relationship as it is not observed for a continuous time period. It is majorly used by healthcare sector or the retail industry.

For example: A medical study to find the prevalence of under-nutrition disorders in kids of a given population. This will involve looking at a wide range of parameters like age, ethnicity, location, incomes  and social backgrounds. If a significant number of kids coming from poor families show under-nutrition disorders, the researcher can further investigate into it. Usually a cross sectional study is followed by a longitudinal study to find out the exact reason.

• Causal-Comparative research : This method is based on comparison. It is mainly used to find out cause-effect relationship between two variables or even multiple variables.

For example: A researcher measured the productivity of employees in a company which gave breaks to the employees during work and compared that to the employees of the company which did not give breaks at all.

LEARN ABOUT: Action Research

Some research questions need to be analysed qualitatively, as quantitative methods are not applicable there. In many cases, in-depth information is needed or a researcher may need to observe a target audience behavior, hence the results needed are in a descriptive analysis form. Qualitative research results will be descriptive rather than predictive. It enables the researcher to build or support theories for future potential quantitative research. In such a situation qualitative research methods are used to derive a conclusion to support the theory or hypothesis being studied.

LEARN ABOUT: Qualitative Interview

• Case study: Case study method is used to find more information through carefully analyzing existing cases. It is very often used for business research or to gather empirical evidence for investigation purpose. It is a method to investigate a problem within its real life context through existing cases. The researcher has to carefully analyse making sure the parameter and variables in the existing case are the same as to the case that is being investigated. Using the findings from the case study, conclusions can be drawn regarding the topic that is being studied.

For example: A report mentioning the solution provided by a company to its client. The challenges they faced during initiation and deployment, the findings of the case and solutions they offered for the problems. Such case studies are used by most companies as it forms an empirical evidence for the company to promote in order to get more business.

• Observational method:   Observational method is a process to observe and gather data from its target. Since it is a qualitative method it is time consuming and very personal. It can be said that observational research method is a part of ethnographic research which is also used to gather empirical evidence. This is usually a qualitative form of research, however in some cases it can be quantitative as well depending on what is being studied.

For example: setting up a research to observe a particular animal in the rain-forests of amazon. Such a research usually take a lot of time as observation has to be done for a set amount of time to study patterns or behavior of the subject. Another example used widely nowadays is to observe people shopping in a mall to figure out buying behavior of consumers.

• One-on-one interview: Such a method is purely qualitative and one of the most widely used. The reason being it enables a researcher get precise meaningful data if the right questions are asked. It is a conversational method where in-depth data can be gathered depending on where the conversation leads.

For example: A one-on-one interview with the finance minister to gather data on financial policies of the country and its implications on the public.

• Focus groups: Focus groups are used when a researcher wants to find answers to why, what and how questions. A small group is generally chosen for such a method and it is not necessary to interact with the group in person. A moderator is generally needed in case the group is being addressed in person. This is widely used by product companies to collect data about their brands and the product.

For example: A mobile phone manufacturer wanting to have a feedback on the dimensions of one of their models which is yet to be launched. Such studies help the company meet the demand of the customer and position their model appropriately in the market.

• Text analysis: Text analysis method is a little new compared to the other types. Such a method is used to analyse social life by going through images or words used by the individual. In today’s world, with social media playing a major part of everyone’s life, such a method enables the research to follow the pattern that relates to his study.

For example: A lot of companies ask for feedback from the customer in detail mentioning how satisfied are they with their customer support team. Such data enables the researcher to take appropriate decisions to make their support team better.

Sometimes a combination of the methods is also needed for some questions that cannot be answered using only one type of method especially when a researcher needs to gain a complete understanding of complex subject matter.

We recently published a blog that talks about examples of qualitative data in education ; why don’t you check it out for more ideas?

Learn More: Data Collection Methods: Types & Examples

Since empirical research is based on observation and capturing experiences, it is important to plan the steps to conduct the experiment and how to analyse it. This will enable the researcher to resolve problems or obstacles which can occur during the experiment.

Step #1: Define the purpose of the research

This is the step where the researcher has to answer questions like what exactly do I want to find out? What is the problem statement? Are there any issues in terms of the availability of knowledge, data, time or resources. Will this research be more beneficial than what it will cost.

Before going ahead, a researcher has to clearly define his purpose for the research and set up a plan to carry out further tasks.

Step #2 : Supporting theories and relevant literature

The researcher needs to find out if there are theories which can be linked to his research problem . He has to figure out if any theory can help him support his findings. All kind of relevant literature will help the researcher to find if there are others who have researched this before, or what are the problems faced during this research. The researcher will also have to set up assumptions and also find out if there is any history regarding his research problem

Step #3: Creation of Hypothesis and measurement

Before beginning the actual research he needs to provide himself a working hypothesis or guess what will be the probable result. Researcher has to set up variables, decide the environment for the research and find out how can he relate between the variables.

Researcher will also need to define the units of measurements, tolerable degree for errors, and find out if the measurement chosen will be acceptable by others.

Step #4: Methodology, research design and data collection

In this step, the researcher has to define a strategy for conducting his research. He has to set up experiments to collect data which will enable him to propose the hypothesis. The researcher will decide whether he will need experimental or non experimental method for conducting the research. The type of research design will vary depending on the field in which the research is being conducted. Last but not the least, the researcher will have to find out parameters that will affect the validity of the research design. Data collection will need to be done by choosing appropriate samples depending on the research question. To carry out the research, he can use one of the many sampling techniques. Once data collection is complete, researcher will have empirical data which needs to be analysed.

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Step #5: Data Analysis and result

Data analysis can be done in two ways, qualitatively and quantitatively. Researcher will need to find out what qualitative method or quantitative method will be needed or will he need a combination of both. Depending on the unit of analysis of his data, he will know if his hypothesis is supported or rejected. Analyzing this data is the most important part to support his hypothesis.

Step #6: Conclusion

A report will need to be made with the findings of the research. The researcher can give the theories and literature that support his research. He can make suggestions or recommendations for further research on his topic.

A.D. de Groot, a famous dutch psychologist and a chess expert conducted some of the most notable experiments using chess in the 1940’s. During his study, he came up with a cycle which is consistent and now widely used to conduct empirical research. It consists of 5 phases with each phase being as important as the next one. The empirical cycle captures the process of coming up with hypothesis about how certain subjects work or behave and then testing these hypothesis against empirical data in a systematic and rigorous approach. It can be said that it characterizes the deductive approach to science. Following is the empirical cycle.

• Observation: At this phase an idea is sparked for proposing a hypothesis. During this phase empirical data is gathered using observation. For example: a particular species of flower bloom in a different color only during a specific season.
• Induction: Inductive reasoning is then carried out to form a general conclusion from the data gathered through observation. For example: As stated above it is observed that the species of flower blooms in a different color during a specific season. A researcher may ask a question “does the temperature in the season cause the color change in the flower?” He can assume that is the case, however it is a mere conjecture and hence an experiment needs to be set up to support this hypothesis. So he tags a few set of flowers kept at a different temperature and observes if they still change the color?
• Deduction: This phase helps the researcher to deduce a conclusion out of his experiment. This has to be based on logic and rationality to come up with specific unbiased results.For example: In the experiment, if the tagged flowers in a different temperature environment do not change the color then it can be concluded that temperature plays a role in changing the color of the bloom.
• Testing: This phase involves the researcher to return to empirical methods to put his hypothesis to the test. The researcher now needs to make sense of his data and hence needs to use statistical analysis plans to determine the temperature and bloom color relationship. If the researcher finds out that most flowers bloom a different color when exposed to the certain temperature and the others do not when the temperature is different, he has found support to his hypothesis. Please note this not proof but just a support to his hypothesis.
• Evaluation: This phase is generally forgotten by most but is an important one to keep gaining knowledge. During this phase the researcher puts forth the data he has collected, the support argument and his conclusion. The researcher also states the limitations for the experiment and his hypothesis and suggests tips for others to pick it up and continue a more in-depth research for others in the future. LEARN MORE: Population vs Sample

LEARN MORE: Population vs Sample

There is a reason why empirical research is one of the most widely used method. There are a few advantages associated with it. Following are a few of them.

• It is used to authenticate traditional research through various experiments and observations.
• This research methodology makes the research being conducted more competent and authentic.
• It enables a researcher understand the dynamic changes that can happen and change his strategy accordingly.
• The level of control in such a research is high so the researcher can control multiple variables.
• It plays a vital role in increasing internal validity .

Even though empirical research makes the research more competent and authentic, it does have a few disadvantages. Following are a few of them.

• Such a research needs patience as it can be very time consuming. The researcher has to collect data from multiple sources and the parameters involved are quite a few, which will lead to a time consuming research.
• Most of the time, a researcher will need to conduct research at different locations or in different environments, this can lead to an expensive affair.
• There are a few rules in which experiments can be performed and hence permissions are needed. Many a times, it is very difficult to get certain permissions to carry out different methods of this research.
• Collection of data can be a problem sometimes, as it has to be collected from a variety of sources through different methods.

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Empirical research is important in today’s world because most people believe in something only that they can see, hear or experience. It is used to validate multiple hypothesis and increase human knowledge and continue doing it to keep advancing in various fields.

For example: Pharmaceutical companies use empirical research to try out a specific drug on controlled groups or random groups to study the effect and cause. This way, they prove certain theories they had proposed for the specific drug. Such research is very important as sometimes it can lead to finding a cure for a disease that has existed for many years. It is useful in science and many other fields like history, social sciences, business, etc.

LEARN ABOUT: 12 Best Tools for Researchers

With the advancement in today’s world, empirical research has become critical and a norm in many fields to support their hypothesis and gain more knowledge. The methods mentioned above are very useful for carrying out such research. However, a number of new methods will keep coming up as the nature of new investigative questions keeps getting unique or changing.

Create a single source of real data with a built-for-insights platform. Store past data, add nuggets of insights, and import research data from various sources into a CRM for insights. Build on ever-growing research with a real-time dashboard in a unified research management platform to turn insights into knowledge.

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PSYC 200 Lab in Experimental Methods (Atlanta)

• Find Research Articles

Empirical vs. Review Articles

How to recognize empirical journal articles, scholarly vs. non-scholarly sources.

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Know the difference between empirical and review articles.

Empirical article An empirical (research) article reports methods and findings of an original research study conducted by the authors of the article.  

Literature Review article A review article or "literature review" discusses past research studies on a given topic.

Definition of an empirical study:  An empirical research article reports the results of a study that uses data derived from actual observation or experimentation. Empirical research articles are examples of primary research.

Parts of a standard empirical research article:  (articles will not necessary use the exact terms listed below.)

• Abstract  ... A paragraph length description of what the study includes.
• Introduction ...Includes a statement of the hypotheses for the research and a review of other research on the topic.
• Who are participants
• Design of the study
• What the participants did
• What measures were used
• Results ...Describes the outcomes of the measures of the study.
• Discussion ...Contains the interpretations and implications of the study.
• References ...Contains citation information on the material cited in the report. (also called bibliography or works cited)

Characteristics of an Empirical Article:

• Empirical articles will include charts, graphs, or statistical analysis.
• Empirical research articles are usually substantial, maybe from 8-30 pages long.
• There is always a bibliography found at the end of the article.

Type of publications that publish empirical studies:

• Empirical research articles are published in scholarly or academic journals
• These journals are also called “peer-reviewed,” or “refereed” publications.

Examples of such publications include:

• Computers in Human Behavior
• Journal of Educational Psychology

Examples of databases that contain empirical research:  (selected list only)

• Web of Science

This page is adapted from the Sociology Research Guide: Identify Empirical Articles page at Cal State Fullerton Pollak Library.

Know the difference between scholarly and non-scholarly articles.

"Scholarly" journal = "Peer-Reviewed" journal = "Refereed" journal

When researching your topic, you may come across many different types of sources and articles. When evaluating these sources, it is important to think about: 

• Who is the author? 
• Who is the audience or why was this written? 
• Where was this published? 
• Is this relevant to your research? 
• When was this written? Has it been updated? 
• Are there any citations? Who do they cite?  

Helpful Links and Guides

Here are helpful links and guides to check out for more information on scholarly sources: 

• This database contains data on different types of serials and can be used to determine whether a periodical is peer-reviewed or not:  Ulrich's Periodicals Directory  
• The UC Berkeley Library published this useful guide on evaluating resources, including the differences between scholarly and popular sources, as well as how to find primary sources:  UC Berkeley's Evaluating Resources LibGuide
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Q. What is an empirical article?

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Answered By: Trenia Napier Last Updated: May 08, 2023     Views: 4283

What are empirical research articles.

Empirical Research is defined as research based on observed and measured phenomena.  It is research that derives knowledge from actual experience rather than from theory or belief.

Requests for "Empirical" articles are usually from instructors in Education or Psychology; most other disciplines will ask for Scholarly, Peer Reviewed or Primary literature.

See if the article mentions a study, an observation, an analysis or a number of participants or subjects. Was data collected, a survey or questionnaire administered, an assessment or measurement used, an interview conducted? All of these terms indicate possible methodologies used in empirical research.

 Empirical articles often contain these sections:

• Introduction
• Literature review
• Methodology

The sections may be combined, and may have different headings or no headings at all; however, the information that would fall within these sections should be present in an empirical article.

Try using the Methodology limiter in PsycINFO or PscyhARTICLES to find empirical research articles.

After entering search terms in boxes at top of screen, scroll down to Methodology and select: Empirical Study.

Note there are subsets of Empirical Study that may be helpful to you.

Try using specific keywords in other library databases.

When using other databases, such as Academic Search Ultimate or Education Research Complete, try entering your search terms and then paste this string of terms into another search box:

study OR methodology OR subjects OR data OR results OR findings OR discussion

and change the pull down to "Abstract".

Look over the articles you get from searches carefully. The final determination of whether or not a particular article is empirical is a judgment that you must make. Also, some of the search devices mentioned here may not retrieve all of the empirical articles for a given topic.

This FAQ answer is based on Cal Poly Poloma Library's FAQ "My instructor said that I needed to find "Empirical" articles. What should I do? " and Empirical Journal Articles: How to Find Articles that Report Empirical Studies (Cal State Fullerton) original version | new version and What is an Empirical Article? (Univ of LaVerne)

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Nursing: Searching for Empirical Articles

• Reading Scholarly Articles
• Searching for Empirical Articles
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• Systematic Reviews
• Grey Literature
• Writing a Literature Review
• Searching for US Research
• Annotated Bibliography vs. Literature Review
• Writing Help

What is Empirical Research?

Empirical research  is conducted based on observed and measured phenomena and derives knowledge from actual experience, rather than from theory or belief.  Empirical research articles are examples of primary research.

How do you know if a study is empirical?

Read the subheadings within the article, book, or report and look for a description of the research methodology.  Ask yourself: Could I recreate this study and test these results?

Key characteristics to look for:

• Specific research questions  to be answered
• Definition of the  population, behavior, or   phenomena  being studied
• Description of the  process  used to study this population or phenomena, including selection criteria, controls, and testing instruments (such as surveys)
• The article abstract  mentions a study, observation, analysis, # of participants/subjects .
• The article includes  charts ,  graphs , or  statistical analysis .
• The article is substantial in size, likely to be  more than 5 pages  long.
• The article contains the following sections (the exact terms may vary): abstract, introduction, methodology , results , discussion, references.
• Empirical research is often (but not always) published in peer-reviewed academic journals.

Finding Empirical Research in the Databases

Most databases will not have a simple way to only look at empirical research. In the window below are some suggestions for specific databases, but here are some good rules of thumb to follow:

Search subject-specific databases - Multipurpose databases can definitely contain empirical research, but it's almost always easier to use the databases devoted to your topic, which should have more topical results and will respond better to your keywords.

Select "Peer-reviewed Journals" - Not all empirical research is published in academic journals. Grey literature is a great place to search, particularly in the health sciences. However, grey literature can be difficult to identify, so it is recommended to search the databases until you are more comfortable identifying empirical literature.

Check the abstract / methods - Most articles will not have the phrase "empirical research" in their title, or even in the whole article. A better place to get an idea of what the article contains is by looking at the abstract and the methods section. In the abstract, there will usually be a description of what was done in the article. If there isn't, look in the methods. Ideally, you can get an idea of whether original research is being conducted or if it's reviewing it from other sources.

Consider your keywords - Think about what types of methods are used in empirical research and incorporate those into your keywords. or example, searching for "sleep loss" will certainly bring back many articles about that subject, but "sleep loss and study" might yield some results describing studies being conducted on sleep loss.

The box to the right features some typical methods of conducting empirical research that you might consider including in your search terms.

Empirical research search terms

• observation
• questionnaire
• participants

Specific database examples

• CINAHL Plus
• APA PsychINFO
• Science Direct
• Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts
• CINAHL Complete This link opens in a new window CINAHL, the Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature, is a comprehensive research tool for nursing, allied health, public health, biomedicine, and related fields. It provides indexing for articles from 5,400 journals in the fields of nursing and allied health. This database provides full text access to more than 1,300 journals dating back to 1937.
• Use the "Advanced Search"
• Type your keywords into the search boxes
• Below the search windows, check off "Evidence-Based Practice" in the "Special Interests" menu
• Choose other limits, such as published date, if needed
• Click on the "Search" button
• Empirical Research
• Experimental Studies
• Nonexperimental Studies
• Qualitative Studies
• Quantitative Studies
• PubMed This link opens in a new window A comprehensive index to biomedical and life sciences journals with citations to over 18 million articles back to 1948. Note: To limit to full-text articles, search PUBMED CENTRAL.

There are 2 ways to find empirical articles in PubMed:

One technique is to limit your search results after you perform a search:

• Type in your keywords and click on the "Search" button
• To the left of your results, under "Article Types," click on "Customize"
• Choose the types of studies that interest you, and click on the "Show" button

Another alternative is to construct a more sophisticated search:

• From PubMed's main screen, click on "Advanced" link underneath the search box
• On the Advance Search Builder screen type your keywords into the search boxes
• Change one of the empty boxes from "All Fields" to "Publication Type"
• To the right of Publication Type, click on "Show Index List" and choose a methodology that interests you. You can choose more than one by holding down the "Ctrl" or "⌘" on your keyboard as you click on each methodology
• APA PsycINFO This link opens in a new window Available via EBSCO. The American Psychological Associations (APA) notable database for locating abstracts of scholarly journal articles, book chapters, books, and dissertations. This resource is the largest of its kind dedicated to peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health, and it also includes information about the psychological aspects of related fields such as medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, technology, linguistics, anthropology, business, and law. Material is drawn from over 2,000 periodicals in more than 20 languages.

To find empirical articles in PsycINFO:

• Scroll down the page to "Methodology," and choose "Empirical Study." There are more specific methodologies below.
• Choose other limits, such as publication date, if needed

To find empirical articles in ScienceDirect:

• Click on "Advanced Search" to the right of the search windows
• On next page, click on "Show all fields"
• Under "Article Types," select "Research Articles," or any other type of article which might be helpful.
• Slick Search
• Case Studies
• Qualitative Analysis
• Quantitative Analysis
• Statistical Analysis
• ERIC This link opens in a new window Abstracts (and in some cases, full-text) articles, reports, book reviews and government documents covering all aspects of education from 1966 to the present
• Action Research
• Ethnography
• Evaluation Methods
• Evaluation Research
• Experiments
• Focus Groups
• Field Studies
• Mail Surveys
• Mixed Methods Research
• Naturalistic Observation
• Online Surveys
• Participant Observation
• Participatory Research
• Qualitative Research
• Questionnaires
• Statistical Studies
• Telephone Surveys

Empirical Articles - Sample Research Tips -- CAS & PSYC 101 / PSYC 341 IN-PERSON & ONLINE -- ACCESSIBLE VERSION

This  guide  helps to identify the major parts of an empirical article and covers sample strategies for locating them through databases such as  APA PsycInfo  and  ERIC . There are also general tips applicable to other databases.

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Writing Empirical Articles: Transparency, Reproducibility, Clarity, and Memorability

Morton Ann Gernsbacher

Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin–Madison

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0397-3329

This article provides recommendations for writing empirical journal articles that enable transparency, reproducibility, clarity, and memorability. Recommendations for transparency include preregistering methods, hypotheses, and analyses; submitting registered reports; distinguishing confirmation from exploration; and showing your warts. Recommendations for reproducibility include documenting methods and results fully and cohesively, by taking advantage of open-−science tools, and citing sources responsibly. Recommendations for clarity include writing short paragraphs, composed of short sentences; writing comprehensive abstracts; and seeking feedback from a naive audience. Recommendations for memorability include writing narratively; embracing the hourglass shape of empirical articles; beginning articles with a hook; and synthesizing, rather than Mad Libbing, previous literature.

They began three and a half centuries ago ( Wells, 1998 ). Since then, they’ve been written and read; cited, abstracted, and extracted; paywalled and unpaywalled; pre-printed and reprinted. They arose as correspondences between pairs of scientists ( Kronick, 1984 ), then morphed into publicly disseminated conference presentations ( Schaffner, 1994 ). By the 20th century, they’ d grown into the format we use today ( Mack, 2015 ). They are empirical journal articles, and their raison d’être was and continues to be communicating science.

Many of us baby boomers honed our empirical-article writing skills by following Bem’s (1987) how-to guide. We applied Bem’s recommendations to our own articles, and we assigned his chapter to our students and postdocs. The 2004 reprint of Bem’s chapter retains a high recommendation from the American Psychological Association (2010) in its “Guide for New Authors”; it appears in scores of graduate and undergraduate course syllabi ( Gernsbacher, 2017a ); and its advice is offered by numerous universities’ writing centers (e.g., Harvard College, 2008 ; Purdue Online Writing Lab, 2012 ; University of Connecticut, n.d. ; University of Minnesota, n.d. ; University of Washington, 2010 ).

However, psychological scientists have recently confronted their questionable research practices ( John, Loewenstein, & Prelec, 2012 ), many of which arise during the writing (or revising) process ( Sacco, Bruton, & Brown, 2018 ). Questionable research practices include

• failing to report all the studies conducted, conditions manipulated, participants tested, data collected, or other “researcher degrees of freedom” ( Simmons, Nelson, & Simonsohn, 2011 , p. 1359);
• fishing through statistical analyses to report only those meeting a certain level of statistical significance, which is a practice known as p -hacking ( Simonsohn, Nelson, & Simmons, 2014 );
• reporting an unpredicted result as though it had been hypothesized all along, which is a practice known as hypothesizing after the results are known (often referred to as HARKing; Kerr, 1998 ); and
• promising that the reported results bear implications beyond the populations sampled or materials and tasks administered ( Simons, Shoda, & Lindsay, 2017 ).

Unfortunately, some of these questionable reporting practices seem to be sanctioned in Bem’s how-to guide ( Devlin, 2017 ; Vazire, 2014 ). For example, Bem’s chapter seems to encourage authors to p -hack their data. Authors are advised to

examine [your data] from every angle. Analyze the sexes separately. Make up new composite indexes. If a datum suggests a new hypothesis, try to find additional evidence for it elsewhere in the data. If you see dim traces of interesting patterns, try to reorganize the data to bring them into bolder relief. If there are participants you don’t like, or trials, observers, or interviewers who gave you anomalous results, drop them (temporarily). Go on a fishing expedition for something — anything — interesting ( Bem, 1987 , p. 172; Bem, 2004 , pp. 186–187).

Bem’s chapter has also been interpreted as encouraging authors to hypothesize after the results are known ( Wagenmakers, Wetzels, Borsboom, & van der Maas, 2011 ). After acknowledging “there are two possible articles you can write: (a) the article you planned to write when you designed your study or (b) the article that makes the most sense now that you have seen the results,” Bem noted the two potential articles “are rarely the same” and directed authors to write the latter article by “recentering your article around the new findings and subordinating or even ignoring your original hypotheses” ( Bem, 1987 , pp. 171—173; Bem, 2004 , pp. 186–187).

This article provides recommendations for writing empirical journal articles that communicate research processes and products transparently with enough detail to allow replication and reproducibility. 1 Like Bem’s chapter, this article also provides recommendations for writing empirical articles that are clear and memorable.

Open materials for this article, which are available at https://osf.io/q3pna/ , include a list of publicly available course syllabi that mention Bem’s (1987 , 2004) “Writing the Empirical Journal Article” chapter and a tally of word and sentence counts, along with citation counts, for Clark and Clark (1939 , 1940 , 1947) , Harlow (1958) , Miller (1956) , and Tolman (1948) .

Recommendations for Transparency

Researchers write empirical journal articles to report and record why they conducted their studies, how they conducted their studies, and what they observed in their studies. The value of these archival records depends on how transparently researchers write their reports. Writing transparently, means, as the vernacular connotes, writing frankly.

Preregister your study

The best way to write transparent empirical articles is through preregistration ( Chambers et al., 2013 ). Preregistering a study involves specifying the study’s motivation, hypothesis, method, materials, sample, and analysis plan—basically everything but the results and discussion of those results—before the study is conducted.

Preregistration is a “time-stamped research plan that you can point to after conducting a study to prove to yourself and others that you really are testing a predicted relationship” (Mellor, as cited in Graf, 2017 , para.3). Indeed, most of our common statistical tests rest on the assumption that we have preregistered, or at the least previously specified, our predictions ( Wagenmakers, Wetzels, Borsboom, van der Maas, & Kievit, 2012 ).

For more than 20 years, medical journals have required preregistration for researchers conducting clinical trials ( Maxwell, Kelley, & Rausch, 2008 ). More recently, sites such as Open Science Framework and AsPredicted.org allow all types of researchers to document their preregistration, and preregistration is considered a best practice by psychologists of many stripes: cognitive ( de Groot, 2014 ), clinical ( Tackett et al., 2017 ), comparative ( Stevens, 2017 ), developmental ( Donnellan, Lucas, Fraley, & Roisman, 2013 ), social ( van 't Veerab & Giner-Sorolla, 2016 ), personality ( Asendorpf et al., 2013 ), relationship ( Campbell, Loving, & Lebelc, 2014 ), neuroscience ( Button et al., 2013 ), and neuroimaging ( Poldrack et al., 2017 ).

The benefits of preregistration are plentiful, both to our sciences and to ourselves. As Mellor noted (cited in Graf, 2017 , para. 8), “Every step that goes into a preregistration: writing the hypotheses, defining the variables, and creating statistical tests, are steps that we all have to take at some point. Making them before data collection can improve the researcher’s study design.” Misconceptions about preregistration are also plentiful. For instance, some researchers mistakenly believe that if a study is preregistered, unpredicted analyses cannot be reported; they can, but they need to be identified as exploratory (see, e.g., Neuroskeptic, 2013 ). Other researchers worry that purely exploratory research cannot be preregistered; it can, but it needs to be identified as exploratory (see, e.g., McIntosh, 2017 ). Preregistration manifests transparency and is, therefore, one of the most important steps in conducting and reporting research transparently.

Submit a registered report

A further step in writing transparent articles is to submit a registered report. Registered reports are journal articles for which both the authors’ preregistrations and their subsequent manuscripts undergo peer review. (Pre-registration outside of submission as a registered- report journal article does not require peer review, only documentation.)

Registered reports epitomize how most of us were trained to do research. For our dissertations and masters’ theses, even our senior theses, we submitted our work to review at two stages: after we designed the study (e.g., at our dissertation proposal meeting) and after we collected and analyzed the data and interpreted our results (e.g., at our final defense). The same two-stage review occurs with registered-report journal articles ( Nosek & Lakens, 2014 ). More and more journals are providing authors with the option to publish registered reports (for a list, see Center for Open Science, n.d. ). The beauty of registered reports is that, as with our dissertations, our success depends not on the shimmer of our results but on the soundness of our ideas and the competence of our execution.

Distinguish confirmation from exploration

Writing transparently means distinguishing confirmation from exploration. To be sure, exploration is a valid and important mode of scientific inquiry. The exploratory analyses Bem wrote about (“examine [your data] from every angle”) are vital for discovery—and should not be discouraged. However, it is also vital to distinguish exploratory from confirmatory analyses.

For example, clarify whether “additional exploratory analysis was conducted” ( Brockhaus, 1980 , p. 517), “data were derived from an exploratory questionnaire” ( Scogin & Bienias, 1988 , p. 335), or “results . . . should be interpreted cautiously because of their exploratory nature” ( Martin & Stelmaczonek, 1988 , p. 387). Entire research projects may be exploratory ( McIntosh, 2017 ), but they must be identified as such (e.g., “Prediction of Improvement in Group Therapy: An Exploratory Study,” Yalom, Houts, Zimerberg, & Rand, 1967 ; and “Personality and Probabilistic Thinking: An Exploratory Study,” Wright & Phillips, 1979 ).

Show your warts

Scientific reporting demands showing your work ( Vazire, 2017 ); transparent scientific reporting demands showing your warts. If participants were excluded, explain why and how many: for example, “Two of these subjects were excluded because of their inability to comply with the imagery instructions at least 75% of the time” ( Sadalla, Burroughs, & Staplin, 1980 , p. 521).

Similarly, if data were lost, explain why and how many: for example, “Ratings for two subjects were lost to equipment error” ( Vrana, Spence, & Lang, 1988 , p. 488) or “Because of experimenter error, processing times were not available for 11 subjects” ( McDaniel & Einstein, 1986 , p. 56).

If one or more pilot studies were conducted, state that. If experiments were conducted in an order different from the reported order, state that. If participants participated in more than one study, state that. If measures were recalculated, stimuli were refashioned, procedures were reconfigured, variables were dropped, items were modified—if anything transgressed the pre- specified plan and approach—state that.

Writing transparently also requires acknowledging when results are unpredicted: for example, “An unexpected result of Experiment 1 was the lack of an age . . . effect . . . due to different presentation rates” ( Kliegl, Smith, & Bakes, 1989 , p. 251) or “Unexpectedly, the female preponderance in depressive symptoms is strongly demonstrated in every age group in this high school sample” ( Allgood-Merten, Lewinsohn, & Hops, 1990 , p. 59). Concede when hypotheses lack support: for example, “we were unable to demonstrate that free care benefited people with a high income” ( Brook et al., 1983 , p. 1431) or “we cannot reject the null hypothesis with any confidence” ( Tannenbaum & Smith, 1964 , p. 407).

Consider placing a Statement of Transparency in either your manuscript or your supplementary materials: for example, “Statement of Transparency: The data used in the present study were initially collected as part of a larger exploratory study” ( Werner & Milyavskaya, 2017 , p. 3) or “As described in the Statement of Transparency in our online supplemental materials, we also collected additional variables and conducted further analyses that we treat as exploratory” ( Gehlbach et al., 2016 , p. 344).

Consider ending your manuscript with a Constraints on Generality statement ( Simons et al., 2017 ), which “defines the scope of the conclusions that are justified by your data” and “clarifies which aspects of your sample of participants, materials, and procedures should be preserved in a direct replication” (p. 1125; see Simons et al., 2017 , for examples).

Recommendations for Reproducibility

The soul of science is that its results are reproducible. Reproducible results are repeatable, reliable, and replicable. But reproducing a result, or simply trying to reproduce it, requires knowing in detail how that previous result was obtained. Therefore, writing for reproducibility means providing enough detail so readers will know how each result was obtained.

Document your research fully

Many researchers appreciate that empirical studies need to be reported accurately and completely—in fact, fully enough to allow other researchers to reproduce them— but they encounter a barrier: Many journals enforce word limits; some even limit the number of tables and figures that can accompany each article or the number of sources that can be cited. Journals’ limits can stymie authors’ efforts to write for reproducibility.

After using the maximum number of words allowed for methods and results, turn to open-science tools. Repositories, such as Open Science Framework (osf.io), Pub-Med Central (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/), and Mendeley Data (mendeley.com/datasets), allow researchers to make their materials and data publicly available, which is a best practice quickly becoming mandatory ( Lindsay, 2017 ; Munafò et al., 2017 ; Nosek et al., 2015 ). These repositories also allow researchers to make detailed documentation of their methods and results publicly available.

For example, I recently analyzed 5 million books, 25 million abstracts, and 150 million journal articles to examine scholars’ use of person-first (e.g., person with a disability ) versus identity-first (e.g., disabled person ) language ( Gernsbacher, 2017b ). Because the journal that published my article limited me to 2,000 words, eight citations, and zero tables or figures, I created and posted on Open Science Framework an accompanying technical report ( Gernsbacher, 2016 ), which served as my open notebook. For the current article, I also created a technical report ( Gernsbacher, 2017a ) to document the course syllabi that assign Bem’s chapter (mentioned earlier) and the word counts that illustrate classic articles’ concision (mentioned later).

By taking advantage of open-science repositories, authors can document

• why they qualify for the 21-Word Solution, which is a statement authors can place in their Method section to verify they have “report[ed] how [they] determined [their] sample size, all data exclusions (if any), all manipulations, and all measures in the study” ( Simmons, Nelson, & Simonsohn, 2012 , p. 4);
• how they fulfilled the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses check-list ( PRISMA, 2015 ); and
• that they have met other methodological or statistical criteria (e.g., they have provided their data, materials, and code; Lindsay, 2017 ).

An accompanying technical report can serve as a publicly accessible lab notebook, which also comes in handy for selfish reasons ( Markowetz, 2015 ; McKiernan et al., 2016 ). A tidy, publicly accessible lab notebook can be, like tidy computer documentation, “a love letter you write to your future self” ( Conway, 2005 , p. 143).

Document your research cohesively

Documentation should also be cohesive. For instance, rather than posting a slew of separate supplementary files, consider combining all the supporting text, summary data, and supplementary tables and figures into one composite file. More helpfully, annotate the composite file with a table of contents or a set of in-file bookmarks.

A well-indexed composite file can reduce the frustration readers (and reviewers) incur when required to open multiple supplementary files (often generically named Supp. Fig.1, Supp. Fig. 2, etc.). Posting a well-indexed composite file on an open-science platform can also ensure that valuable information is available outside of journals’ paywalls, with guaranteed access beyond the life of an individual researcher’s or journal’s Web site (e.g., Open Science Framework guarantees their repository for 50 years).

Cite sources responsibly

As Simkin and Roychowdhury (2003) advised in the title of their study demonstrating high rates of erroneous citations, “read before you cite.” Avoid “drive by citations” ( Perrin, 2009 ), which reference a study so generically as to appear pro forma. Ensure that a specific connection exists between your claim and the source you cite to support that claim. Is the citation the original statement of the idea, a comprehensive review, an example of a similar study, or a counterclaim? If so, make that connection clear, rather than simply grabbing and citing the first article that pops up in a Google Scholar search.

Interrogate a reference before citing it, rather than citing it simply because other articles do. For example, I tallied hundreds of articles that mistakenly cited Rizzolatti et al. (1996) as providing empirical evidence for mirror neurons in humans—despite neither Rizzolatti et al.’s data nor their text supporting that claim ( Gallese, Gernsbacher, Heyes, Hickok, & Iacoboni, 2011 ).

Try to include a linked DOI (digital object identifier) for every reference you cite. Clicking on a linked DOI takes your readers directly to the original source, without having to search for it by its title, authors, journal, or the like. 2 Moreover, a DOI, like an ISBN, provides a permanent link to a published work; therefore, DOIs obviate link rot and guarantee greater longevity than standard URLs, even journal publishers’ URLs.

Recommendations for Clarity

Empirical articles are becoming more difficult to read, as an analysis of nearly three-quarter million articles in more than 100 high-impact journals recently demonstrated ( Plavén-Sigray, Matheson, Schiffler, & Thompson, 2017 ). Sentences in empirical articles have grown longer, and vocabulary has grown more abstruse. Therefore, the primary recommendation for achieving clarity in empirical articles is simple: Write concisely using plain language ( Box 1 provides additional suggestions and resources for clear writing).

Additional Recommendations for Clear Writing

Use precise terms.

Concision requires precision. Rather than writing that a dependent variable is related to, influenced by, or affected by the independent variable, state the exact relation between the two variables or the precise effect one variable has on another. Did manipulating the independent variable increase, decrease, improve, worsen, augment, diminish, negate, strengthen, weaken, delay, or accelerate the dependent variable?

Most important, use precise terms in your title. Follow the example of Parker, Garry, Engle, Harper, and Clfasefi (2008) , who titled their article “Psychotropic Placebos Reduce the Misinformation Effect by Increasing Monitoring at Test” rather than “The Effects of Psychotropic Placebos on Memory.”

Omit Needless Words

Numerous wordy expressions can be replaced by one word. For example, replace due to the fact that, for the reason that, or owing to the fact that with because; replace for the purpose of with for; have the capability of with can; in the event that with if; during the course of with during; fewer in number with fewer; in order to with to; and whether or not with whether . And replace the well-worn and wordy expression that appears in numerous acknowledgements, we wish to thank , with simply we thank .

Build Parallel Structures

Parallel structure aids comprehension ( Fraizer, Taft, Roeper, Clifton, & Ehrlich, 1984 ), whereas disjointed structure (e.g., Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana ) impedes comprehension ( Gernsbacher, 1997 ). Simons (2012) demonstrated how to build parallel structure with the example sentence Active reconstruction of a past experience differs from passively hearing a story about it. That sentence lacks parallel structure because the first half uses a noun phrase ( Active reconstruction ), whereas the second half uses a gerundive nominal ( passively hearing ). But the sentence can easily be made parallel: Actively reconstructing a past experience differs from passively hearing a story about it.

Listen to Your Writing

Try reading aloud what you have written (or use text-to-speech software). Listening to your writing is a great way to catch errors and get a feel for whether your writing is too stilted (and your sentences are too long).

Read About Writing

Read about how to write clearly in Pinker’s (2015) book, Zinsser’s (2016) book, Wagenmakers’s (2009) article, Simons’s (2012) guide, and Gernsbacher’s (2013) graduate-level open-access course. Try testing the clarity of your writing with online readability indices (e.g., https://readable.io/text or https://wordcounttools.com )

Write short sentences

Every writing guide, from Strunk and White’s (1959) venerable Elements of Style to the prestigious journal Nature ’s (2014) guide, admonishes writers to use shorter, rather than longer, sentences. Shorter sentences are not only easier to understand, but also better at conveying complex information ( Flesch, 1948 ).

The trick to writing short sentences is to restrict each sentence to one and only one idea. Resist the temptation to embed multiple clauses or parentheticals, which challenge comprehension. Instead, break long, rambling sentences into crisp, more concise ones. For example, write the previous three short sentences rather than the following long sentence: The trick to writing short sentences is to restrict each sentence to one and only one idea by breaking long, rambling sentences into crisp, more concise ones while resisting the temptation to embed multiple clauses or parentheticals, which challenge comprehension.

How short is short enough? The Oxford Guide to Plain English ( Cutts, 2013 ) recommends averaging no more than 15 to 20 words per sentence. Such short, crisp sentences have been the mainstay of many great psychological scientists, including Kenneth and Mamie Clark. Their 1939, 1940, and 1947 articles reporting young Black children’s racial identification and self-esteem have garnered more than 2,500 citations. These articles figured persuasively in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) . And these articles’ sentences averaged 16 words.

Write short paragraphs

Combine short sentences into short paragraphs. Aim for around five sentences per paragraph. Harlow’s “The Nature of Love” (1958) , Tolman’s “Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men” (1948) , and Miller’s “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two” (1956) , which have been cited more than 2,000, 5,000, and 25,000 times, respectively, average five sentences per paragraph.

The prototypical five-sentence paragraph comprises a topic sentence, three supporting sentences, and a conclusion sentence. For example, a paragraph in Parker, Garry, Engle, Harper, and Clifasefi’s (2008 , p. 410) article begins with the following topic sentence: “One of the puzzles of human behaviour is how taking a substance that does nothing can cause something.” The paragraph continues with three (in this case, conjoined) supporting sentences: “Phoney painkillers can lessen our pain or make it worse; phoney alcohol can lead us to do things we might otherwise resist, and phoney feedback can even cause us to shed body fat.” The paragraph then concludes with the sentence “Perhaps Kirsch (2004, p. 341) said it best: ‘Placebos are amazing.’”

Write comprehensive abstracts

Compiling a technical report and placing it on an open-source platform can circumvent a journal’s word limit for a manuscript. However, a journal’s word limit for an abstract is more difficult to circumvent. That limit is firm, and an abstract can often be the sole content that is read, particularly if the rest of the article lies behind a paywall. Therefore, authors need to make the most of their 150 or 250 words so that an abstract can inform on its own ( Mensh & Kording, 2017 ).

A clear abstract states the study’s primary hypothesis; its major methodology, including its sample size and sampled population; its main findings, along with their summary statistics; and its key implications. A clear abstract is explicit, concrete, and comprehensive, which was advice offered by Bem (1987 , 2004) .

Seek naive feedback

One of the best ways to ensure that a message is clear is to assess its clarity according to a naive audience ( Traxler & Gernsbacher, 1995 ). Indeed, the more naive the audience, the more informative the feedback ( Traxler & Gernsbacher, 1992 , 1993 ).

Unfortunately, some researchers seek feedback on their manuscripts from only their coauthors or fellow lab members. But coauthors and fellow lab members are hardly naive. Better feedback can be obtained from readers who are unfamiliar with the research—and unfamiliar with even the research area. If those readers say the writing is unclear (or a figure or table is confusing), it is, by definition, unclear (or confusing); it is best to revise for clarity.

Recommendations for Memorability

Most researchers want their articles not only to be read but also to be remembered. The goal in writing a memorable article is not necessarily to pen a flashy article; rather, the goal is to compose an article that enables readers to remember what they have read days or months later, as well as paragraphs or pages later ( Gernsbacher, 1990 ).

Write narratively

The primary tool for increasing memorability is writing narratively ( Bruner, 1991 ). An empirical article should tell a story, not in the sense of a tall tale but in the spirit of a coherent and logical narrative.

Even authors who bristle at the notion of scholarly articles as stories must surely recognize that empirical articles resemble Aristotelian narratives: Introduction sections begin with a premise (the previous literature) that leads to an inciting incident (however, ...) and conclude with a therefore (the methods used to combat the inciting incident).

Thus, Introduction sections and Method sections are empirical articles’ Act One, their setups. Results sections are empirical articles’ Act Two, their confrontations. And Discussion sections are empirical articles’ Act Three, their resolutions.

Writing Act One (introduction and methods) prior to collecting data, as we would do if submitting a registered report, helps us adhere to Feynman’s (1974) warning not to fool ourselves (e.g., not to misremember what we did vs. did not predict and, consequently, which analyses are vs. are not confirmatory).

Writing all sections narratively, as setup, confrontation, and then resolution, should increase their short- and long-term memorability. Similarly, writing methods and results as sequences of events should increase their memorability.

For methods, Bem (1987 , 2004) recommended leading readers through the procedure as if they were research participants, which is an excellent idea. For results, readers can be led through the analytic pipeline in the sequence in which it occurred.

Embrace the hourglass

Bem advised that an article should be written “in the shape of an hourglass. It begins with broad general statements, progressively narrows down to the specifics of your study, and then broadens out again to more general considerations” ( Bem, 1987 , p. 175; Bem, 2004 , p. 189). That advice should also not be jettisoned ( Devlin, 2017 ).

Call it the hourglass or call it the “broad- narrow-broad” structure ( Mensh & Kording, 2017 , p. 4), the notion is that well-written empirical articles begin broadly (theories and questions), narrow to specifics (methods and results), and end broadly (implications). Authors who embrace the hourglass shape aid their readers, particularly readers who skim ( Weinstein, 2016 ).

Begin with a hook

Journal editors advise that articles “should offer a clear, direct, and compelling story that first hooks the reader” (Rains, 2012, p. 497). For example, Oyserman et al. (2017) began their article with the following hook, which led directly to a statement articulating what their article was about (illustrated here in italics):

Will you be going to that networking lunch? Will you be tempted by a donut at 4 pm? Will you be doing homework at 9 pm? If, like many people, your responses are based on your gut sense of who you are—shy or outgoing, a treat lover or a dieter, studious or a procrastinator—you made three assumptions about identity: that motivation and behavior are identity based, that identities are chronically on the mind, and that identities are stable. (p. 139)

As another example, Newman et al. (2014) began their article with the following hook:

In its classic piece, “Clinton Deploys Vowels to Bosnia,” the satirical newspaper The Onion quoted Trszg Grzdnjkln, 44. “I have six children and none of them has a name that is understandable to me or to anyone else. Mr. Clinton, please send my poor, wretched family just one ‘E.’ Please.” The Onion was onto something when it suggested that people with hard to pronounce names suffer while their more pronounceable counter parts benefit. (p. 1, italics added)

As a third example, Jakimik and Glenberg (1990) began their article with the following hook:

You’re zipping through an article in your favorite journal when your reading stops with a thud. The author has just laid out two alternative hypotheses and then referred to one of them as “the former approach.” But now you are confused about which was first, which was second. You curse the author and your own lack of concentration, reread the setup rehearsing the order of the two hypotheses, and finally figure out which alternative the author was referring to. We have experienced this problem, too, and we do not think that it is simply a matter of lack of concentration. The subject of this article is the reason for difficulty with referring devices such as “the former approach.” (p. 582, italics added)

Synthesize previous literature (rather than Mad Lib it)

In the game of Mad Libs, one player generates a list of words from specified categories, for instance, a proper name, an activity, and a number. Then, the other player fills a template sentence with that list of generated terms.

In a similar way, some authors review the literature by Mad Libbing terms into sentence templates, for example, “_____ [author’s name] investigated _____ [research topic] with _____ [number] of participants and found a statistically significant effect of _____ [variable] on _____ [variable].”

A more memorable, albeit more difficult, way to review the literature is to synthesize it, as Aronson (1969) illustrated in his synthesis of previous studies on cognitive dissonance:

The research [on cognitive dissonance] has been as diverse as it has been plentiful; its range extends from maze running in rats (Lawrence and Festinger, 1962) to the development of values in children (Aronson and Carlsmith, 1963); from the hunger of college sophomores (Brehm et al., 1964) to the proselytizing behavior of religious zealots (Festinger et al., 1956). The proliferation of research testing and extending dissonance theory results from the generality and simplicity of the theory. (p. 1)

Notice that Aronson wrote a coherent narrative in which phenomena, not researchers, are the topics. That is what is meant by synthesizing, not Mad Libbing, previous literature.

Even technical literature can be synthesized rather than Mad Libbed, as Guillem et al. (2011) demonstrated:

Cortical acetylcholine (ACh) release from the basal forebrain is essential for proper sensory processing and cognition (1–3) and tunes neuronal and synaptic activity in the underlying cortical networks (4,5). Loss of cholinergic function during aging and Alzheimer’s disease results in cognitive decline, notably a loss of memory and the ability to sustain attention (6,7). Interfering with the cholinergic system strongly affects cognition (3,8–13). Rapid changes in prefrontal cortical ACh levels at the scale of seconds are correlated with attending and detecting cues (14,15). Various types of nicotinic ACh receptor (nAChR) subunits are expressed in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) (16–18) ... However, the causal relation between nAChR β2 subunits (henceforth β2-nAChRs) expressed in the medial PFC (mPFC) and attention performance has not yet been demonstrated. (p. 888)

Guillem et al. began with a premise (“Cortical acetyl- choline (ACh) release from the basal forebrain is essential”), which they then supported with the literature. They further developed their premise (“Loss of cholinergic function during aging and Alzheimer’s disease results in cognitive decline,” “Interfering with the cholinergic system strongly affects cognition,” and “Rapid changes in prefrontal cortical ACh levels ... are correlated with attending and detecting cues”), and they concluded with their “However.” They synthesized the literature to tell a story.

Writing clearly and memorably need not be orthogonal to writing transparently and enabling reproducibility. For example, in their seminal article on false memories for words presented in lists, Roediger and McDermott (1995)

• documented their experimental procedure fully enough to allow replication, including most recently a preregistered replication ( Zwaan et al., 2017 );
• provided their research materials openly (in an appendix);
• told their story in short paragraphs (average length of 5.1 sentences) and short sentences (average length of 18 words);
• embraced an hourglass shape (e.g., their discussion began by relating their study to prior work, continued by contrasting experiments that measured false recall vs. false recognition, extended to discussing phenomenological experience, and broadened to articulating implications); and
• transparently acknowledged parallel efforts by another research team (“While working on this article, we learned that Don Read was conducting similar research, which is described briefly in Lindsay & Read, 1994,” p. 804).

A well-written empirical article that enables reproducibility and transparency can also be clear and memorable.

Barring extraordinary disruption, empirical journal articles are likely to survive at least a couple more decades. Authors will continue to write empirical articles to communicate why they did their studies, how they did their studies, what they observed, and what those observations mean. And readers will continue to read empirical articles to receive this communication. The most successful articles will continue to embody Grice’s (1975) maxims for communication: They will be informative, truthful, relevant, clear, and memorable.

1 Some researchers distinguish between replication, which they define as corroborating previous results by collecting new data, and reproduction, which they define as corroborating previous results by analyzing previous data ( Peng, 2011 ). Other researchers consider the two terms to be synonymous ( Shuttleworth, 2009 ), or they propose that the two terms should be used synonymously ( Goodman, Fanelli, & Ioannidis, 2016 ).

2 To make a linked, or clickable, DOI, simply add the preface https://doi.org to the alphanumeric string.

Author Contributions

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship or the publication of this article.

Data and materials are available via Open Science Framework and can be accessed at https://osf.io/uxych . The Open Practices Disclosure for this article can be found at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/2515245918754485 . This article has received badges for Open Data and Open Materials. More information about the Open Practices badges can be found at http://www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/badges .

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• Introduction & Help
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Finding Empirical Research Articles

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The method for finding empirical research articles varies depending upon the database* being used. 

1. The PsycARTICLES and PsycInfo databases (both from the APA) includes a Methodology filter that can be used to identify empirical studies. Look for the filter on the Advanced Search screen. To see a list and description of all of the of methodology filter options in PsycARTICLES and PsycInfo visit the  APA Databases Methodology Field Values page .

2. When using databases that do not provide a methodology filter—including ProQuest Psychology Journals and Academic Search Complete—experiment with using keywords to retrieve articles on your topic that contain empirical research. For example:

• empirical research
• empirical study
• quantitative study
• qualitative study
• longitudinal study
• observation
• questionnaire
• methodology
• participants

Qualitative research can be challenging to find as these methodologies are not always well-indexed in the databases. Here are some suggested keywords for retrieving articles that include qualitative research.

• qualitative
• ethnograph*
• observation*
• "case study”
• "focus group"
• "phenomenological research"
• "conversation analysis"

*Recommended databases are listed on the  Databases: Find Journal Articles page of this guide.

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Empirical Research: Defining, Identifying, & Finding

Searching for empirical research.

• Defining Empirical Research
• Introduction

Where Do I Find Empirical Research?

How do i find more empirical research in my search.

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Because empirical research refers to the method of investigation rather than a method of publication, it can be published in a number of places. In many disciplines empirical research is most commonly published in scholarly, peer-reviewed journals . Putting empirical research through the peer review process helps ensure that the research is high quality. 

Finding Peer-Reviewed Articles

You can find peer-reviewed articles in a general web search along with a lot of other types of sources. However, these specialized tools are more likely to find peer-reviewed articles:

• Library databases
• Academic search engines such as Google Scholar

Common Types of Articles That Are Not Empirical

However, just finding an article in a peer-reviewed journal is not enough to say it is empirical, since not all the articles in a peer-reviewed journal will be empirical research or even peer reviewed. Knowing how to quickly identify some types non-empirical research articles in peer-reviewed journals can help speed up your search. 

• Peer-reviewed articles that systematically discuss and propose abstract concepts and methods for a field without primary data collection.
• Example: Grosser, K. & Moon, J. (2019). CSR and feminist organization studies: Towards an integrated theorization for the analysis of gender issues .
• Peer-reviewed articles that systematically describe, summarize, and often categorize and evaluate previous research on a topic without collecting new data.
• Example: Heuer, S. & Willer, R. (2020). How is quality of life assessed in people with dementia? A systematic literature review and a primer for speech-language pathologists .
• Note: empirical research articles will have a literature review section as part of the Introduction , but in an empirical research article the literature review exists to give context to the empirical research, which is the primary focus of the article. In a literature review article, the literature review is the focus. 
• While these articles are not empirical, they are often a great source of information on previous empirical research on a topic with citations to find that research.
• Non-peer-reviewed articles where the authors discuss their thoughts on a particular topic without data collection and a systematic method. There are a few differences between these types of articles.
• Written by the editors or guest editors of the journal. 
• Example:  Naples, N. A., Mauldin, L., & Dillaway, H. (2018). From the guest editors: Gender, disability, and intersectionality .
• Written by guest authors. The journal may have a non-peer-reviewed process for authors to submit these articles, and the editors of the journal may invite authors to write opinion articles.
• Example: García, J. J.-L., & Sharif, M. Z. (2015). Black lives matter: A commentary on racism and public health . 
• Written by the readers of a journal, often in response to an article previously-published in the journal.
• Example: Nathan, M. (2013). Letters: Perceived discrimination and racial/ethnic disparities in youth problem behaviors . 
• Non-peer-reviewed articles that describe and evaluate books, products, services, and other things the audience of the journal would be interested in. 
• Example: Robinson, R. & Green, J. M. (2020). Book review: Microaggressions and traumatic stress: Theory, research, and clinical treatment .

Even once you know how to recognize empirical research and where it is published, it would be nice to improve your search results so that more empirical research shows up for your topic.

There are two major ways to find the empirical research in a database search:

• Use built-in database tools to limit results to empirical research.
• Include search terms that help identify empirical research.
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• Published: 10 August 2024

The impact of international logistics performance on import and export trade: an empirical case of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries

• Weixin Wang 1 ,
• Qiqi Wu 2 ,
• Jiafu Su   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6001-5744 3 &
• Bing li 2  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  11 , Article number:  1028 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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• Business and management

As an important foundation of cargo transportation, logistics plays a vital role in developing international trade. Based on the international logistics performance index (LPI) and the sample data of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries from 2011 to 2022, this paper uses the extended trade gravity model to explore the impact of the logistics performance of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries on China’s import and export trade. The empirical results show that the improvement of the logistics performance level of the countries along the “Belt and Road” Initiative has a certain role in promoting the growth of China’s trade volume to the country, and the improvement of LPI has a more significant positive impact on China’s import and export to large-scale countries along the route. Finally, according to the analysis of empirical results, this paper puts forward specific suggestions to promote the development of logistics performance and import and export trade, which provides some reference value for implementing the “Belt and Road” initiative and improving national logistics and trade level.

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Introduction.

In the context of 'globalization', China and the countries along the “Belt and Road” Initiative have ushered in a high-speed development stage of comprehensive cooperation (Khan et al. 2022a ), working together to promote a higher level of trade facilitation development trend and promote the further expansion of trade scale (Khan et al. 2022b ). The proportion of the trade scale between China and the “Belt and Road” initiative countries in China’s overall foreign trade continues to grow (Mena et al. 2022 ), reaching 34.7% by 2022. The trade between China and the “Belt and Road” initiative countries is mainly concentrated in Southeast Asia, focusing on West Asia and South Asia (Qin 2022 ). From an overall perspective, in 2022, China’s trade with ASEAN accounted for 50.3% of the trade of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries. And the trade imbalance between China and the “Belt and Road” initiative countries is becoming more and more serious (Wang and Liu 2022 ).

Since 2007, the World Bank has published the “Logistics Performance Index Report” every two years to measure the level of logistics in countries worldwide with the LPI (Hausman et al. 2013 ). The progress of the logistics industry drives the development of manufacturing, finance, and other industries, promotes the coordinated development of upstream and downstream enterprises, and promotes the formation of a complete industrial chain and supply chain (Göçer et al. 2022 ). The logistics performance of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries has become an important factor in promoting import and export between China and the “Belt and Road” initiative countries (Pan et al. 2022 ). With the continuous advancement of the 'economic integration' process, logistics connects the needs of trade between countries, is an essential guarantee for the smooth operation of the supply chain (Yang 2023 ), and plays a vital role in the country’s economic development (Yingfei et al. 2022 ). Therefore, the research on the relationship between international logistics performance and the development of import and export trade has certain practical significance.

Due to the incalculable impact of the 2008 financial crisis on the world economy, this paper selects 2011–2022 as the time interval for research to avoid the effect on the accuracy of empirical results. Combined with data availability, taking 61 countries along the Belt and Road Initiative as an example, this paper profoundly analyzes the relationship between international logistics performance and national import and export trade. It systematically analyzes the impact of different indicators of international logistics performance on international trade import and export and more accurately controls the adjustment direction of resource allocation to provide some reference value for the implementation of the “Belt and Road” initiative of China and provide some reference for the balance of national logistics system and trade relations.

Compared with previous studies, the innovation of this paper is mainly reflected in the following aspects: Firstly, the interaction mechanism between international logistics performance and import and export trade is analyzed. This paper analyzes the interaction mechanism between international logistics performance and import and export trade through previous data collection. Secondly, the fixed effect model is used to test the impact of the improvement of the logistics performance level of the countries along the “Belt and Road” on the trade volume, and to explore the impact of international logistics performance on the import and export of countries of different sizes and the differences. Thirdly, the relationship between international logistics performance and import and export trade is tested by using the methods of 'eliminating outlier samples', 'reducing sample interval', 'shrinking tail processing' and 'lagging one period of explained variables', and the conclusions are summarized, and specific and feasible development suggestions are put forward.

The research contributions of this paper can be summarized as follows: Firstly, it further enriches the research on international logistics performance and import and export trade. The research of related fields is mainly related to the relationship between logistics performance and export. This paper takes import and export as the research object, which has a specific reference value for the overall development of the country and the region. Secondly, this paper not only explores the relationship between international logistics performance and import and export trade but also divides different countries according to their scale and explores the various impacts on countries of different scales, which provides a specific reference for the direction of national logistics and trade investment. Thirdly, this paper discusses the relationship between international logistics performance and the development of import and export trade, and puts forward specific suggestions to promote the improvement of international logistics performance and trade volume, which helps provide some reference value for the development of related fields.

The section 2 reviews the literature on logistics performance and international trade, and provides some theoretical support for the article. Section 3 explains the construction of the gravity model data sources, the variables, and the division of the national scale. In section 4, descriptive statistics, LPI comprehensive index regression, and LPI sub-index regression are used, and systematic analysis is carried out according to the results of empirical data. Section 5 conducts a robustness test. Section 6 summarizes the conclusions and puts forward specific suggestions based on the empirical analysis.

Literature review

Logistics performance is the key to supporting trade growth and the main factor determining a country’s economic growth (Cui et al. 2022 ). Bhukiya and Patel ( 2023 ) and Huong et al. ( 2024 ) believed that logistics performance promotes international trade. Barakat et al. ( 2023 ) demonstrated that the improvement of logistics performance helps to increase national trade openness and reduce trade costs. Jayathilaka et al. ( 2022 ) analyzed the impact of gross domestic product (GDP) and LPI on international trade based on 142 countries, and verified the positive role of LPI in promoting international trade, which is more significant in Asia, Europe and Oceania. Çelebi ( 2019 ) believes that logistics performance will promote the development of trade, and the efficiency of logistics system is an important factor affecting bilateral trade. Based on the sample data of 10 countries along the China-Europe Express from 2015 to 2019, Zhong and Zhou ( 2022 ) demonstrated that the improvement of international logistics performance has promoted the increase of import and export trade in Guangdong Province. Liu ( 2022 ) selected the data of 12 provinces and regions in western China from 2015 to 2020 to explore the impact of cross-border logistics performance on the competitiveness of cross-border agricultural products trade, and found that the development of cross-border logistics is conducive to improving the development of cross-border agricultural products trade in western China. The above research shows that: in the context of economic integration, the development of international logistics performance has promoted the improvement of the international trade environment and improved the convenience of international trade. There is a positive correlation between international logistics performance and international trade.

Import and export trade has a certain feedback effect on the development of logistics industry (Yang 2010 ). Guo ( 2018 ) used the panel data of 31 provinces in China from 1997 to 2016 to empirically test the role of import and export trade in promoting the development of the logistics industry, and the impact of exports on the development of the logistics industry is significantly greater than the role of imports. At the same time, due to differences in geographical location and resource endowments, only imports in the central and eastern regions of China promote the development of the logistics industry, and the western region is not significant. Zhan et al. ( 2019 ) found that the scale effect, export efficiency effect and export structure effect of export trade in the core area of the “Belt and Road” have promoted the development of the logistics industry. Wang and Wang ( 2021 ) found that the trade in the core area of “Belt and Road” can promote the growth and agglomeration of the logistics industry, and the export scale effect is the main factor to promote the growth of the logistics industry. The expansion of international trade scale, the improvement of trade efficiency and the improvement of trade structure have also promoted the improvement of international logistics performance. Based on the co-integration model of time series data from 1989 to 2012, Wang ( 2015 ) found that there is a co-integration relationship between logistics development and energy consumption, foreign trade and urbanization level, and this co-integration relationship has a long stability. Yang et al. ( 2019 ) found that the logistics development between China and ASEAN countries is the reason that affects the development of each other’s trade through the Granger causality test. Guo et al. ( 2018 ) studied the development of China’s logistics industry and foreign trade in the past 40 years of reform and opening up, and found that there is a long-term and stable coordinated development relationship between the two. In order to promote the sustainable development of the two, it can be achieved by optimizing the business environment, promoting the support of the coordinated development of modern logistics and foreign trade, improving the quality of logistics infrastructure and customs operation efficiency, and accelerating the informatization and standardization of logistics industry.

There are some differences in the impact of international logistics performance on countries with different income levels, different trade facilitation levels, and different population sizes (Fan and Yu 2015 ). See et al. ( 2024 ) found that countries with higher income levels have better logistics performance. Çelebi ( 2019 ) believes that income level is an important factor in the impact of logistics performance on trade volume. Trade facilitation will have different effects according to per capita income level, and low-income economies with higher logistics level will gain more benefits than high-income economies. Compared with the increase of logistics level in low-income countries, the increase of trade volume will be promoted, and the import volume of middle and high-income countries will benefit more from the improvement of logistics performance. Kumari and Bharti ( 2021 ) studied the impact of country size on trade and logistics performance based on population size, and found that the degree of LPI to improve related trade growth is the highest in medium-sized countries, followed by small-scale countries. Among the sub-indicators of LPI, cargo tracking ability and timeliness have the greatest impact on the trade of small-scale countries, and the convenience and timeliness of arranging international freight transportation have the greatest impact on medium-sized countries.

In summary, with the deepening of the globalization of the supply chain and industrial chain, import and export trade are moving towards lower cost and higher efficiency. International logistics performance and import and export trade promote each other and jointly drive national economic development. The impact of international performance on the trade of different countries has certain differences. However, there are still few studies on the impact of logistics performance on the trade of countries of different sizes. Therefore, this paper divides the “Belt and Road” initiative countries according to population size, further explores the impact of international logistics performance on import and export trade, and provides a reference for the development of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries and the trade between nations.

Data selection and model construction

In order to improve the trade level of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries, this paper studies the impact of international logistics performance of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries on China’s import and export trade, constructs an extended gravity model, and introduces the LPI into the model. At the same time, according to the population size, the countries along the “Belt and Road” are divided into three categories: large, medium and small, to explore the impact of international logistics performance on the import and export of countries of different sizes and the differences.

Data processing and variable setting

This study takes 2011–2022 as the time interval of the study. The data mainly come from the World Bank WDI database. In view of the fact that the data published by the World Bank has been updated to 2022, but there are missing data in individual years, such as LPI, since the World Bank releases the logistics performance index every two years, in order to ensure the continuity of the data, the missing data of this part is filled by linear prediction using stata15 software. In order to avoid the impact of unit differences between indicators on the experimental results, the gross national product of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries, China’s imports and exports to the “Belt and Road” initiative countries, the distance from the “Belt and Road” initiative countries, China’s gross national product, the comprehensive index of international logistics performance, the score of cargo tracking ability, the score of logistics serviceability, the score of international freight transportation that is easy to arrange competitive prices, the score of customs clearance process efficiency, the score of the expected time of goods to reach the consignee frequency and the score of transportation-related infrastructure quality are standardized by stata15. Variables are set as follows:

Explained variable: China’s trade volume with the “Belt and Road” initiative countries (billions of dollars).

Explanatory variable: international logistics performance of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries. Sub-indicators: goods tracking ability score, logistics serviceability score, easy-to-arrange price competitive international freight score, customs clearance process efficiency score, goods expected time to reach the consignee frequency score, and transportation-related infrastructure quality score.

Control variables: distance from the “Belt and Road” initiative countries (kilometers), gross national product of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries (billions of dollars), gross national product of China (billions of dollars), the ratio of total imports and exports of goods and services to GDP of the sample countries, whether it is adjacent to China, and whether it has joined the WTO.

Data sources and processing instructions

According to the model setting and variable definition, the variable name, economic implications, variable value, data source and expected impact on trade volume of international logistics performance and its sub-indicators and control variables on trade volume is shown in Table 1 . If the expected impact on trade volume is positive, it is expressed as '+', and vice versa.

Since the fixed effect model is used for regression analysis while controlling the year and time, all variables should change with time. This paper uses the product of the distance between China and the “Belt and Road” initiative countries and the Brent crude oil price of the year to represent the distance, so that the distance can change with time, which enhances the feasibility of the model. There are 65 countries and regions along the “Belt and Road” marked by the 'China Belt and Road Network'. However, due to the lack of data in Brunei, Timor-Leste, Palestine and other countries, combined with the availability of data, this study selects the “Belt and Road” initiative countries: 40 countries in Asia, 20 countries in Europe and one country in Africa, a total of 61 countries from 2011 to 2022 sample data for empirical research.

According to the average population data of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries from 2011 to 2022, the countries with the top 25% of the population are classified as large-scale countries, the latter 25% are classified as small-scale countries, and 25–75% are classified as medium-scale countries. The specific division results are shown in Table 2 .

Model construction

The gravitational model is derived from the law of universal gravitation proposed by the British physicist Newton. It was originally used to explain the interaction between objects and was later cited in the field of international trade. It is used to measure the relationship between the trade volume between the two countries and their economic scale (Zhong and Zhou 2022 ). The formula can be expressed as:

Formula (1) is transformed into logarithmic form and the random error term can be expressed as:

The above equation \({{TRADE}}_{{ij}}\) represents the trade volume between country i and country j, \({X}_{i}\) and \({X}_{j}\) represent the economic aggregate of country i and country j respectively, \({{DIS}}_{{ij}}\) represents the geographical distance between the two economies of country i and country j, \({\beta }_{0}\) represents the parameters to be estimated in the model, and ε represents the random error term of the model.

In the gravity model setting in the field of international trade, the trade volume between the two countries is negatively correlated with the distance between the two countries, and positively correlated with the total economic volume of the two countries. On the basis of the basic gravity model, combined with the existing research, the international logistics performance index released by the World Bank is introduced into the gravity model, and the control variables are added to expand the model. The control variables include: DIS, GDPJ, GDPC, OPEN, BORDER and WTO, in which OPEN is an endogenous variable, BORDER and WTO are dummy variables.

The extended gravity model can be expressed as follows:

Each sub-index of LPI as an alternative index of LPI into the extended gravity model can be expressed as:

Empirical analyses

Analysis of statistical index results.

The descriptive statistical results are shown in Table 3 . According to the results in the table, there are great differences in the data results of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries. First of all, there is a big difference in China’s import and export to the “Belt and Road” initiative countries: China’s import and export to Bhutan, Maldives, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia and other countries remained low from 2011 to 2022, with an average annual import and export value of no more than $300 million. Trade with Singapore, India, Russia and other countries have remained at more than USD 50 billion since 2011. Secondly, the population size of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries is significantly different: the population of Maldives, Bhutan, Montenegro and other countries is less than one million between 2011 and 2022, while India’s population remains above one billion. Third, the scores of various indicators related to logistics in countries along the route are not the same: from the perspective of the comprehensive index of logistics performance, Singapore and other countries have maintained a score of more than 4, and the comprehensive ranking is among the top ten in the world, while Mongolia, Myanmar, Laos, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and other countries have a low logistics level ranking of 100. From the perspective of each sub-index, the differences between countries are obvious, and the development status of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries is uneven.

LPI comprehensive index regression

On the basis of descriptive statistics, this paper further uses Stata15.0 software to conduct regression analysis on the panel data of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries from 2011 to 2022. Since the data cross section (N) > time series (T), it is a short panel and does not require a unit root test. Through collinearity diagnosis, it was found that the VIF values of each index were less than 10, indicating that there was no multicollinearity in the data. The results of the Hausman test are shown in Table 4 , and the P value is 0.0017, which is less than 0.1. Therefore, the results are significant. The original hypothesis that the panel data model is a random effect model is rejected, and the fixed effect model is supported. The fixed effect model is used to analyze the data from 2011 to 2022 by controlling the country and time at the same time. The regression results are shown in Table 5 .

According to the regression results, the impact of international logistics performance of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries on China’s import and export trade is as follows:

According to the regression results in Table 5 , the impact of LPI on China’s import and export trade is significantly positive under the condition of 10%, indicating that the higher the LPI of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries, the more conducive to the trade between China and the country.

In the regression results of endogenous variables, the coefficient of DIS is −0.116, which is significant at the 1% level. Therefore, the distance between China and the “Belt and Road” initiative countries has a significant negative impact on China’s trade volume. The farther the distance is, the more unfavorable it is for China’s import and export to the Belt and Road Initiative countries. In China’s international trade, distance cost is still an important influencing factor. The economic volume coefficient of the countries along the route is 0.803, indicating that the economic volume of the countries along the route has a certain impact on China’s imports and exports to the country. The higher the GDP is, the higher the economic development level of the country is, and the higher the corresponding consumption level is, thus driving China’s import and export to the country. China’s economic volume coefficient is 0.1, which is significantly positive at the 1% level. Therefore, the improvement of China’s economic volume will significantly promote the growth of international trade volume. In addition, the degree of opening to the outside world has a significant role in promoting international trade, with a coefficient of 0.223, indicating that the higher the degree of opening to the outside world of countries along the route will be conducive to China’s import and export to the country.

Through the results of dummy variable data, it can be seen that the BORDER and WTO coefficients are-0.048 and 0.011, respectively, and the BORDER is significant at the level of 10%, indicating that the national border is not conducive to improving China’s import and export of goods. Because the climate environment of the bordering countries is close to China, the differences in resources and production factors may not be obvious enough, so that BORDER is negatively correlated with TRADE. The WTO performance is not significant, indicating that whether to join the WTO organization cannot be used as the strongest factor affecting trade between countries. To a certain extent, the differences in the types of goods traded between China and countries of different sizes will affect the volume of trade between countries. For example, some countries have parallel production with China, which leads to a decrease in trade between China and the country.

The comparison of the results in Table 5 shows that the impact of international logistics performance on China’s import and export to large-scale countries is significantly positive at the 1% level. In addition, the impact of international logistics performance on small and medium-sized countries is negative and insignificant at the 10% level, respectively. To a certain extent, it is due to the small total national demand of small and medium-sized countries. The improvement of international logistics performance has also led to the improvement of the national internal logistics system and promoted the better utilization of national internal resources. Therefore, continuing to invest resources to enhance the international logistics performance level of small and medium-sized countries is not conducive to the growth of import and export trade volume, which is more obvious in small-scale countries, and reasonable allocation of resources is particularly important.

LPI sub-index regression

In order to study the impact of LPI’s specific sub-indicators on China’s import and export to the “Belt and Road” initiative countries, this paper replaces LPI with six sub-indicators TRACE, SERVICE, SHIPMENTS, CLEARANCE, TIME, INFRASTRUCTURE for regression analysis. The results are shown in Table 6 .

From the regression results, it can be seen that TRACE, SHIPMENTS, CLEARANCE and TIME are not significant at the 10% level, indicating that logistics cargo tracking ability, international freight price competitiveness, customs clearance efficiency and logistics timeliness have little impact on China’s import and export to the “Belt and Road” initiative countries. The impact of SERVICE on import and export trade is positive, which is significant at the level of 10%, and INFRASTRUCTURE is positive at the level of 1%. That is, the logistics service capacity and logistics infrastructure quality of the Belt and Road Initiative countries have a greater impact on China’s import and export trade. Logistics service capacity includes inventory capacity, operation capacity and logistics reliability of the logistics system. The progress of logistics inventory capacity and operation capacity will be conducive to the supply of resources and business development of international trade enterprises (Wang 2023 ). The improvement of logistics reliability will increase consumers ‘ online purchase intention to a certain extent and promote the positive development of international trade (Yuan and Zhang 2023 ). The quality of logistics infrastructure is an important guarantee for efficient transportation of goods (Yuan et al. 2023 ). Therefore, China’s trade import and export have a certain dependence on the level of international logistics performance. The improvement of the relevant sub-indicators of the logistics performance index has a certain role in promoting China’s import and export trade.

Through the regression analysis of comprehensive indicators, it can be seen that the impact of international logistics performance on large-scale countries is the most significant. In order to deeply explore the impact of sub-indicators of international logistics performance on large-scale countries, this paper introduces the sub-indicators of international logistics performance indicators into large-scale countries, and replaces LPI for regression analysis. The results are shown in Table 7 .

From the regression results in Table 7 , it can be seen that TRACE and TIME have no significant impact on China’s import and export to large-scale countries. SHIPMENTS is significant at the 5% level. SERVICE, CLEARANCE and INFRASTRUCTURE are significant at the 1% level, and the coefficients are 0.254,0.532,0.485 and 0.449, respectively. The international freight price competitiveness, logistics service capacity, customs clearance efficiency and logistics-related infrastructure level of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries have a significant positive effect on China’s trade import and export.

Robustness test

In order to avoid the influence of extreme values on the empirical results of the selected samples, this paper removes individual outliers and conducts robustness test analysis. Among the 61 sample countries along the “Belt and Road”, China’s annual average import and export volume to Bhutan, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Moldova from 2011 to 2022 is less than USD 100 million, which has a large gap with the average value of China’s import and export volume to the “Belt and Road” initiative countries. Therefore, in order to avoid the impact of such extreme data on the experimental results, this paper eliminates the sample data of four countries, including Bhutan, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Moldova, and performs multiple regression analysis on the remaining sample data. The regression results are shown in Table 8 .

Combined with the regression results, it can be seen that the LPI coefficient passed the significance test under the condition of 5%, excluding the influence of sample selection bias on the empirical results of this paper. That is, the international logistics performance of the Belt and Road Initiative countries has a significant role in promoting the growth of trade volume between China and the country.

Since 2020, the new coronavirus epidemic has traumatized the economies of various countries to a certain extent and has had a certain impact on the country’s import and export trade. In order to avoid the interference of such factors on the regression results, the sample time interval is shortened to 2011–2020, and the regression is carried out again. The results are shown in Table 9 , and the estimated coefficient of LPI is significantly positive at the level of 10%, which proves that under the condition of weakening the interference of economic turbulence factors, the improvement of logistics performance level of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries has a significant role in promoting China’s trade import and export, and the conclusions of this paper are still robust.

The data are tailed in the range of 5–95%. The second column in Table 10 shows that the international logistics performance of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries has a positive impact on China’s import and export trade, which is significant at the level of 5%, the coefficient is small, and the main research conclusions have not changed.

Since there may be a certain time difference in the effect of international logistics performance level on import and export trade volume, this paper lags the explained variable TRADE by one period to explore the lag effect of LPI on TRADE, which helps to alleviate the possible two-way causality. The results in Table 11 show that the impact of LPI on TRADE lags one period is consistent with the benchmark results, so the benchmark regression is robust.

Conclusions

By adding the international logistics performance index to the trade gravity model, this paper analyzes the impact of the logistics performance of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries on China’s import and export trade. At the same time, the countries along the 'Belt and Road' are divided into three scales: large, medium and small, to explore the differences in the impact of logistics performance on the import and export of China and these three scale countries. According to the empirical analysis, the following conclusions can be drawn:

First, the improvement of the logistics performance level of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries has a certain role in promoting the increase of trade volume between China and the country. The international logistics performance index of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries has the most significant impact on China’s import and export to large-scale countries. The impact of LPI on China’s import and export trade is significantly positive under the condition of 10%. Therefore, the improvement of the logistics performance index of the 'Belt and Road' initiative countries is conducive to the increase of trade volume between China and the country. The impact of international logistics performance on China’s import and export to large-scale countries is significantly positive at the 1% level, small-scale countries are significantly negative at the 10% level, and medium-scale countries are not significant.

Second, the sub-indicators of the international logistics performance index of the countries along the “Belt and Road” have different degrees of influence on the import and export volume. Among them, logistics service capacity has a significant impact at the level of 10%, and the quality of logistics infrastructure is significant at the level of 1%, and the coefficient is positive. Therefore, the improvement of logistics service capacity and logistics infrastructure quality will help promote the growth of import and export volume. However, TRACE, SHIPMENTS, CLEARANCE and TIME have no significant impact on import and export volume. Therefore, logistics cargo tracking capability, international freight price competitiveness, customs clearance efficiency and logistics timeliness have little impact on China’s import and export to the Belt and Road Initiative countries.

Third, among the sub-indicators of international logistics performance of large-scale countries along the 'Belt and Road', international freight price competitiveness, logistics service capacity, customs clearance efficiency and logistics-related infrastructure level have a significant role in promoting import and export trade, and the impact of cargo tracking capacity and logistics timeliness is not significant. SERVICE, CLEARANCE and INFRASTRUCTURE are significant at the 1% level, with coefficients of 0.532,0.485 and 0.449, respectively, so the impact of logistics service capacity is the greatest.

Practical implications

Based on the relevant conclusions of this paper, it is concluded that the improvement of the international logistics performance of the 'Belt and Road' initiative countries is conducive to promoting the development of China’s international trade, and the factors that have a greater impact on the growth of import and export trade in the sub-indicators of international logistics performance are clarified, which provides a certain basis for the implementation of the 'Belt and Road' initiative. In addition, combined with the research conclusions, targeted suggestions are put forward to provide certain reference values for the improvement of national logistics and trade levels and the implementation direction of the “Belt and Road” initiative.

First, improve logistics performance and reduce trade costs. The regression results show that the international logistics performance of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries has a significant and positive impact on China’s import and export, indicating that the level of logistics performance will promote the economic and trade exchanges between China and the “Belt and Road” initiative countries. The implementation of China’s 'Belt and Road' initiative is of great significance to the deepening of international cooperation. However, due to the large differences in the level of logistics performance among the “Belt and Road” initiative countries, this difference will restrict the development of intra-regional trade to a certain extent, and then weaken the benefits of the “Belt and Road” initiative. Therefore, it is particularly important to give full play to the role of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Silk Road Fund to ensure the financial support for the process of improving the logistics performance level of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries. In addition, make full use of advanced digital economy and technology to promote more efficient and lower-cost trade between the “Belt and Road” initiative countries.

Second, strengthen infrastructure facilities and reduce trade barriers between countries along the route. Whether from the LPI comprehensive index regression or the regression results of each sub-index, the coefficient of distance is negative, indicating that the geographical distance between China and the “Belt and Road” initiative countries will have a negative impact on China’s import and export, that is, distance is still an important factor affecting trade costs. However, there are still some problems and obstacles in the logistics facilities of various countries. Therefore, it is necessary to increase the capital investment and investment in various facilities related to logistics, improve the sub-indicators of logistics performance, and improve logistics competitiveness and reduce trade costs by improving infrastructure quality and logistics service capabilities.

Third, improve the logistics performance of large-scale countries and promote the overall development of countries along the “Belt and Road”. Comparing the regression results of the three models of large, medium and small, the LPI passed the significance test of China’s import and export to large-scale countries at the 1% level. International logistics performance has the most significant impact on China’s import and export to large-scale countries along the “Belt and Road”, and the impact of logistics service capacity, customs clearance efficiency and logistics-related infrastructure level in each sub-index is the most significant. That is to say, the improvement of logistics performance of large-scale countries along the route will promote China’s import and export trade to a greater extent. Therefore, in order to promote the high-quality development of the “Belt and Road”, the government can increase investment in infrastructure construction in large-scale countries, promote the development of their import and export trade, and enhance the overall development of the “Belt and Road”.

Limitation and future research

In the research, the “Belt and Road” initiative countries are used as research samples. The sample interval is not broad enough, and the data source has certain limitations. Future research can consider many countries in the world with trade. Secondly, according to the number of populations, this paper divides different countries into three categories: large-scale countries, medium-scale countries and small-scale countries, and explores the different effects of international logistics performance on import and export trade in different countries. In the future, it can be further studied according to other aspects such as national income level, national geographical location and national economic development level. Finally, the fixed effect model is adopted in this paper. The research method is relatively simple, and the selection of control variables and sub-indicators is limited. Future research can try different research methods, add different control variables and sub-indicators to improve the technicality and comprehensiveness of the research. Although there are some limitations in this study, this study has certain positive significance for enriching the literature in the field of international logistics performance and international trade development, and enriches the current knowledge.

Data availability

The data used in the paper were compiled by the authors according to the World Bank Database and Prospective Database. Requests to access these publicly available datasets should be directed to https://d.qianzhan.com/xdata/list/xCxpy5y5xr.html , https://data.worldbank.org.cn/indicator/LP.LPI.OVRL.XQ , https://data.worldbank.org.cn/indicator/LP.LPI.TRAC.XQ , https://data.worldbank.org.cn/indicator/LP.LPI.INFR.XQ , https://data.worldbank.org.cn/indicator/LP.LPI.ITRN.XQ , https://data.worldbank.org.cn/indicator/LP.LPI.LOGS.XQ , https://data.worldbank.org.cn/indicator/LP.LPI.CUST.XQ , https://data.worldbank.org.cn/indicator/LP.LPI.TIME.XQ , https://data.worldbank.org.cn/indicator/NE.TRD.GNFS.ZS .

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the Science and Technology Innovation Project of Chongqing Education Commission “Chengdu Chongging Double City Economic Circle Construction”, Grant Number KJCX2020039.

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School of International Business and Management, Sichuan International Studies University, Chongqing, 400031, China

Weixin Wang

College of Finance and Economics, Sichuan International Studies University, Chongqing, 400031, China

Qiqi Wu & Bing li

International College, Krirk University, Bangkok, 10220, Thailand

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Conceptualization, Weixin Wang and Jiafu Su; methodology, Qiqi Wu.; software, Jiafu Su.; formal analysis, Bing Li; resources, Weixin Wang; writing—original draft preparation, Weixin Wang; writing—review and editing, Qiqi Wu. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jiafu Su .

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Wang, W., Wu, Q., Su, J. et al. The impact of international logistics performance on import and export trade: an empirical case of the “Belt and Road” initiative countries. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11 , 1028 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03541-0

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Received : 18 January 2024

Accepted : 31 July 2024

Published : 10 August 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03541-0

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