Empirical research is a concept opposite to normative research, a basic research paradigm in the field of social science and one of the important methods of scientific research. Empirical research focuses on scientific induction from a large number of empirical facts and summarizes conclusions or laws of universal significance. If normative research is understood as deductive analysis to form an answer to the question of "what should it be", then empirical research mainly explores and answers the question of "what should it be" through inductive analysis.

Empirical and normative research methods have their own characteristics, advantages and disadvantages. The applicable research objects and contents are different, and the research steps and objectives are also different. But according to my observation, empirical research in the field of social science research in China is on the rise.

For example, I searched for the title of a document in China HowNet, with "empirical" as the key word (yes, this is a very primary search, don't laugh), and found that with the passage of time, the trend of the number of "empirical" documents published is shown in the following figure.

I found that more and more documents adopted the method of empirical research, and directly wrote the word "empirical" on the title of the documents-which means that empirical research has become an important academic increment of these documents, and it exists with a sense of pride. I am proud!

For example, I said that it was the first CSSCI journal paper published ten years ago after reading Bo, that is, I used the method of empirical research in a very loose sense. The title of the paper is as shown in the figure below.

In fact, looking back, my paper was very rough. From sample selection to statistical data analysis, all links are basically at the level of insulting empirical research methods ... but the goose is hungry, can you believe it? This research method itself has really become the highlight of the paper and won the favor of journal editors.