adjective · academic
empirical
/ɪmˈpɪr.ɪ.kəl/em·PIR·i·cal
Band 5-6task2task1
based on observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic
Examples
“The conclusions are supported by empirical evidence from fieldwork.”
“We conducted empirical tests to measure students’ reading speed.”
“Empirical data suggests a link between diet and mood.”
Band 8 sentence
“The study combines empirical observations with statistical modelling to provide robust policy recommendations.”
Collocations
- empirical evidence/data
- empirical research/study
Word family
empirically adverbempiricism noun
Common mistakes
empirical evidence is from experiment→empirical evidence comes from observation or experiment
Say it for a higher band
5observational→6experimental→7+empirical
Synonyms
observational
Easily confused
theoretical
“The theoretical model predicts different results from the experiments.”
Related words
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In Sublist 7
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