What is a "Primary" Article, Study or Research Study?
What is a Primary Study?
When an author does do original research in a clinic or laboratory or out in the field, and then writes a detailed article about this research, this is a "primary study." Other related terms are "original research" or "research study."
By contrast, a secondary article is like most of your term papers. You are basing your arguments and conclusions on research materials that were produced and written by other people. You did not personally collect the water samples in the marsh or compute the data on drug treatment outcomes or figure out how many juvenile offenders who went through a particular outreach program ended up being arrested again, so the resulting paper or article that you produce is secondary. Likewise, journalism or reportage may be considered secondary (or tertiary). For an article in Science News, for example, a writer calls up several university researchers on the phone and gets information from them about the latest developments in a particular field. Then the science journalist writes an article summarizing all the latest research findings, but they themselves did not actually do the research, so Science News could be a secondary resource.
Empirical Study?
A professor may also use the term "empirical" to describe a study or research article. In many cases, the term empirical is used to mean the exact same thing as a "primary study" or "original research" article. However, specifically, an empirical study is one that reports research based on direct observations or experiments. It often seeks to answer a specific question or to test a hypothesis. The research may use quantitative research methods, generating numerical data which attempts to establish causal relationships between two or more variables. Also, empirical research articles may use qualitative research methodology, in which the author objectively and critically analyzes beliefs or behaviors (etc.) without the analysis of numerical data.
Finding an empirical study can be tricky. The word empirical might be used in describing the study. In a few cases, the subject term "EMPIRICAL research" might even be assigned to a record in a database. Other terms like quantitative data might also be used in the summary. You can try searching for these words --for example, family violence and empirical-- but otherwise you will need to read and evaluate the article to decide whether that particular research article could be termed an empirical study.
An Additional Note on "Primary Sources" or "Primary Documents"
Historians often refer to "primary documents" or "primary sources". This is different. A primary document is an original work, but it is not a research study. A letter, a diary or a speech are examples of a primary document. Generally speaking, a primary document is a way to get a first-person view of an event or period. They are either created during the time period being studied or are created at some later time by someone who participated in the events under study. One such example would be a memoir or autobiography. If you are in a History or English course, you may need to find some primary documents for your paper, but if you are in a Sociology or Psychology or Communication or Biology class, chances are the instructor is looking for primary research studies and not primary documents. Ask a reference librarian for clarification!
