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One of the hardest parts of writing a research paper can be just finding a good topic to write about. Fortunately we've done the hard work for you and have compiled a list of 113 interesting research paper topics. They've been organized into ten categories and cover a wide range of subjects so you can easily find the best topic for you.

In addition to the list of good research topics, we've included advice on what makes a good research paper topic and how you can use your topic to start writing a great paper.

What Makes a Good Research Paper Topic?

Not all research paper topics are created equal, and you want to make sure you choose a great topic before you start writing. Below are the three most important factors to consider to make sure you choose the best research paper topics.

#1: It's Something You're Interested In

A paper is always easier to write if you're interested in the topic, and you'll be more motivated to do in-depth research and write a paper that really covers the entire subject. Even if a certain research paper topic is getting a lot of buzz right now or other people seem interested in writing about it, don't feel tempted to make it your topic unless you genuinely have some sort of interest in it as well.

#2: There's Enough Information to Write a Paper

Even if you come up with the absolute best research paper topic and you're so excited to write about it, you won't be able to produce a good paper if there isn't enough research about the topic. This can happen for very specific or specialized topics, as well as topics that are too new to have enough research done on them at the moment. Easy research paper topics will always be topics with enough information to write a full-length paper.

Trying to write a research paper on a topic that doesn't have much research on it is incredibly hard, so before you decide on a topic, do a bit of preliminary searching and make sure you'll have all the information you need to write your paper.

#3: It Fits Your Teacher's Guidelines

Don't get so carried away looking at lists of research paper topics that you forget any requirements or restrictions your teacher may have put on research topic ideas. If you're writing a research paper on a health-related topic, deciding to write about the impact of rap on the music scene probably won't be allowed, but there may be some sort of leeway. For example, if you're really interested in current events but your teacher wants you to write a research paper on a history topic, you may be able to choose a topic that fits both categories, like exploring the relationship between the US and North Korea. No matter what, always get your research paper topic approved by your teacher first before you begin writing.

113 Good Research Paper Topics

Below are 113 good research topics to help you get you started on your paper. We've organized them into ten categories to make it easier to find the type of research paper topics you're looking for.

Arts/Culture

Discuss the main differences in art from the Italian Renaissance and the Northern Renaissance .
Analyze the impact a famous artist had on the world.
How is sexism portrayed in different types of media (music, film, video games, etc.)? Has the amount/type of sexism changed over the years?
How has the music of slaves brought over from Africa shaped modern American music?
How has rap music evolved in the past decade?
How has the portrayal of minorities in the media changed?

Current Events

What have been the impacts of China's one child policy?
How have the goals of feminists changed over the decades?
How has the Trump presidency changed international relations?
Analyze the history of the relationship between the United States and North Korea.
What factors contributed to the current decline in the rate of unemployment?
What have been the impacts of states which have increased their minimum wage?
How do US immigration laws compare to immigration laws of other countries?
How have the US's immigration laws changed in the past few years/decades?
How has the Black Lives Matter movement affected discussions and view about racism in the US?
What impact has the Affordable Care Act had on healthcare in the US?
What factors contributed to the UK deciding to leave the EU (Brexit)?
What factors contributed to China becoming an economic power?
Discuss the history of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies (some of which tokenize the S&P 500 Index on the blockchain) .
Do students in schools that eliminate grades do better in college and their careers?
Do students from wealthier backgrounds score higher on standardized tests?
Do students who receive free meals at school get higher grades compared to when they weren't receiving a free meal?
Do students who attend charter schools score higher on standardized tests than students in public schools?
Do students learn better in same-sex classrooms?
How does giving each student access to an iPad or laptop affect their studies?
What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Montessori Method ?
Do children who attend preschool do better in school later on?
What was the impact of the No Child Left Behind act?
How does the US education system compare to education systems in other countries?
What impact does mandatory physical education classes have on students' health?
Which methods are most effective at reducing bullying in schools?
Do homeschoolers who attend college do as well as students who attended traditional schools?
Does offering tenure increase or decrease quality of teaching?
How does college debt affect future life choices of students?
Should graduate students be able to form unions?

What are different ways to lower gun-related deaths in the US?
How and why have divorce rates changed over time?
Is affirmative action still necessary in education and/or the workplace?
Should physician-assisted suicide be legal?
How has stem cell research impacted the medical field?
How can human trafficking be reduced in the United States/world?
Should people be able to donate organs in exchange for money?
Which types of juvenile punishment have proven most effective at preventing future crimes?
Has the increase in US airport security made passengers safer?
Analyze the immigration policies of certain countries and how they are similar and different from one another.
Several states have legalized recreational marijuana. What positive and negative impacts have they experienced as a result?
Do tariffs increase the number of domestic jobs?
Which prison reforms have proven most effective?
Should governments be able to censor certain information on the internet?
Which methods/programs have been most effective at reducing teen pregnancy?
What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Keto diet?
How effective are different exercise regimes for losing weight and maintaining weight loss?
How do the healthcare plans of various countries differ from each other?
What are the most effective ways to treat depression ?
What are the pros and cons of genetically modified foods?
Which methods are most effective for improving memory?
What can be done to lower healthcare costs in the US?
What factors contributed to the current opioid crisis?
Analyze the history and impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic .
Are low-carbohydrate or low-fat diets more effective for weight loss?
How much exercise should the average adult be getting each week?
Which methods are most effective to get parents to vaccinate their children?
What are the pros and cons of clean needle programs?
How does stress affect the body?
Discuss the history of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
What were the causes and effects of the Salem Witch Trials?
Who was responsible for the Iran-Contra situation?
How has New Orleans and the government's response to natural disasters changed since Hurricane Katrina?
What events led to the fall of the Roman Empire?
What were the impacts of British rule in India ?
Was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki necessary?
What were the successes and failures of the women's suffrage movement in the United States?
What were the causes of the Civil War?
How did Abraham Lincoln's assassination impact the country and reconstruction after the Civil War?
Which factors contributed to the colonies winning the American Revolution?
What caused Hitler's rise to power?
Discuss how a specific invention impacted history.
What led to Cleopatra's fall as ruler of Egypt?
How has Japan changed and evolved over the centuries?
What were the causes of the Rwandan genocide ?

Why did Martin Luther decide to split with the Catholic Church?
Analyze the history and impact of a well-known cult (Jonestown, Manson family, etc.)
How did the sexual abuse scandal impact how people view the Catholic Church?
How has the Catholic church's power changed over the past decades/centuries?
What are the causes behind the rise in atheism/ agnosticism in the United States?
What were the influences in Siddhartha's life resulted in him becoming the Buddha?
How has media portrayal of Islam/Muslims changed since September 11th?

Science/Environment

How has the earth's climate changed in the past few decades?
How has the use and elimination of DDT affected bird populations in the US?
Analyze how the number and severity of natural disasters have increased in the past few decades.
Analyze deforestation rates in a certain area or globally over a period of time.
How have past oil spills changed regulations and cleanup methods?
How has the Flint water crisis changed water regulation safety?
What are the pros and cons of fracking?
What impact has the Paris Climate Agreement had so far?
What have NASA's biggest successes and failures been?
How can we improve access to clean water around the world?
Does ecotourism actually have a positive impact on the environment?
Should the US rely on nuclear energy more?
What can be done to save amphibian species currently at risk of extinction?
What impact has climate change had on coral reefs?
How are black holes created?
Are teens who spend more time on social media more likely to suffer anxiety and/or depression?
How will the loss of net neutrality affect internet users?
Analyze the history and progress of self-driving vehicles.
How has the use of drones changed surveillance and warfare methods?
Has social media made people more or less connected?
What progress has currently been made with artificial intelligence ?
Do smartphones increase or decrease workplace productivity?
What are the most effective ways to use technology in the classroom?
How is Google search affecting our intelligence?
When is the best age for a child to begin owning a smartphone?
Has frequent texting reduced teen literacy rates?

How to Write a Great Research Paper

Even great research paper topics won't give you a great research paper if you don't hone your topic before and during the writing process. Follow these three tips to turn good research paper topics into great papers.

#1: Figure Out Your Thesis Early

Before you start writing a single word of your paper, you first need to know what your thesis will be. Your thesis is a statement that explains what you intend to prove/show in your paper. Every sentence in your research paper will relate back to your thesis, so you don't want to start writing without it!

As some examples, if you're writing a research paper on if students learn better in same-sex classrooms, your thesis might be "Research has shown that elementary-age students in same-sex classrooms score higher on standardized tests and report feeling more comfortable in the classroom."

If you're writing a paper on the causes of the Civil War, your thesis might be "While the dispute between the North and South over slavery is the most well-known cause of the Civil War, other key causes include differences in the economies of the North and South, states' rights, and territorial expansion."

#2: Back Every Statement Up With Research

Remember, this is a research paper you're writing, so you'll need to use lots of research to make your points. Every statement you give must be backed up with research, properly cited the way your teacher requested. You're allowed to include opinions of your own, but they must also be supported by the research you give.

#3: Do Your Research Before You Begin Writing

You don't want to start writing your research paper and then learn that there isn't enough research to back up the points you're making, or, even worse, that the research contradicts the points you're trying to make!

Get most of your research on your good research topics done before you begin writing. Then use the research you've collected to create a rough outline of what your paper will cover and the key points you're going to make. This will help keep your paper clear and organized, and it'll ensure you have enough research to produce a strong paper.

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Christine graduated from Michigan State University with degrees in Environmental Biology and Geography and received her Master's from Duke University. In high school she scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and was named a National Merit Finalist. She has taught English and biology in several countries.

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Empirical Research: A Comprehensive Guide for Academics

Empirical research relies on gathering and studying real, observable data. The term ’empirical’ comes from the Greek word ’empeirikos,’ meaning ‘experienced’ or ‘based on experience.’ So, what is empirical research? Instead of using theories or opinions, empirical research depends on real data obtained through direct observation or experimentation.

Why Empirical Research?

Empirical research plays a key role in checking or improving current theories, providing a systematic way to grow knowledge across different areas. By focusing on objectivity, it makes research findings more trustworthy, which is critical in research fields like medicine, psychology, economics, and public policy. In the end, the strengths of empirical research lie in deepening our awareness of the world and improving our capacity to tackle problems wisely. 1,2

Qualitative and Quantitative Methods

There are two main types of empirical research methods – qualitative and quantitative. 3,4 Qualitative research delves into intricate phenomena using non-numerical data, such as interviews or observations, to offer in-depth insights into human experiences. In contrast, quantitative research analyzes numerical data to spot patterns and relationships, aiming for objectivity and the ability to apply findings to a wider context.

Steps for Conducting Empirical Research

When it comes to conducting research, there are some simple steps that researchers can follow. 5,6

Create Research Hypothesis: Clearly state the specific question you want to answer or the hypothesis you want to explore in your study.
Examine Existing Research: Read and study existing research on your topic. Understand what’s already known, identify existing gaps in knowledge, and create a framework for your own study based on what you learn.
Plan Your Study: Decide how you’ll conduct your research—whether through qualitative methods, quantitative methods, or a mix of both. Choose suitable techniques like surveys, experiments, interviews, or observations based on your research question.
Develop Research Instruments: Create reliable research collection tools, such as surveys or questionnaires, to help you collate data. Ensure these tools are well-designed and effective.
Collect Data: Systematically gather the information you need for your research according to your study design and protocols using the chosen research methods.
Data Analysis: Analyze the collected data using suitable statistical or qualitative methods that align with your research question and objectives.
Interpret Results: Understand and explain the significance of your analysis results in the context of your research question or hypothesis.
Draw Conclusions: Summarize your findings and draw conclusions based on the evidence. Acknowledge any study limitations and propose areas for future research.

Advantages of Empirical Research

Empirical research is valuable because it stays objective by relying on observable data, lessening the impact of personal biases. This objectivity boosts the trustworthiness of research findings. Also, using precise quantitative methods helps in accurate measurement and statistical analysis. This precision ensures researchers can draw reliable conclusions from numerical data, strengthening our understanding of the studied phenomena. 4

Disadvantages of Empirical Research

While empirical research has notable strengths, researchers must also be aware of its limitations when deciding on the right research method for their study.4 One significant drawback of empirical research is the risk of oversimplifying complex phenomena, especially when relying solely on quantitative methods. These methods may struggle to capture the richness and nuances present in certain social, cultural, or psychological contexts. Another challenge is the potential for confounding variables or biases during data collection, impacting result accuracy.

Tips for Empirical Writing

In empirical research, the writing is usually done in research papers, articles, or reports. The empirical writing follows a set structure, and each section has a specific role. Here are some tips for your empirical writing. 7

Define Your Objectives: When you write about your research, start by making your goals clear. Explain what you want to find out or prove in a simple and direct way. This helps guide your research and lets others know what you have set out to achieve.
Be Specific in Your Literature Review: In the part where you talk about what others have studied before you, focus on research that directly relates to your research question. Keep it short and pick studies that help explain why your research is important. This part sets the stage for your work.
Explain Your Methods Clearly : When you talk about how you did your research (Methods), explain it in detail. Be clear about your research plan, who took part, and what you did; this helps others understand and trust your study. Also, be honest about any rules you follow to make sure your study is ethical and reproducible.
Share Your Results Clearly : After doing your empirical research, share what you found in a simple way. Use tables or graphs to make it easier for your audience to understand your research. Also, talk about any numbers you found and clearly state if they are important or not. Ensure that others can see why your research findings matter.
Talk About What Your Findings Mean: In the part where you discuss your research results, explain what they mean. Discuss why your findings are important and if they connect to what others have found before. Be honest about any problems with your study and suggest ideas for more research in the future.
Wrap It Up Clearly: Finally, end your empirical research paper by summarizing what you found and why it’s important. Remind everyone why your study matters. Keep your writing clear and fix any mistakes before you share it. Ask someone you trust to read it and give you feedback before you finish.

References:

Empirical Research in the Social Sciences and Education, Penn State University Libraries. Available online at https://guides.libraries.psu.edu/emp
How to conduct empirical research, Emerald Publishing. Available online at https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/how-to/research-methods/conduct-empirical-research
Empirical Research: Quantitative & Qualitative, Arrendale Library, Piedmont University. Available online at https://library.piedmont.edu/empirical-research
Bouchrika, I. What Is Empirical Research? Definition, Types & Samples in 2024. Research.com, January 2024. Available online at https://research.com/research/what-is-empirical-research
Quantitative and Empirical Research vs. Other Types of Research. California State University, April 2023. Available online at https://libguides.csusb.edu/quantitative
Empirical Research, Definitions, Methods, Types and Examples, Studocu.com website. Available online at https://www.studocu.com/row/document/uganda-christian-university/it-research-methods/emperical-research-definitions-methods-types-and-examples/55333816
Writing an Empirical Paper in APA Style. Psychology Writing Center, University of Washington. Available online at https://psych.uw.edu/storage/writing_center/APApaper.pdf

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Writing a Research Paper Introduction | Step-by-Step Guide

Published on September 24, 2022 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on March 27, 2023.

The introduction to a research paper is where you set up your topic and approach for the reader. It has several key goals:

Present your topic and get the reader interested
Provide background or summarize existing research
Position your own approach
Detail your specific research problem and problem statement
Give an overview of the paper’s structure

The introduction looks slightly different depending on whether your paper presents the results of original empirical research or constructs an argument by engaging with a variety of sources.

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Step 1: introduce your topic, step 2: describe the background, step 3: establish your research problem, step 4: specify your objective(s), step 5: map out your paper, research paper introduction examples, frequently asked questions about the research paper introduction.

The first job of the introduction is to tell the reader what your topic is and why it’s interesting or important. This is generally accomplished with a strong opening hook.

The hook is a striking opening sentence that clearly conveys the relevance of your topic. Think of an interesting fact or statistic, a strong statement, a question, or a brief anecdote that will get the reader wondering about your topic.

For example, the following could be an effective hook for an argumentative paper about the environmental impact of cattle farming:

A more empirical paper investigating the relationship of Instagram use with body image issues in adolescent girls might use the following hook:

Don’t feel that your hook necessarily has to be deeply impressive or creative. Clarity and relevance are still more important than catchiness. The key thing is to guide the reader into your topic and situate your ideas.

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This part of the introduction differs depending on what approach your paper is taking.

In a more argumentative paper, you’ll explore some general background here. In a more empirical paper, this is the place to review previous research and establish how yours fits in.

Argumentative paper: Background information

After you’ve caught your reader’s attention, specify a bit more, providing context and narrowing down your topic.

Provide only the most relevant background information. The introduction isn’t the place to get too in-depth; if more background is essential to your paper, it can appear in the body .

Empirical paper: Describing previous research

For a paper describing original research, you’ll instead provide an overview of the most relevant research that has already been conducted. This is a sort of miniature literature review —a sketch of the current state of research into your topic, boiled down to a few sentences.

This should be informed by genuine engagement with the literature. Your search can be less extensive than in a full literature review, but a clear sense of the relevant research is crucial to inform your own work.

Begin by establishing the kinds of research that have been done, and end with limitations or gaps in the research that you intend to respond to.

The next step is to clarify how your own research fits in and what problem it addresses.

Argumentative paper: Emphasize importance

In an argumentative research paper, you can simply state the problem you intend to discuss, and what is original or important about your argument.

Empirical paper: Relate to the literature

In an empirical research paper, try to lead into the problem on the basis of your discussion of the literature. Think in terms of these questions:

What research gap is your work intended to fill?
What limitations in previous work does it address?
What contribution to knowledge does it make?

You can make the connection between your problem and the existing research using phrases like the following.

Now you’ll get into the specifics of what you intend to find out or express in your research paper.

The way you frame your research objectives varies. An argumentative paper presents a thesis statement, while an empirical paper generally poses a research question (sometimes with a hypothesis as to the answer).

Argumentative paper: Thesis statement

The thesis statement expresses the position that the rest of the paper will present evidence and arguments for. It can be presented in one or two sentences, and should state your position clearly and directly, without providing specific arguments for it at this point.

Empirical paper: Research question and hypothesis

The research question is the question you want to answer in an empirical research paper.

Present your research question clearly and directly, with a minimum of discussion at this point. The rest of the paper will be taken up with discussing and investigating this question; here you just need to express it.

A research question can be framed either directly or indirectly.

This study set out to answer the following question: What effects does daily use of Instagram have on the prevalence of body image issues among adolescent girls?
We investigated the effects of daily Instagram use on the prevalence of body image issues among adolescent girls.

If your research involved testing hypotheses , these should be stated along with your research question. They are usually presented in the past tense, since the hypothesis will already have been tested by the time you are writing up your paper.

For example, the following hypothesis might respond to the research question above:

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The final part of the introduction is often dedicated to a brief overview of the rest of the paper.

In a paper structured using the standard scientific “introduction, methods, results, discussion” format, this isn’t always necessary. But if your paper is structured in a less predictable way, it’s important to describe the shape of it for the reader.

If included, the overview should be concise, direct, and written in the present tense.

This paper will first discuss several examples of survey-based research into adolescent social media use, then will go on to …
This paper first discusses several examples of survey-based research into adolescent social media use, then goes on to …

Full examples of research paper introductions are shown in the tabs below: one for an argumentative paper, the other for an empirical paper.

Argumentative paper
Empirical paper

Are cows responsible for climate change? A recent study (RIVM, 2019) shows that cattle farmers account for two thirds of agricultural nitrogen emissions in the Netherlands. These emissions result from nitrogen in manure, which can degrade into ammonia and enter the atmosphere. The study’s calculations show that agriculture is the main source of nitrogen pollution, accounting for 46% of the country’s total emissions. By comparison, road traffic and households are responsible for 6.1% each, the industrial sector for 1%. While efforts are being made to mitigate these emissions, policymakers are reluctant to reckon with the scale of the problem. The approach presented here is a radical one, but commensurate with the issue. This paper argues that the Dutch government must stimulate and subsidize livestock farmers, especially cattle farmers, to transition to sustainable vegetable farming. It first establishes the inadequacy of current mitigation measures, then discusses the various advantages of the results proposed, and finally addresses potential objections to the plan on economic grounds.

The rise of social media has been accompanied by a sharp increase in the prevalence of body image issues among women and girls. This correlation has received significant academic attention: Various empirical studies have been conducted into Facebook usage among adolescent girls (Tiggermann & Slater, 2013; Meier & Gray, 2014). These studies have consistently found that the visual and interactive aspects of the platform have the greatest influence on body image issues. Despite this, highly visual social media (HVSM) such as Instagram have yet to be robustly researched. This paper sets out to address this research gap. We investigated the effects of daily Instagram use on the prevalence of body image issues among adolescent girls. It was hypothesized that daily Instagram use would be associated with an increase in body image concerns and a decrease in self-esteem ratings.

The introduction of a research paper includes several key elements:

A hook to catch the reader’s interest
Relevant background on the topic
Details of your research problem

and your problem statement

A thesis statement or research question
Sometimes an overview of the paper

Don’t feel that you have to write the introduction first. The introduction is often one of the last parts of the research paper you’ll write, along with the conclusion.

This is because it can be easier to introduce your paper once you’ve already written the body ; you may not have the clearest idea of your arguments until you’ve written them, and things can change during the writing process .

The way you present your research problem in your introduction varies depending on the nature of your research paper . A research paper that presents a sustained argument will usually encapsulate this argument in a thesis statement .

A research paper designed to present the results of empirical research tends to present a research question that it seeks to answer. It may also include a hypothesis —a prediction that will be confirmed or disproved by your research.

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Research Paper Topics

Choose your Topic Smart

What starts well, ends well, so you need to be really careful with research paper topics. The topic of a research paper defines the whole piece of writing. How often have you chosen the book by its title? First impression is often influential, so make sure your topic will attract the reader instantly. By choosing your topic smart, the half of your job is done. That is why we have singled out several secrets on how to pick the best topic for you.

Browse Research Paper Topics by Category:

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What is the Key to a Perfect Topic for a Research Paper?

The key to a perfect topic includes three main secrets: interest, precision, and innovation.

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It is impossible to do something great if you have no interest in what you are doing. For this reason, make sure you choose the topic that drives you. If you are bored by what you investigate, do not expect that your paper will be exciting. Right now, spend some minutes or even hours thinking about what interests you. Jot down all your preferences in life, science, politics, social issues etc. It will help you get the idea what you can write about.

After realizing what drives you, narrow this general idea to a more specific one. A research paper is not about beating around the bush. You will need clear facts and data. You will have to provide evidence to your ideas. You will need to be precise, specific and convincing.

Finally, the idea of any research is that it should be surprising and distinctive. Think what makes your perspective and approach special. What is the novelty of your research?

Use Technology

If you are still stuck, use technology. Today we have an opportunity to make our lives easier with a bit of technology used. You can find paper topic generators online. This software will examine the category you want to investigate and the keywords from your research. Within several seconds, this program generates paper topics, so you can try it yourself. It can help you get started with your assignment.

100% Effective Advice

We will now give you advice that is 100% effective when picking the topic. Firstly, forget about what others may think about your topic. This is your topic and this is your perception of the world. Stay personal and let your personal style get you the top grades. Secondly, never decide on the topic before analyzing the background for your research. By this we mean, investigate the topic before you start the research proper. It happens quite often that students choose the topic and later they realize there is no data or information to use. That is why conduct some research beforehand. Thirdly, read other researchers’ papers on the topic you want to write about. It will help you get the idea of the investigation. Moreover, it will help you understand whether you truly want to write a paper on this topic. Finally, when you have picked the topic, started your research, make sure you dedicate your time and energy. If you want to get high results, you need to study every little details of your research.

Examine Different Ideas

People often come up with genius ideas after analyzing thousands of other people’s ideas. This is how our brain works. That is why you can analyze other people’s ideas for research paper topics and think up your own. If you have never written any paper of that kind, it will help you understand the gist of this assignment, the style and the requirements. By comparing different topics, you can motivate yourself and get inspired with these ideas. Luckily, you have come to the right place. Here is our list of top 100 research paper topics.

What Makes a Good Topic for a Research Paper?

A good research paper topic is the one that is successful and manageable in your particular case. A successful research paper poses an interesting question you can actually answer. Just as important, it poses a question you can answer within the time available. The question should be one that interests you and deserves exploration. It might be an empirical question or a theoretical puzzle. In some fields, it might be a practical problem or policy issue. Whatever the question is, you need to mark off its boundaries clearly and intelligently so you can complete the research paper and not get lost in the woods. That means your topic should be manageable as well as interesting and important.

A topic is manageable if you can:

Master the relevant literature
Collect and analyze the necessary data
Answer the key questions you have posed
Do it all within the time available, with the skills you have

A topic is important if it:

Touches directly on major theoretical issues and debates, or
Addresses substantive topics of great interest in your field

Ideally, your topic can do both, engaging theoretical and substantive issues. In elementary education, for example, parents, teachers, scholars, and public officials all debate the effectiveness of charter schools, the impact of vouchers, and the value of different reading programs. A research paper on any of these would resonate within the university and well beyond it. Still, as you approach such topics, you need to limit the scope of your investigation so you can finish your research and writing on time. After all, to be a good research paper, it first has to be a completed one. A successful research paper poses an interesting question you can actually answer within the time available for the project. Some problems are simply too grand, too sweeping to master within the time limits. Some are too minor to interest you or anybody else.

The solution, however, is not to find a lukewarm bowl of porridge, a bland compromise. Nor is it to abandon your interest in larger, more profound issues such as the relationship between school organization and educational achievement or between immigration and poverty. Rather, the solution is to select a well-defined topic that is closely linked to some larger issue and then explore that link. Your research paper will succeed if you nail a well-defined topic. It will rise to excellence if you probe that topic deeply and show how it illuminates wider issues.The best theses deal with important issues, framed in manageable ways. The goal is to select a well-defined topic that is closely linked to some larger issue and can illuminate it.

You can begin your project with either a large issue or a narrowly defined topic, depending on your interests and the ideas you have generated. Whichever way you start, the goals are the same: to connect the two in meaningful ways and to explore your specific topic in depth.

Of course, the choice of a particular research paper topic depends on the course you’re taking. Our site can offer you the following research paper topics and example research papers:

Moving from a Research Paper Idea to a Research Paper Topic

Let’s begin as most students actually do, by going from a “big issue” to a more manageable research paper topic. Suppose you start with a big question such as, “Why has the United States fought so many wars since 1945?” That’s certainly a big, important question. Unfortunately, it’s too complex and sprawling to cover well in a research paper. Working with your professor or instructor, you could zero in on a related but feasible research topic, such as “Why did the Johnson administration choose to escalate the U.S. war in Vietnam?” By choosing this topic, your research paper can focus on a specific war and, within that, on a few crucial years in the mid-1960s.

You can draw on major works covering all aspects of the Vietnam War and the Johnson administration’s decision making. You have access to policy memos that were once stamped top secret. These primary documents have now been declassified, published by the State Department, and made available to research libraries. Many are readily available on the Web. You can also take advantage of top-quality secondary sources (that is, books and articles based on primary documents, interviews, and other research data).

Drawing on these primary and secondary sources, you can uncover and critique the reasons behind U.S. military escalation. As you answer this well-defined question about Vietnam, you can (and you should) return to the larger themes that interest you, namely, “What does the escalation in Southeast Asia tell us about the global projection of U.S. military power since 1945?” As one of America’s largest military engagements since World War II, the war in Vietnam should tell us a great deal about the more general question.

The goal here is to pick a good case to study, one that is compelling in its own right and speaks to the larger issue. It need not be a typical example, but it does need to illuminate the larger question. Some cases are better than others precisely because they illuminate larger issues. That’s why choosing the best cases makes such a difference in your research paper.

Since you are interested in why the United States has fought so often since 1945, you probably shouldn’t focus on U.S. invasions of Grenada, Haiti, or Panama in the past two decades. Why? Because the United States has launched numerous military actions against small, weak states in the Caribbean for more than a century. That is important in its own right, but it doesn’t say much about what has changed so dramatically since 1945. The real change since 1945 is the projection of U.S. power far beyond the Western Hemisphere, to Europe and Asia. You cannot explain this change—or any change, for that matter—by looking at something that remains constant.

In this case, to analyze the larger pattern of U.S. war fighting and the shift it represents, you need to pick examples of distant conflicts, such as Korea, Vietnam, Kosovo, Afghanistan, or Iraq. That’s the noteworthy change since 1945: U.S. military intervention outside the Western Hemisphere. The United States has fought frequently in such areas since World War II but rarely before then. Alternatively, you could use statistics covering many cases of U.S. intervention around the world, perhaps supplemented with some telling cases studies.

Students in the humanities want to explore their own big ideas, and they, too, need to focus their research. In English literature, their big issue might be “masculinity” or, to narrow the range a bit, “masculinity in Jewish American literature.” Important as these issues are, they are too vast for anyone to read all the major novels plus all the relevant criticism and then frame a comprehensive research paper.

If you don’t narrow these sprawling topics and focus your work, you can only skim the surface. Skimming the surface is not what you want to do in a research paper. You want to understand your subject in depth and convey that understanding to your readers.

That does not mean you have to abandon your interest in major themes. It means you have to restrict their scope in sensible ways. To do that, you need to think about which aspects of masculinity really interest you and then find works that deal with them.

You may realize your central concern is how masculinity is defined in response to strong women. That focus would still leave you considerable flexibility, depending on your academic background and what you love to read. That might be anything from a reconsideration of Macbeth to an analysis of early twentieth-century American novels, where men must cope with women in assertive new roles. Perhaps you are interested in another aspect of masculinity: the different ways it is defined within the same culture at the same moment. That would lead you to novelists who explore these differences in their characters, perhaps contrasting men who come from different backgrounds, work in different jobs, or simply differ emotionally. Again, you would have considerable flexibility in choosing specific writers.

Connecting a Specific Research Paper Topic to a Bigger Idea

Not all students begin their research paper concerned with big issues such as masculinity or American wars over the past half century. Some start with very specific topics in mind. One example might be the decision to create NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement encompassing Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Perhaps you are interested in NAFTA because you discussed it in a course, heard about it in a political campaign, or saw its effects firsthand on local workers, companies, and consumers. It intrigues you, and you would like to study it in a research paper. The challenge is to go from this clear-cut subject to a larger theme that will frame your paper.

Why do you even need to figure out a larger theme? Because NAFTA bears on several major topics, and you cannot explore all of them. Your challenge—and your opportunity—is to figure out which one captures your imagination.

One way to think about that is to finish this sentence: “For me, NAFTA is a case of ___________.” If you are mainly interested in negotiations between big and small countries, then your answer is, “For me, NAFTA is a case of a large country like the United States bargaining with a smaller neighbor.” Your answer would be different if you are mainly interested in decision making within the United States, Mexico, or Canada. In that case, you might say, “NAFTA seems to be a case where a strong U.S. president pushed a trade policy through Congress.” Perhaps you are more concerned with the role played by business lobbies. “For me, NAFTA is a case of undue corporate influence over foreign economic policy.” Or you could be interested in the role of trade unions, environmental groups, or public opinion.

The NAFTA decision is related to all these big issues and more. You cannot cover them all. There is not enough time, and even if there were, the resulting paper would be too diffuse, too scattershot. To make an impact, throw a rock, not a handful of pebbles.

Choosing one of these large issues will shape your research paper on NAFTA. If you are interested in U.S. decision making, for example, you might study the lobbying process or perhaps the differences between Democrats and Republicans. If you are interested in diplomacy, you would focus on negotiations between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Either would make an interesting research paper, but they are different topics.

Although the subject matter and analysis are decidedly different in the humanities, many of the same considerations still apply to topic selection. In English or comparative literature, for example, you may be attracted to a very specific topic such as several poems by William Wordsworth. You are not trying, as a social scientist would, to test some generalizations that apply across time or space. Rather, you want to analyze these specific poems, uncover their multiple meanings, trace their allusions, and understand their form and beauty.

As part of the research paper, however, you may wish to say something bigger, something that goes beyond these particular poems. That might be about Wordsworth’s larger body of work. Are these poems representative or unusual? Do they break with his previous work or anticipate work yet to come? You may wish to comment on Wordsworth’s close ties to his fellow “Lake Poets,” Coleridge and Southey, underscoring some similarities in their work. Do they use language in shared ways? Do they use similar metaphors or explore similar themes? You may even wish to show how these particular poems are properly understood as part of the wider Romantic movement in literature and the arts. Any of these would connect the specific poems to larger themes.

How to Refine Your Research Paper Topic

One of your professor’s or instructor’s most valuable contributions to the success of your research paper is to help you refine your topic. She can help you select the best cases for detailed study or the best data and statistical techniques. S/he can help you find cases that shed light on larger questions, have good data available, and are discussed in a rich secondary literature. She may know valuable troves of documents to explore. That’s why it is so important to bring these issues up in early meetings. These discussions with your instructor are crucial in moving from a big but ill-defined idea to a smart, feasible topic.Some colleges supplement this advising process by offering special workshops and tutorial support for students. These are great resources, and you should take full advantage of them. They can improve your project in at least two ways.

First, tutors and workshop leaders are usually quite adept at helping you focus and shape your topic. That’s what they do best. Even if they are relatively new teachers, they have been writing research papers themselves for many years. They know how to do it well and how to avoid common mistakes. To craft their own papers, they have learned how to narrow their topics, gather data, interpret sources, and evaluate conjectures. They know how to use appropriate methods and how to mine the academic literature. In all these ways, they can assist you with their own hard-won experience. To avoid any confusion, just make sure your instructor knows what advice you are getting from workshop leaders and tutors. You want everyone to be pulling in the same direction.

Second, you will benefit enormously from batting around your research paper in workshops. The more you speak about your subject, the better you will understand it yourself. The better you understand it, the clearer your research and writing will be. You will learn about your project as you present your ideas; you will learn more as you listen to others discuss your work; and you will learn still more as you respond to their suggestions. Although you should do that in sessions with your instructor, you will also profit from doing it in workshops and tutorial sessions.

Secrets to Keep in Mind when Writing a Research Paper

As a bonus, we have prepared several secrets for you to make your paper perfect. Firstly, always write your paper from scratch. Do not copy the already existing materials, as it can lead to unsatisfactory mark or even expulsion. Secondly, start your research early; do not put off investigating the topic. The earlier you start, the easier it will be to meet the deadline. Thirdly, plan your work and create an outline for your task. A planned work will help you be systematic. Plus, it will help you avoid writer’s block, as you always have an outline to follow. Another secret is following all the requirements. A research paper is an academic assignment, so all these structural and formatting standards are important. Finally, make sure you proofread and edit your task. Check your paper for grammar and spelling mistakes, examine your choice of vocabulary. If it seems too much, you can always ask our professional editors and they will check the paper for you. A mistakes-free paper is essential to get high results.

Custom Research Paper Writing Service

If you still have concerns regarding your research paper, we are here to answer your questions. It is no secret that studying is becoming more and more difficult at college. Every week you have an overload of tasks and assignments. You work hard, sleep little. As a result, you can be at the edge of a nervous breakdown trying to finish all the tasks on time. That is why we are here helping thousands of students to study smart.

24/7 you can contact us and order your paper. We never miss the deadline and always provide our clients with a top-notch quality. When you feel that you cannot handle it on your own, a bit of assistance will do no harm. All our writers are experts with years of experience. They are aware of all the subtleties of academic writing and they know all the recent college requirements. You can turn to us for help any time and we will get down to work immediately. From choosing the topic to writing the whole paper – this is what we have to offer. Getting top grades is much easier when the real professionals help you.

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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?

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.

LEARN ABOUT: Best Data Collection Tools

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.

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Published: 22 December 2022

A systematic review of high impact empirical studies in STEM education

Yeping Li 1 ,
Yu Xiao 1 ,
Ke Wang 2 ,
Nan Zhang 3 , 4 ,
Yali Pang 5 ,
Ruilin Wang 6 ,
Chunxia Qi 7 ,
Zhiqiang Yuan 8 ,
Jianxing Xu 9 ,
Sandra B. Nite 1 &
Jon R. Star 10

International Journal of STEM Education volume 9 , Article number: 72 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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The formation of an academic field is evidenced by many factors, including the growth of relevant research articles and the increasing impact of highly cited publications. Building upon recent scoping reviews of journal publications in STEM education, this study aimed to provide a systematic review of high impact empirical studies in STEM education to gain insights into the development of STEM education research paradigms. Through a search of the Web of Science core database, we identified the top 100 most-cited empirical studies focusing on STEM education that were published in journals from 2000 to 2021 and examined them in terms of various aspects, including the journals where they were published, disciplinary content coverage, research topics and methods, and authorship’s nationality/region and profession. The results show that STEM education continues to gain more exposure and varied disciplinary content with an increasing number of high impact empirical studies published in journals in various STEM disciplines. High impact research articles were mainly authored by researchers in the West, especially the United States, and indicate possible “hot” topics within the broader field of STEM education. Our analysis also revealed the increased participation and contributions from researchers in diverse fields who are working to formulate research agendas in STEM education and the nature of STEM education scholarship.

Introduction

Two recent reviews of research publications, the first examining articles in the International Journal of STEM Education (IJSTEM) and the second looking at an expanded scope of 36 journals, examined how scholarship in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education has developed over the years (Li et al., 2019 , 2020a ). Although these two reviews differed in multiple ways (e.g., the number of journals covered, the time period of article publications, and article selection), they shared the common purpose of providing an overview of the status and trends in STEM education research. The selection of journal publications in these two reviews thus emphasized the coverage and inclusion of all relevant publications but did not consider publication impact. Given that the development of a vibrant field depends not only on the number of research outputs and its growth over the years but also the existence and influence of some high impact research articles, here we aimed to identify and examine those high impact research publications in STEM education in this review.

Learning from existing reviews of STEM education research

Existing reviews of STEM education have provided valuable insights about STEM education scholarship development over the years. In addition to the two reviews mentioned above, there are many other research reviews on different aspects of STEM education. For example, Chomphuphra et al. ( 2019 ) reviewed 56 journal articles published from 2007 to 2017 covering three popular topics: innovation for STEM learning, professional development, and gender gap and career in STEM. They identified and selected these journal articles through searching the Scopus database and two additional journals in STEM education that were not indexed in Scopus at that time. Several other reviews have been conducted and published with a focus on specific topics, such as the assessment of the learning assistant model (Barrasso & Spilios, 2021 ), STEM education in early childhood (Wan et al., 2021 ), and research on individuals' STEM identity (Simpson & Bouhafa, 2020 ). All of these reviews helped in summarizing and synthesizing what we can learn from research on different topics related to STEM education.

Given the on-going rapid expansion of interest in STEM education, the number of research reviews in STEM education research has also been growing rapidly over the years. For example, there were only one or two research reviews published yearly in IJSTEM just a few years ago (Li, 2019 ). However, the situation started to change quickly over the past several years (Li & Xiao, 2022 ). Table 1 provides a summary list of research reviews published in IJSTEM in 2020 and 2021. The journal published a total of five research reviews in 2020 (8%, out of 59 publications), which then increased to seven in 2021 (12%, out of 59 publications).

Taking a closer look at these research reviews, we noticed that three reviews were conducted with a broad perspective to examine research and trends in STEM education (Li et al., 2020a , 2020b ) or STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) education (Marin-Marin et al., 2021 ). Relatively large numbers of publications/projects were reviewed in these studies to provide a general overview of research development and trends. The other nine reviews focused on research on specific topics or aspects in STEM education. These results suggest that, with the availability of a rapidly accumulating number of studies in STEM education, researchers have started to go beyond general research trends to examine and summarize research development on specific topics. Moreover, across these 12 reviews, researchers used many different approaches to search multiple data sources (often with specified search terms) to identify and select articles, including journal publications, research reports, conference papers, or dissertations. It appears that researchers have been creative in developing and using specific approaches to select and review publications that are pertinent to their topics. At the same time, however, none of these reviews were designed and conducted to identify and review high impact research articles that had notable influences on the development of STEM education scholarship.

The importance of examining high impact empirical research publications in STEM education

STEM education differs from many other fields, as STEM itself is not a discipline. There are diverse perspectives about the disciplinarity of STEM and STEM education (e.g., Erduran, 2020 ; Li et al., 2020a ; Takeuchi et al., 2020 ; Tytler, 2020 ). The complexity and ambiguity in viewing and examining STEM and STEM education presents challenges as well as opportunities for researchers to explore and specify what and how they do in ways different from and/or connected with traditional education in the individual disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Although the field of STEM education is still in an early stage of its development, STEM education has experienced tremendous growth over the past decade. This field has evolved from traditional individual discipline-based education in STEM fields to multi- and interdisciplinary education in STEM. The development of STEM education has been supported by multiple factors, including research funding (Li et al., 2020b ) and the growth of research publications (Li et al., 2020a ). High impact publications play a very large role in the growth of the field, as they are read and cited frequently by others and serve to shape the development of scholarship in the field more than other publications.

Among high impact research publications, we can identify several different types of articles, including empirical studies, research reviews, and conceptual or theoretical papers. Research reviews and conceptual/theoretical papers are very valuable, as they synthesize existing research on a specific topic and/or provide new perspective(s) and direction(s), but they are typically not empirical studies. Review articles aim to provide a summary of the current state of the research in the field or on a particular topic, and they help readers to gain an overview about a topic, key issues and publications. Thus, they are more about what has been published in the literature about a topic and less about reporting new empirical evidence about a topic. Similarly, theoretical or conceptual papers tend to draw on existing research to advance theory or propose new perspectives. In contrast, empirical studies require the use and analysis of empirical data to provide empirical evidence. While reporting original research has been typical in empirical studies in education, these studies can also be secondary analyses of empirical data that test hypotheses not considered or addressed in previous studies. Empirical studies are generally published in academic, peer-reviewed journals and consist of distinct sections that reflect the stages in the research process. With the aim to gain insights about research development in STEM education, we thus decided to focus here on empirical studies in STEM education. Examining and reviewing high impact empirical research publications can help provide us a better understanding about emerging trends in STEM education in terms of research topics, methods, and possible directions in the future.

Considerations in identifying and selecting high impact empirical research publications

Publishing as a way of disseminating and sharing knowledge has many types of outlets, including journals, books, and conference proceedings. Different publishing outlets have different advantages in reaching out to readers. Researchers may search different data sources to identify and select publications to review, as indicated in Table 1 . At the same time, journal publications are commonly chosen and viewed as one of the most important outlets valued by the research community for knowledge dissemination and exchange. Specifically, there are two important advantages in terms of evaluating the quality and impact of journal publications over other formats. First, journal publications typically go through a rigorous peer-review process to ensure the quality of manuscripts for publication acceptance based on certain criteria. In educational research, some common criteria being used include “Standards for Reporting on Empirical Social Science Research in AERA Publications” (AERA, 2006 ), “Standards for Reporting on Humanities-Oriented Research in AERA Publications” (AERA, 2009 ), and “Scientific Research in Education” (NRC, 2002 ). Although the peer-review process is also employed in assessing and selecting proposals or papers for publication acceptance in other formats such as books and conference proceedings, the peer-review process employed by journals (esp. those reputable and top journals in a field) tends to be more rigorous and selective than other publication formats. Second, the impact of journals and their publications has frequently been evaluated by peers and different indexing services for inclusion, such as Clarivate’s Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and Elsevier’s Scopus. The citation information collected and evaluated by indexing services provides another important measure about the quality and impact of selected journals and their publications. Based on these considerations, we decided to select and review those journal publications that can be identified as having high citations to gain an overview of their impact on the research development of STEM education.

Focusing on the selection and review of journal publications with high citations has also been used by many other scholars. For example, Martín‐Páez et al. ( 2019 ) conducted a literature review to examine how STEM education is conceptualized, used, and implemented in educational studies. To ensure the quality of published articles for review, they searched and selected journal articles published in the 2013–2018 period from the Web of Science (WoS) database only. Likewise, Akçayır and Akçayır ( 2017 ) conducted a systematic literature review on augmented reality used in educational settings. They used keywords to search all SSCI-indexed journals from WoS database to identify and select published articles, given that WoS provides easy access to search SSCI indexed articles. In addition to the method of searching the WoS database, some researchers used other approaches to identify and select published articles with high citations. For example, some researchers may search different databases to identify and select articles for reviews, such as Scopus (Chomphuphra et al., 2019 ) and Google (Godin et al., 2015 ). In comparison, however, the WoS core database is more selective than many others, including Scopus. The WoS is the world’s leading scientific citation search and analytical information platform (Li et al., 2018 ), and has its own independent and thorough editorial process to ensure journal quality together with the most comprehensive and complete citation network ( https://clarivate.com/webofsciencegroup/solutions/webofscience-ssci/ ). Its core database has been commonly used as a reliable indexing database with close attention to high standard research publications with a peer-review process and is thus used in many research review studies (e.g., Akçayır & Akçayır, 2017 ; Li et al., 2018 ; Marín-Marín et al., 2021 ; Martín‐Páez et al., 2019 ).

It should be noted that some researchers have used a different approach to identify and select high impact publications other than focusing on article citations. This alternative approach is to identify leading journals from specific fields first and then select relevant articles from these journals. For example, Brown ( 2012 ) identified and selected eight important journals in each STEM discipline after consulting with university faculty and K-12 teachers. Once these journals were selected, Brown then located 60 articles that authors self-identified as connected to STEM education from over 1100 articles published between January 1, 2007 and October 1, 2010. However, as there was no well-established journal in STEM education until just a few years ago (Li et al., 2020a ), the approach used by Brown may be less useful for identifying high impact publications in the field of STEM education. In fact, researchers in STEM education have been publishing their high-quality articles in many different journals, especially those well-established journals with an impact factor. Thus, this approach will not help ensure the selection of high impact articles in STEM education, even though they were selected from well-recognized journals rooted in each of STEM disciplines.

In summary, we searched the WoS core database to identify and select high impact empirical research articles in STEM education as those highly cited articles published in journals indexed and collected in the WoS.

Current review

Similar to previous research reviews (e.g., Li et al., 2020a ), we need to specify the scope of the current review with specific considerations of the following two issues:

What time period should be considered?

How should we identify and select highly cited research publications in STEM education?

Time period

As discussed in a previous review (Li et al., 2020a ), the acronym STEM did not exist until the early 2000s. The existence of the acronym has helped to focus attention on and efforts in STEM education. Thus, consistent with the determination of the time period used in the previous review on examining the status and trends in STEM education, we decided to select articles starting from the year 2000. At the same time, we can use the acronym of STEM as an identifier in locating journal articles in a way as done before (Li et al., 2020a ) and also by others (e.g., Brown, 2012 ; Mizell & Brown, 2016 ). We chose the end of 2021 as the end of the time period for publication search and inclusion.

Searching and identifying highly cited empirical research journal publications in STEM education

To identify and select journal articles in STEM education from the WoS core database, we decided to use the common approach of keyword searches as used in many other reviews (e.g., Gladstone & Cimpian, 2021 ; Winterer et al., 2020 ). Li et al. ( 2020a ) also noted the complexity and ambiguity of identifying publications in STEM education. Thus, we planned to identify and select publications in STEM education as those self-identified by authors. As mentioned above, we then used the acronym STEM (or STEAM) as key terms in our search for publications in STEM education.

Different from the previous review on research status and trends in STEM education (Li et al., 2020a ), the current review aimed to identify and select high impact journal articles but not coverage. Thus, we decided to define and limit the scope of high impact empirical research journal publications as the top 100 most-cited empirical research journal publications obtained from the WoS core database.

Research questions

Li et al. ( 2020a ) showed that STEM education articles have been published in many different journals, especially with the limited journal choices available in STEM education. Given a broader range of journals and a longer period of time to be covered in this review, we can thus gain some insights through examining multiple aspects of the top 100 most-cited empirical studies, including journals in which these empirical studies were published, publication years, disciplinary content coverage, research topics and methods. In addition, recent reviews suggested the value of examining possible trends in the authorship and school level focus (Li, 2022 ; Li & Xiao, 2022 ). Taken together, we are interested in addressing the following six research questions:

What are the top 100 most-cited empirical STEM education research journal publications?

What are the distributions and patterns of the top 100 most-cited empirical research publications in different journals?

What is the disciplinary content coverage of the top 100 most-cited empirical research journal publications and possible trends?

What are research topics and methods of the top 100 most-cited empirical research journal publications?

What are the corresponding authors’ nationalities/regions and professions?

What are school level foci of the top 100 most-cited empirical research journal publications over the years?

Based on the above discussion, we carried out the following steps for this systematic review to address these research questions.

Searching and identifying the top 100 most-cited empirical research journal publications in STEM education

Figure 1 provides a summary of the article search and selection process that was used for this review. The process started with a search of the WoS core database on September 12, 2022 under the field of “topic” (covering title, abstract, author keywords, and keywords plus), using the search terms: “STEM” OR “STEAM” OR “science, technology, engineering, and mathematics”. Because there are many different categories in the WoS database, we then specified the publication search using the four WoS categories listed under “education”: “Education Educational Research,” “Education Scientific Disciplines,” “Psychology Educational,” and “Education Special.” The time period of publication search was further specified as starting from 2000 to 2021.

Flowchart of publication search, identification, and selection process

The search returned 9275 publications under “Education Educational Research,” 2161 under “Education Scientific Disciplines,” 247 under “Psychology Educational,” and 15 under “Education Special.” The combined list of all publications was then placed in descending order in terms of citation counts up to the search date of Sept. 12, 2022, and each publication record was screened one-by-one by three researchers using the inclusion or exclusion criteria (see Table 2 ). At times when the publication record listed was not detailed enough, we searched and obtained the full article to screen and check to determine its eligibility. The process ended after identifying and selecting the top 100 most-cited empirical research journal publications.

Data analysis

To address research question 3, we categorized all 100 publications in terms of the number of STEM disciplines covered in a study. Two general categories were used for this review: publications within a single discipline of STEM vs. those with multi- or inter-disciplines of STEM. In contrast to the detailed classifications used in a previous review (Li et al., 2020a ), this simplified classification can help reveal overall trends in disciplinary content coverage and approach reflected in high impact empirical research in STEM education.

To examine research topics, we used the same list of topics from previous reviews (Li & Xiao, 2022 ; Li et al., 2020a ). The following list contains the seven topic categories (TCs) that were used to classify and examine all 100 publications identified and selected from the search in this study.

TC1: Teaching, teacher, and teacher education in STEM (including both pre-service and in-service teacher education) in K-12 education;

TC2: Teacher and teaching in STEM (including faculty development, etc.) at post-secondary level;

TC3: STEM learner, learning, and learning environment in K-12 education;

TC4: STEM learner, learning, and learning environments (excluding pre-service teacher education) at post-secondary level;

TC5: Policy, curriculum, evaluation, and assessment in STEM (including literature reviews about a field in general);

TC6: Culture, social, and gender issues in STEM education;

TC7: History, epistemology, and perspectives about STEM and STEM education.

To examine research methods, we coded all publications in terms of the following methodological categories: (1) qualitative methods, (2) quantitative methods, and (3) mixed methods. We assigned each publication to only one research topic and one method, following the process used in the previous reviews (Li et al., 2019 , 2020a ). When there was more than one topic or method that could have been used for a publication, a final decision was made in choosing and assigning the primary topic and/or method after discussion.

To address research question 5, we examined the corresponding author’s (or the first author, if no specific indication was given about the corresponding author) nationality/region and profession. Many publications in STEM education have joint authorship but may contain limited information about different co-authors. Focusing on the corresponding author’s nationality/region is a feasible approach as we learned from a previous research review (Li et al., 2020a ). For the corresponding author’s profession, we used the same two general categories from the recent reviews (Li, 2022 ; Li & Xiao, 2022 ): “education” and “STEM+” that differentiate a corresponding author’s profession in education/educational research vs. disciplines and fields other than education. If a publication’s corresponding author was listed as affiliated with multiple departments/institutions, the first department/institution affiliation was chosen and used to identify the author’s nationality/region and profession.

To answer research question 6, we adopted the three categories from recent research reviews: K-12, postsecondary, and general (Li, 2022 ; Li & Xiao, 2022 ). The use of these school level categories helped reveal the distribution of STEM education research interests and development over the school level span. While the first two categories are self-explanatory, the “general” category is for those empirical research publications on questions or issues either pertinent to all school levels or that cross the boundary of K-12 school and college.

Results and discussion

The following sections are structured to report findings as corresponding to each of the six research questions.

Distributions and patterns of highly cited publications across different journals

Forty-five journals were identified as publishing these top 100 most-cited articles. Table 4 shows that the majority (26) of these journals focus on general educational research or educational psychology, publishing 52 of the top 100 most-cited articles. Fourteen journals with titles specifying a single discipline of STEM published 38 of these top 100 articles, three journals with two specified STEM disciplines in their titles published seven of these articles, one journal with three specified STEM disciplines published one article, and one journal specifying all four STEM disciplines published two articles. Among these 45 journals, 36 journals are indexed in SSCI, with the remaining nine journals indexed in ESCI (Emerging Sources Citation Index). These are clearly all reputable and well-established journals, with 36 established before 2000 and 9 established in or after 2000. Only three journals in the list are Open Access (OA) journals, and they were all established after 2000. The results suggest that researchers have been publishing high impact STEM education research articles in a wide range of well-established traditional journals, with the majority in general educational research or educational psychology with a long publishing history. It further confirms that the importance of STEM education research has been well-recognized in educational research or educational psychology as noted above. At the same time, the results imply that the history of STEM education itself has been too brief to establish its own top journals and identity except only one in STEM education (IJSTEM) (Li et al., 2020a ).

Among these 45 journals listed in Table 4 , we classified them into two general categories: general education research journals (26, all without mention of a discipline of STEM in a journal’s title) and those (19) with one or more STEM disciplines specified in a journal’s title. Figure 3 presents the distributions of these top 100 articles in these two general categories over the years. Among 49 articles published before 2014, the majority (31, 63%) of these articles were published in journals on general educational research or educational psychology. However, starting in 2014, a new trend emerged with more of these highly cited articles (30 out of 51, 59%) published in journals with STEM discipline(s) specified. The result suggests a possible shift of developing and gaining disciplinary content consciousness in STEM education research publications.

Trend of the top 100 most-cited articles published in journals without vs. with subject discipline(s) of STEM specified. (Note: 0 = journals without STEM discipline specified, 1 = journals with STEM discipline(s) specified.)

As a further examination of the distribution of publications in journals specified with STEM discipline(s), Fig. 4 shows the distributions of these highly cited articles in different journal categories over the years. It is clear that these highly cited articles were typically published in journals on general educational research or educational psychology before 2014. However, things started to change since 2014, with these highly cited articles published in more diverse journals including those with STEM discipline(s) specified in the journal titles. The journals that include only a single discipline of STEM have been more popular than others among those journals that specify one or more STEM disciplines. The result is not surprising as journals specified with a single discipline of STEM are more common, often with a long publishing history and support from well-established professional societies of education on a single discipline of STEM. This trend suggests that the importance of STEM education has also gained increasing recognition from professional societies that used to focus on a single discipline of STEM.

Distribution of highly cited research articles across different journal categories over the years. (Note: 0 = journals without STEM discipline specified, 1 = journals with a single discipline of STEM specified, 2 = journals with two disciplines of STEM specified, 3/4 = journals with 3 or 4 disciplines of STEM specified.)

To glimpse into those recent changes, we took a closer look at the six articles published in 2018 and 2019 as examples (see Table 5 ). All of these articles have been highly cited in just 3 or 4 years, with an average of 102 citations (range, 75–144) per article. Across these six articles, the majority were published in journals whose titles specified one or more STEM disciplines: three in journals with a single discipline of STEM specified, one in a journal on STEM education, and two in journals on general educational research. At the same time, these recent publications are not specifically on any single discipline of STEM, but multi- and interdisciplinary STEM education.

Disciplinary content coverage

The search of STEM education publications from the WoS core database relied on several keywords that the authors used to self-identify their research on STEM education. After coding and categorizing all top 100 publications, 25 research publications were found as focusing on a single discipline of STEM and 75 publications on multi- and interdisciplinary STEM education. The majority of these 100 most-cited empirical studies, in their focus on multi- and interdisciplinary STEM education, reflects the overall focus in STEM education, a trend consistent with what was learned from a previous review of journal publications in STEM education (Li et al., 2020a ).

Among the 25 research articles on a single discipline of STEM, the majority of these articles (56%, 14 out of 25) focused on science, 5 articles on technology, 4 articles on mathematics, and 2 articles on engineering. The result suggests that of the four STEM disciplines, arguably “science” is the broadest category and so it is not surprising that the number of publications on science is the most prevalent. Indeed, the result is also consistent with what we can learn from Table 4 . Among the 14 journals specifying a single STEM discipline that published 38 of the top 100 articles, seven journals focus on “science” that published 27 of these 38 articles.

To examine possible trends over time, Fig. 5 shows the distribution of these 100 articles across these two disciplinary content coverage categories over the years. For each of the publishing years from 2005 to 2019, there were always more high citation empirical publications on multi- and interdisciplinary STEM education than high citation publications focusing on a single discipline of STEM. Moreover, there were no high citation publications on a single discipline of STEM before 2011 or after 2017 that made the cut for inclusion in the top 100 list. These results suggest an overall trend of on-going emphasis on multi- and interdisciplinary research in STEM education, which can be further verified by what we learned from the six recent publications in Table 5 .

Publication distribution by disciplinary content coverage over the years. (Note: S = single discipline of STEM, M = multiple disciplines of STEM.)

Research topics and methods

Table 6 presents the distribution of all 100 highly cited publications classified in terms of the seven topic categories (TCs) over the years. Overall, all seven TCs have publications that were on the top 100 high citation publication list. There were clearly the most publications on TC6 (culture, social, and gender issues in STEM education), followed by publications on TC4 (STEM learner, learning, and learning environments at post-secondary level). The large number of publications with high citations in these two categories suggest possible evolution of research interests and topics in the field of STEM education. Taking a closer look at the six recent publications in Table 5 , it is clear that culture, social, and gender issues were the focus in these recent publications, with the exception of one publication on assessment. This result presents a picture that appears somewhat different from what we learned from previous research reviews that did not focus exclusively on high impact publications from the WoS database (Li & Xiao, 2022 ; Li et al., 2020a ).

Looking at the distribution of these publications within each of the seven TCs, “culture, social, and gender issues in STEM education” (TC6) is a topic area that consistently has some highly cited research publications in almost each of the publishing years. “STEM learner, learning, and learning environments at post-secondary level” (TC4) also has some consistent and on-going research interest with highly cited publications making the list in most of these publishing years. In contrast, publication distributions in the rest of the TCs did not present clearly notable patterns over the years.

Figure 6 shows the number of publications distributed over the years by research methods in these empirical studies. The use of quantitative methods (71) is dominant overall and is especially prevalent among these most-cited publications in the years from 2005 to 2019, a result consistent with what we learned from a previous research review (Li et al., 2020a ). Across these three methodological classifications, qualitative methods were used in 20 empirical studies, and mixed methods were used in only 9 empirical studies. Comparatively, there were many more articles published between 2010 and 2016 that used quantitative methods than the other two methods. However, there were somehow less dramatic differences in method use among empirical studies published either before 2010 or after 2016. As the use of different methods can help reveal ways of collecting and analyzing data to provide empirical evidence, it would be interesting to learn more about possible development and use of research methods in STEM education in the future as a new empirical research paradigm.

Publication distribution in terms of research methods over the years. (Note: 1 = qualitative, 2 = quantitative, 3 = mixed.)

Corresponding author’s nationality/region and profession Footnote 1

Examining the corresponding author’s nationality/region helps reveal the international diversity in research engagement and scholarly contribution to STEM education. Figure 7 indicates 87 highly cited publications (87%, out of 100 publications) with the corresponding author from the United States, followed by 6 publications (6%) contributed by researchers in the U.K., and the remaining 7 publications with the corresponding author from seven other countries/regions (i.e., one publication for each country/region). The results show some international diversity in terms of the number of country/region represented, but with a clear dominance of research contributions from the West especially the United States. The result echoes what we learned above about the corresponding author’s nationality/region for the top ten most-cited articles (see Table 3 ).

Distribution of corresponding author’s nationality/region of the top 100 articles

Recent reviews of journal publications in IJSTEM suggest a trend of increasing diversity in research contributions from many more different countries/regions (Li, 2022 ; Li & Xiao, 2022 ). We would not be surprised if the list of top 100 most-cited empirical research publications contained more contributions from other countries/regions in the future.

After coding the corresponding author’s profession in these top 100 articles, we found that similar numbers of publications had corresponding authors who were researchers in education (49) and STEM+ (51). This result is consistent with what we learned from the corresponding authors’ profession distribution in recent publications in IJSTEM (Li, 2022 ). The diversity in contributing to STEM education scholarship from researchers with various disciplinary training is evident.

To examine possible trends in the corresponding authors’ profession over time, Fig. 8 shows the distributions of these publications in the two profession categories over the years. It is interesting to note that researchers in education typically served as the corresponding authors for more articles published before 2014: 31 articles by researchers in education and 18 articles by researchers in STEM+ for a total of 49 published before 2014. However, a new trend has emerged since 2014, with many more researchers in STEM+ serving as the corresponding authors for these highly cited research articles: 18 articles by researchers in education and 33 articles by researchers in STEM+ for a total of 51 published since 2014.

Distribution of publications by corresponding author’s profession over the years. (Note: 1 = education, 2 = STEM+)

This trend is consistent with what we learned above about the increased number of these publications in journals specified with STEM discipline(s) since 2014 (see Figs. 3 and 4 ). We see an increasing number of researchers in STEM+ fields contributing and publishing empirical research articles in many journals associated with STEM discipline(s) since 2014, resulted in an increase in citations from professional communities while furthering the development of STEM education scholarship. The result is also consistent with what we learned from the authorship development of publications in IJSTEM over the years (Li & Xiao, 2022 ), an increasing trend of having STEM education scholarship contributions from diverse STEM+ fields.

Publications by school level over the years

With an increasing trend of contributions from researchers in diverse STEM+ fields, the identification of school level can help reveal where these high impact research publications focus on issues in STEM education. The coding results show that the majority (63) of these 100 most-cited articles focused on issues at the postsecondary level, 30 articles on issues at the K-12 school level, and 7 articles in the category of “general.”

Figure 9 presents the distributions of these highly cited publications across these three school categories over the years. It is interesting to note that high impact publications on issues at the postsecondary level outnumbered those in other two categories in almost every of these publishing years. As educational issues in K-12 school level were typically attended to by researchers in education, the increasing number of contributions from researchers in diverse STEM+ fields likely pushed the number of citations on publications that fit their interests more at the postsecondary level. The result is consistent with a growing trend in IJSTEM publications on STEM education at the post-secondary level revealed in a recent review (Li & Xiao, 2022 ).

Distribution of highly cited publications by school level focus and year. (Note: 1 = K-12 school level, 2 = Post-secondary level, 3 = General.)

We also noticed that almost no articles in the category of “general” before 2011 and after 2015 made to the list of top 100 most-cited publications. This result suggests that high impact empirical research in STEM education was conducted more at the school level rather than on issues across the boundary of K-12 school and college. With an increasing number of publications in the “general” category noted in recent review of IJSTEM publications (Li & Xiao, 2022 ), it would be interesting to learn more about cross-school boundary development of STEM education scholarship in the future.

Concluding remarks

This systematic review of high impact empirical studies in STEM education explores the top 100 most-cited research articles from the WoS database as published in journals from 2000 to 2021. These articles were published in a wide range of 45 reputable and well-established journals, typically with a long publishing history. These publications present an overall emphasis more on multi- and interdisciplinary STEM education rather than a single discipline of STEM, with an increasing trend of publishing in journals whose title specified one or more STEM discipline(s). Before 2014, 37% (18 out of 49) of these most-cited articles were published in journals whose title specified with a STEM discipline(s). In contrast, 59% (30 out of 51) articles were published in such journals since 2014, and even more so with 67% of the six articles published in 2018 and 2019. This trend is further elevated with two of those high impact articles recently published in this journal, International Journal of STEM Education . There appears a growing sense of developing disciplinary content consciousness and identity in STEM education.

Consistent with our previous reviews (Li et al., 2019 , 2020a ), the vast majority of these highly cited STEM research publications were contributed by authors from the West, especially the United States where STEM and STEAM education originated. Although there were contributions from eight other countries/regions in these top 100 publications, the diversity of international engagement and contribution was limited. Our results also provide an explanation of what may become “hot” topics among these highly cited articles. In particular, the topic of “culture, social, and gender issues in STEM education” is quite prevalent among those highly cited research publications, followed by the topic area of “STEM learner, learning, and learning environments at post-secondary level.” In comparison, topics related to disciplinary content integration in STEM teaching and learning and STEM teacher training have not yet emerged as “hot” among these highly cited empirical studies. Given that an increasing trend of diversity was noted from a review of recent publications in IJSTEM (Li, 2022 ), we would not be surprised if there will be more high impact research publications contributed by researchers from many other countries/regions on diverse topics in the future.

As STEM education does not have a long history, there will be many challenges and opportunities for new development in STEM education. One important dimension is research method. Among the top 100 most-cited empirical studies, quantitative methods were used as the dominant approach, followed by qualitative methods and then mixed methods. This is not surprising as research in multidisciplinary STEM education may require the use and analysis of data across different disciplines, more frequently in large quantitative data than in other data formats. However, when research questions evolve in the future, it would be interesting to learn more about method development and use in STEM education as a new research paradigm.

We started this review with the intention of gaining insights into the development of STEM education scholarship beyond what we learned about publication growth in STEM education from prior reviews. Indeed, this systematic review provided us with the opportunity to learn about possible trends and gaps in different aspects as discussed above. At the same time, we can learn even more by making connections across these different aspects. One important question in STEM education is to understand the nature of STEM education scholarship and to find ways of developing STEM education scholarship. However, STEM is not a discipline by itself, which suggests possible fundamental differences between STEM education scholarship and scholarship typically defined and classified for a single discipline of STEM. With the increasing participation and contributions from researchers in diverse STEM+ fields as we learned from this review, there is a good possibility that the nature of STEM education scholarship will be collectively formulated with numerous contributions from diverse scholars. Continuing analyses of high impact publications is an important and interesting topic that can yield more insights in the years to come.

Availability of data and materials

The data and materials used and analyzed for the report were obtained through searching the Web of Science database, and related journal information are available directly from these journals’ websites.

Our analysis found that the vast majority (94%) of these top 100 articles had the same researcher to serve as the first author and the corresponding author. There are 10 articles that had more than one corresponding authors, and we chose the first corresponding author as listed in our coding.

Abbreviations

Association for computing machinery AERA

American Educational Research Association

Cell biology education

Emerging Sources Citation Index

Institute of electrical and electronics engineers

International Journal of STEM Education

Kindergarten-Grade 12

National Research Council

Social Sciences Citation Index

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics

Disciplines or fields other than education, including those commonly considered under the STEM umbrella plus some others

Science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics

Topic category

Web of Science

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Marius Jung and the staff at SpringerOpen for their support in publishing this article.

This work was supported by National Social Science Foundation of China, BHA180134.

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YL conceived the study, helped with article search and screening, conducted data analyses, and drafted the manuscript. YX and KW contributed with article search, identification, selection and coding. NZ, YP, RW, CQ, ZY, and JX contributed with data coding. SBN and JRS reviewed drafts and contributed to manuscript revisions. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Li, Y., Xiao, Y., Wang, K. et al. A systematic review of high impact empirical studies in STEM education. IJ STEM Ed 9 , 72 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-022-00389-1

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Empirical studies
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Empirical Research Paper Topics

Empirical research paper topics can cover a wide range of subjects, depending on your area of interest and academic discipline. Empirical research involves collecting and analyzing data to draw conclusions based on evidence. Here are some empirical research paper topics across various fields:

The impact of social media on mental health among adolescents.
The effectiveness of mindfulness meditation in reducing stress and anxiety.
Factors influencing the development of phobias in children.
The relationship between socioeconomic status and access to quality education.
Examining the effects of urbanization on family structures and dynamics.
Analyzing the impact of racial profiling on community-police relations.
The relationship between minimum wage policies and unemployment rates.
Factors affecting consumer behavior in the e-commerce era.
The economic consequences of immigration policies on host countries.
Voter behavior and the influence of political advertising on election outcomes.
The effectiveness of international peacekeeping missions in conflict resolution.
The impact of campaign finance reform on political campaigns.
The correlation between diet and the prevalence of chronic diseases.
Assessing the effectiveness of vaccination campaigns in preventing disease outbreaks.
Exploring the factors influencing healthcare access and disparities.
Analyzing the impact of climate change on biodiversity in a specific region.
Evaluating the effectiveness of recycling programs in reducing waste.
The relationship between air pollution and respiratory health in urban areas.
Investigating the impact of online learning on student performance and engagement.
The effectiveness of teacher training programs in improving student outcomes.
Examining the relationship between class size and academic achievement.
Analyzing the factors influencing employee job satisfaction and retention.
The impact of leadership styles on organizational performance.
The role of corporate social responsibility in consumer decision-making.
The relationship between sentencing guidelines and recidivism rates.
Examining the effectiveness of rehabilitation programs for incarcerated individuals.
The impact of community policing on crime reduction in urban areas.
Analyzing the user experience and adoption of emerging technologies (e.g., virtual reality, AI).
The impact of cybersecurity measures on the prevention of data breaches.
Investigating the social and ethical implications of automation and AI in the workplace.

When selecting an empirical research topic, it’s essential to consider your interests, the availability of data, and the feasibility of conducting the research. Additionally, ensure that your chosen topic aligns with the requirements and guidelines of your academic institution or publication outlet.

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102 Best Econometrics Research Topics

College and university professors require students to write about econometrics research topics to gauge their comprehension of the relationship between mathematical economics, statistics, and economics.

The purpose of this integration is to provide numerical values to economic relationships and parameters. Usually, econometrics involves economic theories and their presentation in mathematical forms and the empirical study of business. Perhaps, this integration explains why some students struggle to choose topics for research in econometrics.

What Is Econometrics?

As hinted, econometrics is an economics branch that focuses on the relationships between economics, statistics, and mathematical economics. Ideally, econometrics entails the quantitative application of mathematical and statistical models using data to test hypotheses and develop economic theories while forecasting future trends based on historical data. Econometricians subject real-world data to various statistical trials while comparing and contrasting the results against the idea under examination.

Writing an econometric research paper is a process that starts with the selection of an interesting topic. Once you’ve chosen a title and the supervisor approves it, embark on extensive research using the prompt from your teacher. Proceed by gathering and analyzing all relevant information from different sources. Engaging in in-depth study and comprehensive analysis will enable you to write an informative paper that will compel the educator to award you the best grade in your class. Below are the steps to follow to write a high-quality econometric thesis or essay.

Write the introduction: Introduce your econometrics topic and tell the audience why it’s crucial. Also, include a thesis statement summarizing the entire paper. Describe the theoretical model: Tell the readers about the theoretical models to structure the empirical work. Present the data: Describe the data, whether time series or cross-sectional. Use descriptive statistics data and graphics if possible. Present the empirical model: Explain the model you intend to estimate and the functional form you intend to use. Present your empirical results: This section presents empirical results using a table to summarize them. Conclude the paper: Describe lessons from the research and state whether it supports the theory. Also, suggest approaches for future research on the topic.

Your paper should also include a reference section comprising the information sources you used to gather data.

Interesting Econometrics Paper Topics

Maybe you know the process of writing a paper on an econometrics topic but don’t have an idea to explore. If so, consider these exciting econometrics paper ideas.

How privatizing public enterprises could affect economic development and policy
Cashless economy: How demonetization affects medium and small businesses
How Gini index dynamics reflect the income inequality problem
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Investigating salary inequalities and the forces behind them
How income changes affect consumer choices
How does allowing the labor force to participate in public budgeting affect the economy
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How consumption attitudes have changed over the last decade
How economic convergence relates to salary levels
How income affects life insurance
The consequences of leaving the rat race
Testing Okun’s Law in the U.S
Analysis of spending on disposable income and imports
Comparing the unemployment rate in the United States to the rest of the world
Regional labor mobility and unemployment
Stock market evolution: Analyzing the causes and effects
How internet productivity relate to connectivity in the workplace
How currency devaluation affects medium and small companies
How government spending and inflation relate in an economy
The relationship between stock prices and inflation in a country
How income tax revenue affects a developing economy
How government expenditure affects economic growth
Factors contributing to the global recession
How a country’s unemployment rate relates to economic growth

Any of these topics can be an excellent basis for an econometrics paper. However, you require extensive research about any of these topics to develop a winning thesis.

Undergraduate Econometrics Project Ideas

Maybe your school or faculty requires you to write an econometrics paper to graduate from university. In that case, consider these econometrics research topics for undergraduates.

Analyzing the impact of income inequality on the poverty level
Analyzing gender differences in education between developing and developed countries
How immigration affects unemployment in the European Union
How economic growth relates to trade
Are immigrants more in countries with a high income?
How high taxations affect GSP
Analyzing the relationship between local income level and house prices
How income, education, and life expectancy affect the human development index
How inflation affects national savings
How life expectancy relates to national income
How financial development affects the economic growth of a country
Crime index versus the average education years
Investigating the correlation between youth unemployment and minimum wage
How economic prosperity relate to government systems
Economic factors that affect housing prices in the United States
Economic factors contributing to homelessness in the U.S
Socioeconomic and economic determinants of infant mortality
Econometric analysis: Impact of trade barriers
Why matching methods are essential in econometrics
How a randomized experiment can aid econometrics
Why instrumental variables matter in econometrics
Can experts predict the future using econometrics?
Econometrics as a numerical estimates source for economic relationship variables
Ways of testing economic theories that econometricians present
Regression discontinuity: Describe its application

These are great ideas to consider for an econometrics project. Nevertheless, you require sufficient time to research any of these topics and write a winning essay or dissertation.

Easy Econometric Research Topics

Perhaps, you need an easy topic for an econometrics paper. Maybe you have a short time to complete your assignment. In that case, these econometrics topics are ideal for you.

Theory suggestion- The initial econometrics methodology step
Why estimating variables is important
The importance of Proof-reading once you have evaluated the variables
Why testing a hypothesis matters
The impact of poverty on education
How poverty relates to childhood obesity
Human development and income inequality
The link between religion and ideologies on a country’s economy
Income and importation- How do they connect?
Personal income and life expectancy- What is the connection?
The effects of minimum wage on unemployment
Investigating monetary policies and bank regulations
A study of the economies of scale
The impact and relevance of comparative institutional economics
Analyzing the effect of making a company international
Studying the macroeconomics of rare events
Investigating customer behavior towards green products
Trade patterns: Investigating different trade patterns and their applications
Different stochastic processes concepts
Accurate stochastic processes prediction

Any of these topics can be a sound basis of a simple paper. Nevertheless, you still require time to research the idea and analyze data to develop a quality paper.

Financial Econometrics Research Paper Topics

Perhaps, you want to write an academic paper about a financial econometrics topic. If so, consider these ideas.

How does bank regulation affect the economy?
A critical look into the loan markets
How a cashless policy affects the economy
Structure and implementation of the monetary policy
Lessons to learn from financial crises
Investigating regression models
Statistical tools in the financial econometrics

These are good topics to explore in financial econometrics. However, follow the prompt from your teacher to write an impressive paper.

Econometrics Empirical Project Ideas FExor Ph.D. Level

Maybe you’re pursuing your Ph.D. and want to write a dissertation about an econometrics topic. In that case, this category comprises excellent ideas for you.

Analytical statistics versus theoretical statistics
The effects of the low and high demand of labor on an economy
The arbitrage pricing theory
How goods production and productivity affect econometrics at a national level
Applied econometrics- Its essence in turning qualitative economic ideas into quantitative ones
Definition, relevance, and application of the general line model
Theoretical econometrics’ study and application
The macro behavioral theory
Panel data methods applications- A microeconomics subsection
The impacts of the spillover effect on econometrics
The impact of labor supply on a local economy
Why labor markets are essential to econometrics
What is micro-econometrics modeling?
Micro-econometrics methods and applications
Statistical tools and their use in financial econometrics

This list also has fantastic economics paper topic ideas. But like the topics in the other sections, each of these notions requires extensive research to write a quality paper.

Exciting Econometrics Questions

Maybe you need a question to serve as the basis of your econometrics research. In that case, here are exciting queries to inspire you.

What is the current state of your country’s economy?
What’s the difference between the current state of the local and international trades?
What are the latest forecasts for the global economy?
How do the foreign exchange market and the local businesses relate?
What’s the impact of exportation and importation on the local economy?
How do businesses monopolies affect a country’s economy?
What are the effects of international banks on the local banking sector?
How does population growth affect economic development?
How can a natural disaster affect an emerging economy?
What techniques do companies use to “nudge” consumers into spending more?

This comprehensive list has some of the best econometrics ideas for essays and research papers. Nevertheless, having a topic is not a guarantee that you’ll write a good essay. You might still need help with your assignment after choosing a topic.

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Consumption Dynamics and Welfare Under Non-Gaussian Earnings Risk

Recent empirical studies document that the distribution of earnings changes displays substantial deviations from lognormality: in particular, earnings changes are negatively skewed with extremely high kurtosis (long and thick tails), and these non-Gaussian features vary substantially both over the life cycle and with the earnings level of individuals. Furthermore, earnings changes display nonlinear (asymmetric) mean reversion. In this paper, we embed a very rich “benchmark earnings process” that captures these non-Gaussian and nonlinear features into a lifecycle consumption-saving model and study its implications for consumption dynamics, consumption insurance, and welfare. We show four main results. First, the benchmark process essentially matches the empirical lifetime earnings inequality—a first-order proxy for consumption inequality—whereas the canonical Gaussian (persistent-plus-transitory) process understates it by a factor of five to ten. Second, the welfare cost of idiosyncratic risk implied by the benchmark process is between two-to-four times higher than the canonical Gaussian one. Third, the standard method in the literature for measuring the pass-through of income shocks to consumption—can significantly overstate the degree of consumption smoothing possible under non-Gaussian shocks. Fourth, the marginal propensity to consume out of transitory income (e.g., from a stimulus check) is higher under non-Gaussian earnings risk.

The order of coauthors has been assigned randomly using AEA's Author Randomization Tool. We thank Fatih Karahan for contributions to some of the early results in this paper. For helpful comments, we thank Dirk Krueger, Gonzalo Paz-Pardo, Richard Rogerson, Ayşegül Şahin, Rob Shimer, and conference participants at the Gerzensee Conference on Heterogeneity and Macroeconomics of Labor Markets. Ozkan acknowledges financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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15th Annual Feldstein Lecture, Mario Draghi, "The Next Flight of the Bumblebee: The Path to Common Fiscal Policy in the Eurozone cover slide

Access to Credit Reduces the Value of Insurance

We analyze the value of insurance when individuals have access to credit markets. Loans allow consumers to smooth financial shocks over time, decreasing the value of consumption smoothing from insurance. We derive formulas for the value of insurance that can be taken to data, and show how that value depends on individual charac-teristics and features of loans. We estimate that access to a five-year loan decreases the values of community- and experience-rated insurance for the average beneficiary by $232–$366 (58–61%). Even for the sickest decile, this loan access reduces the value of community-rated insurance by $1,099 (17%).

More Research From These Scholars

Effect of health insurance in india: a randomized controlled trial, prevalence of covid-19 in rural versus urban areas in a low-income country: findings from a state-wide study in karnataka, india, allocating scarce information.

Using pulp and paper waste to scrub carbon from emissions

Researchers at McGill University have come up with an innovative approach to improve the energy efficiency of carbon conversion, using waste material from pulp and paper production.

The technique they've pioneered using the Canadian Light Source at the University of Saskatchewan not only reduces the energy required to convert carbon into useful products, but also reduces overall waste in the environment.

"We are one of the first groups to combine biomass recycling or utilization with CO 2 capture," said Ali Seifitokaldani, Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Electrocatalysis for Renewable Energy Production and Conversion. The research team, from McGill's Electrocatalysis Lab, published their findings in the journal RSC Sustainability .

Capturing carbon emissions is one of the most exciting emerging tools to fight climate change. The biggest challenge is figuring out what to do with the carbon once the emissions have been removed, especially since capturing CO 2 can be expensive. The next hurdle is that transforming CO 2 into useful products takes energy. Researchers want to make the conversion process as efficient and profitable as possible.

Energy and Resources
Energy Technology
Energy and the Environment
Environmental Science
Renewable Energy
Global Warming
Hazardous waste
Photosynthesis
Climate change mitigation
Radioactive waste
Carbon cycle
Carbon dioxide

Story Source:

Materials provided by McGill University . Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

Roger Lin, Haoyan Yang, Hanyu Zheng, Mahdi Salehi, Amirhossein Farzi, Poojan Patel, Xiao Wang, Jiaxun Guo, Kefang Liu, Zhengyuan Gao, Xiaojia Li, Ali Seifitokaldani. Efficient integration of carbon dioxide reduction and 5-hydroxymethylfurfural oxidation at high current density . RSC Sustainability , 2024; 2 (2): 445 DOI: 10.1039/D3SU00379E

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