Compare/Contrast Paper - Essay Example

Practitioners use action research to reflect, in a systematic way, their practices with regards to their professionalism and education to enable improvement and creation of new knowledge (Greenwood, 1999, p. 118). On the other hand, empirical research is a means through which practitioners observe and experience, both directly and indirectly, the environment as a way of acquiring and creating knowledge. Action and Empirical Research Empirical research uses progressively simpler questions in a cyclic manner to focus on the subject matter through establishing crucial relationships between the aspects in question.

As opposed to action research, it is possible to establish grounded theories in empirical research through such inductive processes. Due to this fact, empirical research seeks to come with a map for achieving the intended solution with regards to established relationships between varieties of variables. The intended solution in this case must not be testable since it only seeks to identify the most probable way to improve the situation. Action research on the other hand necessitates that the grounded theory is tested to ensure that it works, and thus validating the research unlike empirical research, then continues with rational processes by assessing the test of the grounded theory (Phillips & Carr, 2010, p. 19-23). .

Although action research processes may vary from one to another, it is agreeable that there are emphases on democratic social and critical theory by practitioners with unengaged research being abandoned as an applicable theory in situations that are practical. Researchers use empirical research to gain knowledge through direct and indirect observation of the subject of study. Empirical evidence, being information gathered through observations, is analyzed either quantitatively or qualitatively to come up with findings and conclusions, which form the basis of knowledge gained.

By quantifying the empirical evidence, the researcher seeks to make sense of it in a form that is qualitative. Through analysis of the empirical evidence, a researcher is able to answer questions with supporting data as that evidence is clearly defined. The design in which research is done varies according to the question and the field being researched upon. Empirical research seeks to make up for laboratory tests, which cannot be able to answer certain questions through quantitative and qualitative analysis mainly in education and social sciences (Phillips & Carr, 2010, p. 131). Quantitative research begins with research questions in some fields where lab experiments can be tested to come up with a conclusive answer.

The researcher usually makes use of a theory concerning the research topic. Theory in use will then be used to come up with hypothetical statements from which predictions are made with regards to prevailing situations. The predictions as to the prevailing situations can then be tested using suitable experiments, after which its outcomes are used to determine whether the hypothetical statements are true or false. Empirical