POLS 367 Lecture Notes

Distinguishing Empirical From Normative Claims

While this course is focused on empirical research, there is often a normative orientation to the questions we ask as political scientists as well as normative implications of our findings. The normative implications fall heaviest on public policy makers and administrators. The job the research is to keep norms, or the values of what should happen, separate from the analysis of what is being studied.

Empirical research is used to acquire scientific knowledge of what is, what might be in the future and why. As such, it does not address whether what is is good or bad, or whether it should or should not be not be the case. Of course the results of empirical research is key in understanding these types of normative questions. Still, it is not the work of empirical researchers to address the normative concerns that often result from their work.

Thus, we use the terms normative and non normative research to distinguish different types of research projects and different types of research outcomes.

Knowledge that is evaluative, value-laden and concerned with figuring out what we ought to know is called normative knowledge

Knowledge that is factual and objective in nature is non normative.

This is not to say that non normative. or empirical research exists in a vacuum. In fact, values are very important at initial stages of research where the researcher must draw upon their insights, observations and even their sense of what ought to be when selecting topics or how those topics ought to be framed in their larger contexts. By frame, I mean how we should limit the discussion of the object under study, what time periods or physical contexts ought to be analyzed, and the like.

An example will help illustrate the boundaries for empirical research. Considering my own research on American Indian justice in South Dakota, one might fairly engage in research of the state's criminal justice system because they feel that American Indians should not receive different sentence lengths than Whites for the same crimes. This is a normative concern that motivates the research. Here, what is most compelling to the researcher may be the capacity to first identify if Whites and American Indians receive similar sentences for similar crimes and, further, to explain why disparities exist if they are observed. As you can see, this research agenda is first motivated by normative concerns for justice or fairness.

However, it is essential that the researcher not select data sources, time periods, jurisdictional contexts, or any other frame for the research that might bias the outcomes of the study. In short, the research needs to be conducted in a manner that insures that the research's values, interests or initial expectations will not bias the results of the study. If the researcher did allow their values to bias the outcomes, you would not call this research normative because of the weight of the researcher's normative values. You would just call it bad research because it has little or no scientific value -- empirically or normatively speaking.

This brings to mind the clearest distinction between normative and empirical research. It certainly is not in the difference between biased and unbiased research. Rather, the distinction between the two types of scientific research lies in the intentions of the research. A critical question to consider when distinguishing research types is whether the project seeks to establish something is in fact, no matter what others might say or think about the value of that condition, or does the project seek to establish the importance of appropriate condition of what is being studied as a means to define what should or ought to happen.