Empirical cycle
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Welcome to the empirical cycle page
| Adrianus Dingeman (Adriaan) de Groot (Santpoort, 26 October 1914 – Schiermonnikoog, 14 August 2006) was a Dutch chess master and psychologist, who conducted some of the most famous chess experiments of all time in the 1940s-60. In 1946 he wrote his thesis “Het denken van den schaker”, which in 1965 was translated into English and published as Thought and choice in chess. Source: Wikipedia 2022. |
During his study, he came up with a cycle which is consistent and now widely used to conduct empirical research. It consists of phases with each phase being as important as the next one.
The empirical cycle does not come from the natural sciences, as we usually think. It can be found in the interaction between empiricism and theory, but also in analogical thinking and modelling.
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.
After an empirically observed pattern has been linked to a theoretical principle, this principle is used to predict new events or phenomena, after which it is reconsidered whether this link can be maintained or has failed. This can then result in a new assessment, followed by new adjustments, ad infinitum. This results in an iterative interaction between theory and experience.
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The empirical cycle for your strategic exercise
Problem statement, purpose, benefits
- What exactly do you want to find out / change / enhance / …?
- What is the (strategic) problem exactly?
- What are the obstacles in terms of knowledge, data availability, time, or resources?
- Do the benefits outweigh the costs of the process?
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Methodology
- Do you have a methodology leading towards a valid strategy?
- Does it have internal and/or external validity?
- Will your method permit you to answer all your questions?
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Co-creation
- Who is involved?
- Is this team representative?
- With what degree of accuracy and level of confidence do you want to work?
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Ethical considerations
- What level of reliability will you accept?
- Are the rights of all subjects involved preserved?
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Background assumptions
- What is the history of your problem?
- What do you know for sure about your near past?
- To which theory or conceptual framework (we used) can you link it?
- What are the draw-backs of the used approach or how did it constrain the process?
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Current variables
- What will you take as given in the current environment?
- How certain are you of the relationship(s) between variables?
- Which are the independent and dependent variables?
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Future variables: imagination, hypothesis
- Do you start with our future in mind?
- Do you use all aspect of your own and our organisations imagination?
- Is your hypothesis about the future specific enough to be meaningful?
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Measurement
- How will you measure?
- What methods or tools will you use to make or record observations?
- What is the unit of measurement?
- What degree of error in the findings is tolerable?
- Will other people in your organisation agree with your choice of measurement operations?
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Analysis
- What combinations of analytical and statistical process will be applied to the data generated by the new strategy?
- What will allow you to accept or reject your own hypotheses?
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Conclusions & start of a new strategic cycle
- Was your initial strategic hypothesis supported by resulting facts?
- What are the implications of your findings for our strategic thinking and for your background assumptions?
- What suggestions can you make for further strategic enhancement?