Confirmatory Research
Confirmatory research is a deductive quantitative design in which the researcher specifies hypotheses derived from existing theory before data collection, then tests whether the data support or refute those hypotheses. Unlike exploratory approaches that generate ideas from data, confirmatory research begins with an established theoretical framework, pre-registers predictions, and applies statistical tests to evaluate those predictions against empirical evidence. It is the backbone of hypothesis-driven social, behavioral, and health science inquiry.
Source record
Citations copied verbatim from the method’s source record. No claim-level verification is inferred from them.
- Popper, K. R. (1959). The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Hutchinson. · ISBN 978-0415278447
- Kline, R. B. (2013). Beyond Significance Testing: Statistics Reform in the Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association. · ISBN 978-1433812378
Curated claims
Claims persisted in the evidence ledger, each with its own assessment.
This view does not invent a claim assessment when the ledger has none.
Related methods
Generated from the method graph and shown as machine-suggested relations — no evidence claim is inferred.