 This knowledge clip explains the empirical cycle and how the empirical cycle leads to the basic structure of an article. The empirical cycle captures the process of developing hypotheses relating to how certain subjects work or behave, and then testing these hypotheses against empirical data in a systematic and rigorous approach. The empirical cycle characterises the deductive approach to science. You enter the empirical cycle when you have a research idea. This can be anything you find interesting and want to explain. For the first step of the empirical cycle, you will read articles and dive into existing literature on this topic so that you can make a prediction. For example, if you want to study the relation between amount of hours spent on a course and the final grade, you can probably find in the literature that the more hours spent studying, the higher the grade. So this will be your prediction, your hypothesis. In order to test the hypothesis, you will collect data and compare the data with the prediction. In order to do so, you need to decide on a research setup. For example, you have to decide on measurement instruments, procedures and sample. When you have decided on your research setup, you can start with data collection. To test the hypothesis, the data is compared to your prediction in the hypothesis. This almost always requires statistical processing. With the aid of statistics, the prediction is confirmed or rejected. In your example, you may find that in your specific sample, more hours of study did not lead to a higher grade and that you cannot confirm the hypothesis. Finally, you enter the last step of the empirical cycle and you evaluate the results in the discussion and conclusion section. This evaluation may lead to new or adjusted research questions which can be tested in a new empirical cycle. For example, you may look for additional literature to explain your results and find that it depends on the type of course, whether more hours of study can lead to a higher grade and that future research should include the type of course when testing such a hypothesis. The basic structure of an article follows the empirical cycle. The article starts with an introduction followed by a theoretical framework, a method section, results, a discussion and conclusion. Academic writing follows a general specific general format. Just like an hourglass, it starts broad, moves towards its narrowest point and then broadens again. In your introduction, you may start off with a general statement about your research field. Then you introduce your specific focus and variables step by step. You support the relation between your variables with theory and empirical articles in the theoretical framework. By introducing your hypothesis, the purpose of your research becomes clear. The methods and results are again very specific in relation to what you did and what you found. By the time you reach the end of the paper, you need to start talking about the importance of the paper. Why this paper is important becomes your discussion. As you move through the discussion, you finish with the conclusion, which again is a very general statement. Here you see again how the structure of your paper follows the shapes of the hourglass.