Empirically driven

Here is a generalization by the author: "First and foremost, over many decades of scholarship, evidence of voters politicizing personal economic hardship has been exceedingly rare."

The author offers this reason based on many decades of her scholarship. And I comment: This reason is, which is more rigorous in science.

"Data driven" is proper English because it is widely used in scientific papers. The question of this thread is whether "empirically driven" is proper English in comparison to "data driven." Should I use "personal experience driven"? (This one sounds awkward to me and I don't know how to improve the expression "empirically driven" (It can't be "empiricism driven.").


Thanks in advance

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There are two reasons for skepticism regarding the assumption that personal economic hardship drove Trump support. First and foremost, over many decades of scholarship, evidence of voters politicizing personal economic hardship has been exceedingly rare (8). Although aggregate-level evidence has been suggestive of a public that blames incumbents for general economic downturns and rewards incumbents for economic gains, these relationships seldom hold up at the level of individual economic hardship.

-PNAS

Source

“Empirically driven” is absolutely correct in the technical context you describe, especially when used, as you suggest, alongside the acceptable phrase “data driven”.

Wow. Thank you. 👁 Smile :)

NewAmerica said:

Here is a generalization by the author: "First and foremost, over many decades of scholarship, evidence of voters politicizing personal economic hardship has been exceedingly rare."

The author offers this reason based on many decades of her scholarship. And I comment: This reason is, which is more rigorous in science.

I am guessing you did not read the book chapter that is to be found in the refernce (8*) in your quote. (Neither have I, because one would have to a pay large sum of money to read it👁 Smile :)
) I expect the chapter reviews the field and finds that even after decades of scholarly work in the field (of investigation of voter political behaviour), there is little "evidence of voters poiticizing ...".

* Chapter title: Self-interest in Americans’ political opinions.