Steps of the Scientific Method

An Explanation

Steps of the Scientific Method – An Authoritative Explanation

In 1989, when I started to research the scientific method, I paid special attention then and throughout my 19 years of research to what are the steps of the scientific method. As I read or reviewed thousands of books, I kept a file card on each formula the various authors gave for the scientific method.

I did this regardless of whether they called it by this name or some other name and regardless of whether they called the steps stages, phases, processes, elements, ingredients, set of operations, elementary constituents, or other names.

I Became the Foremost Expert on a Formula
of Steps or Stages for the Scientific Method

Based on my research, I refined the formulas offered into SM-14, the best, most complete, and most practical one ever presented.

People ask a wide variety of questions about steps for the scientific method such as these below:

To answer these questions, I have prepared this explanation.

Guidance for Those Asking the Preceding Questions

You can see that the above questions are all very similar. My booklet The Scientific Method Today and my research reports answer all of them. Be sure to read them. They present the most modern scientific method formula of steps for the scientific method available today. It also includes detailed information about each step starting with the first step in the scientific method, that is, Step or Stage #1 – Curious Observation.

Guidance About Questions Concerning a Specific Number of Steps

Please see my Research Report #3, Scientific Method Steps – Questions About Specific Numbers of Steps. Also see Research Report #11, Steps of the Scientific Method – Model Formulas from the Literature. In this report are steps for formulas containing 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 steps of the scientific method..

Steps of the Scientific Method versus Stages of the Scientific Method

In looking ahead to when the scientific method is widely taught, the term “steps” to describe the mental activity stages of the scientific method is not as good a term to use as “stages” for the following reasons:

• Claims have been made that “steps” means a rigid method of following one step after another. Actual use of the scientific method requires and allows skipping ahead, backtracking, stalling, looping ahead or back, combining two or more ingredients, use of various combinations.
• Steps are often interpreted to mean a rather quick procedure. In practice, there are stages of activity, some of which can be quite intensive.

Thus the term “stages” is much preferred to “steps.” It is the term used in the SM-14 model formula, although at times I add the word step because of its common use.