Requirements problems are widely acknowledged to reduce the quality of software. In previous work, the author designed a requirements elicitation, analysis and validation method (REAVM) to reduce requirements problems. Recently, an empirical study of requirements problems was conducted with 22 Australian practitioners. This paper has two-fold objectives: first to describe the results of an empirical study of requirements problems; second to investigate the behaviour of REAVM towards the reduction of requirements problems identified in the empirical study. The results of this study show that REAVM has potential to reduce requirements problems. It is observed that the key process areas (KPAs) selected for the development of REAVM are the best cluster for enhancing the capability of the requirements engineering (RE) process. Thus, I recommend organizations trial REAVM to further evaluate its effectiveness in the domain of RE process.