Field-research Based Single-Case Studies in the Frontier Areas – Practice and Methodology
The task of the project consists of a systematising reconstruction of the methods used in single-case field studies in the frontier areas. It examines previously used research methods, the relation between the types of investigated phenomena and the respective research design, the significance of implicit and explicit models of phenomena as well as the principal (e.g. epistemologically substantiated) restrictions of field work in the frontier areas. The main topics of these reconstructions are two exemplary subjects: RSPK (Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis) research and UFO research. The issues, which strongly differ from each other in many ways and each of them having a very specific affinity to a variety of interpretation models, cover a wide methodological range. The field of RSPK research proves to be particularly productive, because of the fact that it comprises the most comprehensive, and also in methodological terms presumably the most significant area of field-research based single-case studies in the IGPP’s history. Complemented by studies of the respective research literature, comprehensive archival material on historical case studies conducted by IGPP staff will be systematised and reanalysed.
As the first results show, the respectively selected research methods depended strongly on the ideas of the participating researchers about the ‘nature’ of the studied phenomena. In this regard, immense variations were determined, e.g. in terms of the selection of the measuring instruments or the interpretation of the recorded data. This was particularly apparent in RSPK research, where a wide contrast was detected between the strongly technology-oriented, lay-scientific approach of the so-called ghost hunting groups and the more traditional academic-scientific study approaches. The latter are marked by a profound scepticism on the potentials of a direct phenomenon-oriented research in this field. This research tradition moreover distinguishes itself by an (in the course of decades) increasing ‘psychologisation’ of the paranormal and/or occult, a development that was not without consequence for the study of spontaneous cases. Its main focus increasingly shifted from classical, phenomenon-oriented para-psychological questions to psycho-diagnostic and psycho-hygienic aspects. A secondary effect was the considerable limitation to the study of “person-related RSPK”, which can be much more easily integrated into the now dominant psychological-functionalist models than “RSPK with a location-related component”.
Besides these fundamental developments, other particular areas are studied: the significance of lay research in this field, e.g. in the “ghost hunting movement”, and the influence of the mass media on procedure and results of such studies.
Project Leader: PD. Dr. Michael Schetsche
Staff Member: Dr. Gerhard Mayer
Publications:
Mayer, G. (2010). Die Geisterjäger kommen. Phänomenologie der Ghost Hunting Groups. Zeitschrift für Anomalistik, 10(1+2), 17-48 [Ghost hunters are coming. A phenomenology of ghost-hunting groups]
Mayer, Gerhard & Schetsche, Michael (2011). N gleich 1. Methodologie und Methodik anomalistischer Einzelfallstudien. Edingen-Neckarhausen: Gesellschaft für Anomalistik.
[N Equals 1. Methods and Methodology of Anomalistic Single Case Studies]
