When Aksel Tjora asked me to read through a draft of a methods paper he was writing, I readily agreed. Its main focus was on the role of intuition in ethnographic and qualitative research in sociology. It made for fascinating reading. On the one hand, many researchers would doubtless equivocate about any role being ascribed to intuition in sociological research: after all, it seems to confound any commitment to – valid, reliable – scientific practice. But on the other hand, as many who have engaged in qualitative enquiries would probably accept that they occasionally fell back to feelings, hunches, speculations and the like. How to come to terms with this tension, perhaps best expressed as between methodological theory and methodological practice?
What is intuition? It has been said that it: (i) represents a quick way of by-passing formal deliberate analysis; (ii) draws on subconscious processes to compare current situations of interest with those derived from previous experience; (iii) equates to a kind of ‘gut feeling’; and (iv) promotes creative and more imaginative thinking. In terms of research practice, it has long been ‘unofficially’ deployed as an integral part of ‘doing research’, and at the same time ‘officially’ relegated to a subordinate role in hypothesis formation and so on. In other words its usage is typically an embarrassment to practitioners and something to be either denied or played down.
Eleanor Knott argues that researchers have long used intuition – and will admit as much privately – and goes on to introduce the concept of ‘informed intuition’ to contend that this should be acknowledged, recognised, harnessed and legitimised ‘across methodological and epistemic divides’. Researchers should also consider demonstrating ‘intuitive openness’ to enhance ‘research integrity’. We should move on from a ‘deductive hegemony’ to recognise the plurality of methodological options and the importance of transparently documenting what we actually do. Abduction is salient here: it involves ‘recursively moving back and forth between a set of observations and a theoretical generalisation’. Unlike deduction and induction, abduction sees observations and theory as ‘interdependent’. We should, Knott maintains: (i) recognise that our research is more intuitive and abductive than most researchers are currently willing to do, and (ii) be transparent about the contributions of intuition even to applications of deductive and/or inductive reasoning.
Intuitions act as ‘triggers’ in research. One can be alert to the possibility of them impinging but cannot plan for this.
My aim in this brief blog differs from Aksel’s. I want to experiment with a possible typology of intuitions in sociological research practice; and I use the word ‘experiment’ advisedly, since what I write here is really no more than ‘thinking out loud’ (which is possibly one of the virtues of ‘mere’ blogs versus published papers). So here goes.
Autobiographical intuitions are those intuitions that have their origins in researchers’ own personal experiences. It is not that the researcher must have experienced the same circumstances he or she is studying in others, rather that something ‘strikes a chord’ and, on reflection, helps forward his or her grasp of what is going on.
Crossover intuitions are those intuitions that originate in another – proximally or distally related – field of enquiry. Included here are theories or ideas applied, developed or elaborated in other areas of sociology or allied disciplines. Importantly, these need not have a direct bearing on the researcher’s own interests or project in order to provide a spark for further or deeper reflection.
Incident-related intuitions are those intuitions that spring, ‘as if by chance’, from a particular comment, event or episode occurring within a research project. A chance comment from an interviewee, an item seen on TV or an unexpected observation can serve here.
Experimental intuitions are those intuitions that emerge from a researcher-constructed intervention during a research investigations, as when the ethnomethodologist Harold Garfinkel got his students to deliberately break routine social norms and rules the better to understand their very nature and salience for societal interaction. Relevant here too is philosopher Daniel Dennett’s use of the term ‘intuition pump’, referring not to an actual intervention but to a ‘thought experiment’ designed to focus the mind on what it is that is most important in understanding and explaining a phenomenon under investigation.
Leftfield intuitions are those intuitions that occur to a researcher ‘out of the blue’, bearing no direct relation to the phenomena under investigation. Leftfield intuitions provide ‘eureka moments’.
This is a bit off the cuff. It’s meant just to open up discussion. But the important point to make is that intuition – in whatever guise it strikes – is not, or should not be, an embarrassment to a ‘scientific study’ in any field, but rather something to be open and honest about, to embrace, and to be thought through. Arguably very little worthwhile research is done in the absence of intuition. Aksel is on to something important.
References
Dennett,D (1984) Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting. MIT Press.
Knott,E (2025) Methodologies of informed intuition: the role of informed intuition and intuitive openness. Perspectives on Politics. Published Online 2025: 1-15.