Abstract

This paper describes the theoretical background, development, conception and methodical application of the current IGPP research project "Paranormal experiences. An empirical investigation into their incidence, content and structure". The subject of our research is so-called spontaneous cases, or in other words, unusual experiences. We focus on reports of parapsychological phenomena which can be generally described as subjective experiences that contradict society's understanding (the "common" sense) of what experiences usually entail. Such experiences belong to the classical corpus of scientific parapsychology and have a tradition in IGPP history, too. The spectrum covers many themes from premonition and precognition to psychokinetic phenomena and includes UFO sightings, too.

The project's aim is to conduct a representative survey to measure the incidence of those experiences in the population. It is also dedicated to the reports and accounts of the exceptional experiences themselves; here - in contrast to the first part of the investigation - the focus of interest is the experience itself. The people will be asked to report their experiences and we assume that their content, structure and interpretation will vary.

We will report (i) how our theoretical understanding and a sociological perspective can influence the approach to this question, (ii) which research interests we will pursue and (iii) how we converted this into an empirical research design. Our first results will be presented to show the advantages of our methodical procedure which can be described as a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods and thus represents - compared with existing investigations - an innovative enterprise.