Heuristic Inquiry: The Internal Research Pathway

Introduction

Moustakas (1990) put forward a brief guide to the use of heuristic research only after his own landmark study of self-as-subject focused on the phenomenon of loneliness (Bach, 2002; Moustakas, 1961). The author needed a word to describe the process of an internal investigation of the intrinsic human experience, and came upon the Greek word, heuriskein, which meant heuristic, or the internal search to know (Moustakas, 1990, p. 9). The guide continues to offer a rigorous and systematic process along with detailed procedures for a heuristic research design. For doctoral scholars desiring to conduct systematic research for new knowledge of a lived construct or phenomenon, Moustakas offered HI as an alternative to intensive and systematic introspection for researchers who desire an “existential lens” to the inquiry (Blau, Bach, Scott, & Rubin, 2013, p. 99). The procedures have been described as a self-disciplined and rigorous examination necessary to know the very essence of the construct or phenomenon of the inquiry (Bach, 2002) and continue to be utilized across doctoral disciplines well beyond humanistic psychology in fields such as education, medicine, and other social sciences. Many researchers have utilized HI with personal data, but others have also gathered archival data from others (Throne, 2016) or even self plus others for HI analysis (Ikiugu, 2012).

Yet, perhaps Moustakas still remains more often better known for his later adaption of Giorgi’s (1970) phenomenological methods for phenomenological research design (Blau et al., 2013; Moustakas, 1994). Ozertugrul (2017a) clarified HI contrasts phenomenological inquiry where detachment from the phenomenon is expected as HI expects the researcher-participant to explore a construct from the individual perspectives apart from larger structures or conclusive definitions within the field, and Brisola and Cuapperry (2016) situated HI within the many forms of phenomenology and said, “Although other phenomenological methods also value the researcher subjectivity, the heuristic approach puts it, explicitly, in the center of the investigative process” (p. 2). Appelbaum (2012) succinctly outlined four faulty assumptions often attributed to Giorgi’s phenomenology that can be helpful to doctoral researchers who consider blending HI with Moustakas’ (1994) phenomenology, hermeneutic phenomenology, or descriptive phenomenology for self-as-subject research and Giorgi (2017) has responded to critics of scientific phenomenology that can also be helpful to sorting through qualitative research approaches to align with a self-as-subject doctoral research study.