Blind insights: a new technique for testing a priori hypotheses with qualitative methods

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose and illustrate blind qualitative hypothesis testing, which is a qualitative research technique that further generalizes the well‐known notion of “blindness” in research to include a qualitative researcher. The technique introduces a method to test a priori hypotheses using qualitative, emergent observation and analysis without the biasing influence of prior knowledge of the hypotheses being tested. Design/methodology/approach – In essence, the proposed technique is as follows. After forming a set of a priori predictive hypotheses, a theoretical researcher (who may or may not be a qualitative researcher) engages the cooperation of a qualitative researcher to perform an empirical study. The qualitative empirical researcher is given adequate guidance to perform a study but is kept blind to the hypotheses. After the qualitative empirical researcher makes observations and forms his or her conclusions, the qualitative empirical researcher and the theoretical researcher jointly determine the extent to which the conclusions support or disconfirm the hypotheses. The qualitative empirical researcher then identifies emergent themes and inductive conclusions that contribute beyond the a priori hypotheses. A study testing consumer response to advertising is described as an illustration of the proposed technique. Findings – The proposed technique diminishes the influence of the ontological assumptions of researchers on hypothesis tests. By reducing a priori expectations, the proposed technique frees practical and academic market researchers to more fully immerse in the context of interest and better recognize subtle phenomena and imbricated, complex intrapersonal and/or social interactions. Furthermore, the proposed technique provides a new way for qualitative methods to go beyond the “supportive” and “exploratory” role to which they have often been limited. Originality/value – An ability to test hypotheses gives qualitative researchers another way to contribute to the literatures currently dominated by constricted and pallid questionnaire‐based methods within the positivist tradition. Such literatures will benefit from the methodological pluralism encouraged by the technique introduced here because some benefits of qualitative research (including an ability to identify unanticipated, emergent findings) offer much needed compensation for inherent flaws in questionnaire‐based methods.