Value free sociology

From Kenneth D Bailey “Methods of social research”

Weber was the first to suggest “value free sociological study”. He suggested that a researcher to display “ethical neutrality” to attempt to be purely objective in his or her research regardless of personal feeling. That could be accomplished if a researcher took care to separate his or her every day life, with the particular set of values he or she displays every day, from his or her professional role as social scientist in which he or she tries to refrain from making value judgements.

This view is probably the prevailing view in social study today. However, an increasing number of social scientists, including adherents from several methodological paradigms, rejected the notion that it is possible or even desirable to separate values from either the selections of the research problems or the application of findings. These persons tend to advocate use of qualitative rather than quantitative methods, and to reject the physical-science model of research. Rather than label themselves scientific, they would be more like to adopt the terms “humanistic, qualitative, or radical”

Gouldner (1962) in his article “Anti-minotaur: the myth of a value-free sociology” says that the strict adherence to the value free position tends to ignore the distinction between the good and the evil potentials always present in science. He suggests that a teacher should state his or her personal values as honestly as he or she can lest these values by introduced in a covert or disguised fashion, perhaps without the teacher’s awareness. Gouldner also notes that the value-free position can cause researchers to avoid researching social problems that are of vital importance to society but controversial, so as to render them difficult to study without some explicit moral commitment.

Recent work on the value-free issue has noted that among other things, the difficulty in maintaining a value-free position and the shifts that some social scientists make in their thinking regarding this issue.