Social Research Glossary A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Home
Citation reference: Harvey, L., 2012-24, Social Research Glossary, Quality Research International, http://www.qualityresearchinternational.com/socialresearch/
This is a dynamic glossary and the author would welcome any e-mail suggestions for additions or amendments.
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Value freedom
Value freedom means adopting an approach to research that is not influenced by political, moral, racial or gender considerations
Value freedom demands the consideration of all points of view rather than a single prejudiced point of view.
Value freedom is often mixed up with objectivity and even with
objectivism. This happens when it is argued that all scientists
have their own values and points of view to start with (and are
searching out answers to particular questions). The suggestion is
that if values are clearly set out then the resulting analysis is
effectively value free and thus objective. Such a view places the
emphasis of objectivity on the testing process and ignores the
heart of the subjective-objective debate. The approach often goes
further and suggests that it does not matter what values are
behind the generation of ideas so long as any meanings so
discovered are interpreted 'objectively'. This implies that
values can somehow be expunged from the objective interpretation
process.
However, value freedom raises questions independent of
objectivist concerns and is not limited to positivistic perspectives.
Contrary to the above it is argued that complete value freedom is
impossible because people cannot place their prejudices on one
side, not least, because people are not aware of all their
prejudices. A more extreme view argues that certain aspects of
individual biology (e.g. gender, race, age) and/or social
characteristics (e.g. nationality, class) inform the way the
world is viewed and these cannot be simply set aside. Hence
everybody has either an inherently biased and/or social
contextually biased view of the world. Thus value freedom is an
idealist illusion.
While value freedom may be an idealist notion, it is arguable
that critical social analysis provides a way of addressing the
social world that engages taken-for-granteds and thus through
dialectical analysis develops an anti-prejudicial analysis.
Value freedom: based on the assumption of the necessity of upholding a logical separation of facts and values or descriptive and normative statements, the demand is made that science should proceed in a neutral manner, free from all infection by personal, ethical, moral, social or cultural values, with the scientist actively desisting from deriving ‘ought from is’ or ‘values from facts’.
Max Weber's term for objectivity of sociologists in the interpretation of data.
See also
Schaefer, R. T., 2017, 'Glossary' in Sociology: A brief introduction, Fourth Edition, originally c. 2000, McGraw-Hill. Available at http://novellaqalive.mhhe.com/sites/0072435569/student_view0/glossary.html, site dated 2017, accessed 11 June 2017, 'not found' 1 June 2019.
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