Breaking down the question
The question asks you to examine the problems — not the impossibility — of achieving objectivity in sociological research. The verb is diagnostic: identify the specific obstacles that make objectivity harder in sociology than in the natural sciences, and then indicate how sociologists have tried to manage them.
Objectivity means the pursuit of knowledge that is free from the personal bias, preference and prejudice of the investigator — findings that any competent observer, following the same procedure, would arrive at. In the natural sciences this ideal is comparatively easy to approximate because the objects of study — atoms, cells, planets — neither know they are being studied nor answer back. In sociology the object is also a subject: a thinking, valuing human being embedded in the same society as the researcher.
Key elements to unpack:
- The sources of subjectivity — the researcher, the researched, and the wider social context.
- The distinction between value relevance in the choice of a problem and value neutrality in its analysis.
- The major responses — Weber's value neutrality, the reflexive turn, triangulation — and their limits.
A strong answer treats objectivity as a regulative ideal to be defended through method, rather than a possession sociology either has or lacks.
How to approach it
Open by defining objectivity crisply and locating the debate within the broader positivism-versus-interpretivism contest. Then organise the body around where subjectivity intrudes: at the level of the researcher, the researched, and the surrounding intellectual and social climate. This tripartite structure keeps the answer analytical rather than a loose list.
For each source, name the problem and pair it with an attempted remedy — this shows balance and prevents the essay from lapsing into a counsel of despair. Bring in Max Weber on value neutrality and value relevance, Myrdal on making value premises explicit, and Gouldner's warning against the myth of a value-free sociology. Introduce Giddens's double hermeneutic to capture the distinctive difficulty that sociological concepts feed back into the world they describe.
Conclude by evaluating objectivity as an achievable discipline rather than an unattainable absolute — attained not by pretending to have no values but by controlling them methodically. Refer to the fuller treatment in our note on fact, value and objectivity to signal wider reading.
Model answer
Objectivity refers to the ability of the sociologist to study social reality without allowing personal biases, values, ideological commitments or preferences to distort the process of observation, analysis and inference. It is the cornerstone of any claim that sociology is a science. Yet the very features that make social life worth studying also make objectivity peculiarly difficult to secure. The problems arise from three overlapping sources — the researcher, the researched and the social context of research itself.
The first cluster of problems lies with the researcher. Unlike the chemist, the sociologist is a member of the society being studied and carries into research a biography of class, caste, gender, religion, nationality and ideology. These shape the questions that seem worth asking, the concepts used to frame them, and the interpretations placed upon the data. Selection bias enters at the outset: what one chooses to study, and what one ignores, already reflects a value standpoint. Weber acknowledged this in his notion of value relevance — our cultural values determine which slices of an infinite reality become objects of enquiry. The danger is that these values then colour the analysis and not merely the selection.
The second cluster lies with the researched. The objects of sociology are conscious human beings who attach meanings to their conduct and who react to being studied. This produces the reactivity or Hawthorne effect: respondents alter their behaviour when they know they are observed, or give socially desirable answers that mask their real conduct. Interview data may be shaped by the rapport, gender or status of the interviewer. In participant observation the researcher risks going native, over-identifying with the group and losing critical distance, or conversely imposing an outsider's categories that the members would not recognise. The subject can also withhold, dissemble or perform, none of which afflicts the natural scientist's specimen.
The third cluster is the social context of enquiry. Research is funded, published and rewarded within institutions that have their own interests. Gunnar Myrdal argued that valuations are woven into the whole research process and cannot be exorcised; the honest course is to state one's value premises openly so that readers can discount for them. Alvin Gouldner went further, attacking the myth of a value-free sociology: the pose of neutrality, he warned, can itself become an ideology that shields the sociologist from moral responsibility and quietly serves the powerful. The Marxist tradition insists that all knowledge is socially located and that claims to detachment often conceal a class standpoint.
Anthony Giddens crystallised the deepest difficulty in the idea of the double hermeneutic. The concepts sociologists coin — such as class, charisma or sovereignty — do not stay in the seminar room; they are absorbed by lay actors and change the very behaviour the discipline set out to describe. Society is a moving target that reads its own description, so the neat separation of observer and observed that underwrites natural-scientific objectivity is unavailable to sociology.
These problems are real, but they do not entail surrender. Several disciplined responses exist. Weber's principle of value neutrality demands that, once a problem has been chosen on grounds of value relevance, the analysis proceed dispassionately, letting the evidence rather than the researcher's preferences dictate conclusions. Reflexivity requires the sociologist to make his or her own social position an explicit part of the account, so that bias becomes visible and correctable rather than hidden. Triangulation — combining methods, sources and investigators — allows the weaknesses of one technique to be offset by the strengths of another. Peer review, replication and the public checking of procedures turn objectivity from a private virtue into a collective, institutional achievement. Ideal types and operational definitions further discipline interpretation by supplying yardsticks against which cases can be measured.
Objectivity in sociology is therefore best understood not as the absence of values but as their methodical control. Complete, God's-eye neutrality is a chimera because the sociologist can never step wholly outside society. What is attainable is disciplined objectivity: honesty about one's premises, rigour of procedure, openness to refutation and submission of findings to a critical community. On this view the problems of objectivity are not fatal objections to a science of society but the permanent professional conditions under which such a science must be practised.
Examiner's perspective
Examiners reward candidates who treat objectivity as a problem to be managed rather than a battle to be won or lost. The commonest weak answer simply asserts that sociology cannot be objective because human beings are involved; this earns little because it neither analyses the sources of the difficulty nor engages the remedies.
The strongest scripts organise the sources of subjectivity clearly — researcher, researched and context — and, crucially, pair each problem with an attempted solution. Deploying Weber on value relevance and value neutrality, Myrdal on explicit value premises, Gouldner on the myth of value freedom and Giddens on the double hermeneutic signals genuine command of the debate.
A balanced conclusion is decisive. Answers that end in blank scepticism read as thin; those that present objectivity as a regulative ideal secured through reflexivity, triangulation and peer scrutiny read as mature. Precise use of terms — value relevance, reactivity, double hermeneutic — and British spelling throughout lend the essay authority.