Positivism, Interpretivism and Value freedom basics

·         Believes there is an external, objective reality outside of human consciousness

·         Believes there are social laws just like natural laws such as gravity that are waiting to be discovered

·         We must use scientific, objective methods to remain emotionally neutral and exclude value judgements in order to discover such facts

·         It is a deterministic approach seeing people as passive to external stimuli and pressures and that behaviour is governed by such laws

·         Positivism seeks to use methods that are representative and can be generalised as they seeks to find social facts that apply to the majority of society and therefore their research must reflect wider society

·         Believes behaviour follows social laws only discoverable via empirical, quantitative research

·         Positivists are structuralists as they believe in an overarching society, such as Marxists and Functionalists

·         This approach was influenced by the enlightenment period, the stage in which science made significant progress in discovering natural laws, positivists believed the same technique could be applied to the social world in order to discover social facts

·         Durkheim applied this school of thought to his study of suicide, claiming suicide, perceived as a highly personal act was in fact a product of social pressures and external forces such as levels of integration.

·         Positivists use the hypothetico-deductive method, they create a hypothesis and then through a series of methodical, objective to an extent research aim to support, alter and reject their hypothesis. However, Pawson argues this involves imposing values on the research from the outset as the researcher will try to find results that either support or reject their hypothesis perhaps remaining ignorant to other results.

·         Large samples of data can be gathered which is more likely to uncover general social laws as it will get data from a larger proportion of society, In order to determine social patterns and social laws you need a large sample that can be generalised and is representative as it needs to apply to the majority of society if it is a social law.

·         Positivist methods often contain ethical issues such as experiments (Milgram) or incur the Hawthorne effect.

·         Reality is relative and multiple, not absolute

·         They aim to find out why someone behaves the way they do by using personal, value –laden methods to produce verstehen

·         The research, unlike the positivist paradigm, is open to new insights and ideas as the research develops, this is due to their belief in human free-will and capacity for change and adaptation

·         Their aim is not to predict cause and effect or generalise but to understand and interpret individual behaviour

·         Societies change much more rapidly than the natural world of evolution, societies are all distinctly unique therefore interpretivists argue there is no absolute, objective reality outside of human consciousness but rather human interpretation and interaction creates a unique society to them and we can only understand their behaviour by understanding their meanings, motives and contextual background which official statistics and numerical data is devoid of

·         They believe humans and the natural world are completely separate, humans have the ability to think and make choices and thus they are active not passive and unpredictable, therefore they cannot be studied like inanimate matter that merely reacts rather than acts

·         They argue even allegedly objective methods are not truly value free as official statistics are constructed by what a coroner interprets as suicide or by what individuals label a crime and therefore that is reported.

·         They argue by using the hypothetico-deductive method you are anticipating outcomes and thus reducing your scope of insight, they start from the bottom with an interest and allow participants to lead the way to discovering social phenomena

Sociologists and value freedom

·         Becker argues being value free is undesirable as the point of sociology should not be to simply explain social phenomena but fix it and improve the lives of those studied, usually the underdog or marginalised as Liazos argues sociology is concerned with the “nuts, sluts and perverts” of society or rather the marginal. We should be value-laden as in order to fix society you need to believe there is a problem to fix, sociologists should use their research to provide evidence there is a problem.

·         Layder argues we should adopt a triangulation method to an extent, that choosing either positivism and value freedom or interpretivism and value laden is not desirable as it excludes the impact  both determinism and free will have, he suggests micro sociologists should not ignore social structures that may impact meanings such as the economy, race, gender or integration and similarly positivists should not ignore the influence of free will and choice that people have that may undermine social structures or alter their effects.

·         Pawson argues both macro and micro sociologists impose bias and values on research however at different stages, suggesting value freedom is a myth. For example, macro sociologists by using the hypothetico-deductive method impose values on research in the beginning as there is an anticipated outcome and research will steer towards their supporting or rejecting their beliefs. However, micro sociologists impose their values upon research in their conclusions by choosing based upon their beliefs what results they use and what results they discard

·         Weber argues to be completely value free is futile as the research would not be relevant and would be a pointless expense to conduct. He suggests we must distinguish between value relevance and value freedom, value relevance refers to your values influencing your choice of subject to make sure research is at least relevant to your theory however that is all, after this choice researchers must conduct research in an objective, value free manner and conclusions drawn must be devised in the same objective manner.