Social scientists who are open about their value commitments
are sometimes criticized by people whose beliefs are different
from theirs. Those with a critical social analysis may be accused of bias by colleagues who claim to be
objective.
Nevertheless, a certain amount of human bias is unavoidable. Most
sociologists have some notions about how societies should be
structured, what form of government would be best, whether
change is desirable, and whether change should come from the top
or from the bottom of a society. Such notions become a problem
if they are allowed to interfere with data collection, thus
producing biased information.
Several years ago I was struggling with these issues because I
had become involved in human rights work in solidarity with
rural workers in the north of Brazil as a result of information
gathered in the course of my research. I wanted to find a
balance between the honest conduct of research and the moral
imperative to respond to people's requests for help when they
were the targets of death threats or actual violence. At that
point I
heard a talk given by Eileen
Barker, Professor of Sociology at the London School of
Economics, in which she spelled out the relationship of values
to three aspects of social research:
- areas where values should never enter one’s
research
- areas where values should enter into one’s
research
- areas where values may be allowed to enter
one’s research
In reflecting on Dr. Barker’s presentation, I thought about
those areas where one’s values should never enter the
research – the gathering and the analysis of data. Even if our
sympathies are with the people we are studying, we do not help
anyone by collecting biased data. So we need to be very careful
to conduct our research in a manner that will enable us to find
accurate information, even if it reveals something that we would
prefer not to know about. This requires a constant openness to
examining our own assumptions.
An area in which values should enter is the
decision of what to do with the data. This is an area in which
we may not all agree as to the best course of action. For
example, if we are doing a study of new immigrants, we need to
come to terms with the policies of the Immigration and
Naturalization Service. The researcher’s personal values will
determine
whether to report information about undocumented aliens to the
INS or whether to extend the confidentiality of interview
data to all information obtained in the course of field work. Sometimes a researcher may make the decision to refrain
from publishing information that may cause harm to people, even
if that means losing the opportunity to get one more publication
credit for an academic promotion.
The question of where our values may enter into
our research applies to the selection of topics. There are two main factors that affect the selection of research topics
– personal interest and available funding. In other words, the
selection is influenced by the researcher's own values, or the
values of the funding agencies, or both.
Beyond the funding question, we select a particular topic
because we believe that someone ought to study it. That belief
may be motivated by scientific interest or by a combination of
such interest and personal values. However, these sources of
interest in a particular topic need not distort the outcome of
the research. For example, a concern for one’s fellow human
being does not make one’s research invalid.
Regardless of what our particular values happen to be, the
key is to keep our biases out of the collection and the analysis
of data. The first step toward controlling our biases is the
honest acknowledgement of what they are.
