Why sociology is value free?

Question

Why sociology is value free?

Answer 1

Sociology is value-free because sociologists do not interfere with how things *should be* - they only care about the way things *really are*. It is an "explanatory" field, not "normative" like ethics or theology. Producing value-free data is an important issue in the field, and there are many systems in place to keep it that way.

If Sociology was not value-free, the integrity of its data would be compromised. Before collecting data, the researcher has to write out which questions they will ask. A dishonest researcher could easily skew the questions to elicit a desired response. I've seen surveys that weren't approved by an IRB that had questions like "Every year, 100 million pork are raised in poor conditions, wallowing in their own f***s, only to have their throats slit and flesh consumed by the masses. Do you eat pork products?" Research data that will be published (and considered legitimately "sociological") needs to have all of its methods approved by an Institutional Review Board before the project begins, and questions like this one would not pass that first stage.

But even data that was collected with objectivity and integrity needs to be interpreted by the researcher in their write-up, and write-ups (journal articles) have to be reviewed by peers before they are published. A value-laden interpretation that states opinions about the data collected (without giving full disclosure of the researcher's position) will elicit doubt from the reviewers about the integrity of the data itself, and the article will not be published.

People in the field of journalism sometimes do surveys on a mass scale and publish things in newspapers with a value-laden interpretation; they even try to claim that it was a "sociological study". But anything you've read that did not go through all these barriers is NOT Sociology! There is a big difference.

Answer 2

sociology is not value free. that is because all of known science and genius of man cannot fully comprehend human behavior or frankly speaking the paramount stupidity of man

Answer 3

It's not.

Theres' been an an going debate about this since Weber first argued for it early in the 20th century.  

See especially

a)the set of writings in the 1960s collected together in the text;

'Essays in Honour of CW Mills'

b) any social research text that focuses especially on qualitative research and then especially  on how to do research into issues of gender inequality

c) the first chapter of any Introductory sociology text.

d) the work of the philosopher of knowledge:Thomas Kuhn

There are however two forms of 'objectivity in the social sciences'

(i) the supposed 'value free'  guys

(ii) those who know that every stage of their research is bound to be affected by their values and so the only honest or objective thing to do is

.to declare which major theory influences your choice of

research topic /your research question/the focus of what you are going to study/ and the way you analyse your results

you could end up either saying that crime is a problem of single mothers or of major corporations -depending on this inevitable bias in social analysis.

that's the key the bias is inevitable - so  just be upfront about what it is - what your central values are.

ps the most succinct critique of value freedom is

'he was so open minded his brains fell out'