Strategies to Maximize Objectivity in Qualitative Research

In a previous blog, we highlighted that the assumptions on objectivity shared by interpretive qualitative researchers are not the same as how researchers in the quantitative tradition approach objectivity. To summarize briefly, while quantitative approaches seek to isolate, control and manipulate for predictive capacity and replicability, qualitative methods are designed to understand a dynamic social reality unfolding in its natural setting. Quantitative researchers seek value neutrality and aim to cut through the mess and the noise of a context to answer causal questions. Qualitative researchers, on the other hand, understand their research setting to be a complex social universe with multiple actors and partial viewpoints, of which they themselves are one partial observer and participant.

A critical feature of qualitative research is an awareness of positionality, which refers to the ways in which a researcher’s social identity (for example, their racial/ethnic/national identity, class or gender position as well as their broad cultural orientation as a scientist hailing from a particular social location) may predispose them to particular interpretations of their research subjects. While qualitative researchers begin from a position of partial understanding stemming from their background, experiences and knowledge, the goal of the inquiry is to move beyond this partial view to include how their research subjects make sense of their situation. Hence, qualitative researchers do not consider it a loss of objectivity when questions are not standardized, if knowledge is co-produced with the research subjects, or if the research relies on observations of natural settings rather than on experimental design. 

Thus, while the keywords for achieving objectivity in quantitative inquiry are removal of bias, replicability and statistical generalization, the keywords in interpretive qualitative inquiry are awareness of positionality, use of reflexivity, improving trustworthiness and transparency, all in an effort to “maximize objectivity”.  In this blog, we consider what this means in practice – what strategies do qualitative researchers use to maximize objectivity?