THE NEED AND IMPORTANCE OF BEING VALUE NEUTRAL WITH CLIENTS

The Need and Importance of Being Value Neutral with Clients

The Need and Importance of Being Value Neutral with Clients

Value-neutral

Value Neutral is a related adjective suggesting the independence of a system of values. For example, the classification of an object may depend on context: Is it a tool or weapon, artifact, or an ancestor? The object itself could be considered a neutral value is neither good nor bad, neither useful nor useless, neither important nor trivial, before being placed in a social context.

In sociology, it is common to speak of the value-neutral research. It is an alternative to the intuitive search value laden. We have more credibility if our results are not hopelessly biased by our personal or political motivations. I think it is a useful concept. Even if the choice of our research problem is motivated by values, I hope that our research tools are not contaminated. Something like the statistical analysis of survey data had better be close to this value-neutral idea.

It was recently claimed to me that the value relative to the neutral lead is not the only alternative. Good research can come from a conflict of values. In other words, rather than demand that research be conducted as if the researcher values do not matter, we should ask that the values are made explicit and faced other values through our research.

The conflict of values-based approach has appeal. The "null" in this conversation may be difficult to define, and it can not produce enough guidance on what is important and worth researching. By talking about our values and compete with each other, we have many opportunities to reflect on what our research is missing, or how it might be confused. There's also a chance that our values may change or develop into an integrated overview of other values. Of course, this requires a minimum level of openness. This will not work for your local Maoist doctrine, but it may be an attractive alternative to value-neutral paradigm. Some argue that true objectivity is impossible, that even the most rigorous rational analysis is based on the set of values accepted as part of the analysis. Therefore, any conclusions are not necessarily value judgments (and perhaps suspect). Of course, put all the findings in a category does nothing to distinguish them, and therefore is a useless descriptor, except as a figure of speech ...