This view has, of course, been challenged in recent years by subjectivist arguments that researchers can never set aside their existing knowledge and values and see the world in a completely detached and objective way. It has been pointed out that the questions researchers address, and the data they chose to collect, are inevitably the product of their pre-existing theories and often their political commitments. Moreover, researchers must always interpret what they see and hear, and their interpretations will always be influenced by their existing conceptual schemata and ways of looking at the world. I think we must accept some of this argument and recognise that there is no such thing as total objectivity, in the sense of researchers operating completely independently of these resources and having a direct access to the reality they study. But this does not mean that the principle of objectivity should be abandoned altogether.
Researchers can still strive for objectivity even if some pure form is unattainable.
They can do this in a number of ways. They can be open-minded by considering alternative theoretical and value positions in the framing of their enquiries, by taking account of evidence from a variety of sources, and by actively exploring alternative interpretations of evidence and of the phenomena they study. They can also ground their findings firmly in the data they collect, taking care to search their data systematically for evidence which might raise doubts about their pre-existing or emerging theories rather than only looking for evidence which will support them. They can also adopt a reflexive approach, consciously assessing the influence of their own ideas and actions on what they study and how they conduct their research. They should make information about how their research was conducted, as well as the evidence on which their findings are based, available to readers so that judgements can be make about the likely validity of findings.