Subjectivity in Qualitative Research

Qualitative researchers are not concerned about mathematics and causal laws
(Brink, 1993). They more interested in peoples belief, perspective and experience of the
people. In qualitative research, subjectivity discusses the methods that research is formed
by the certain interests, perspectives and profile of the researcher (Brown, 1996).
Therefore, subjectivity in qualitative research can be termed "bias as it might invalidates
the research results (Cornford & Smithson, 1996). Conversely, subjectivity in qualitative
research also has the advantage due to the researcher's deep participation with topic of
research which proposes insights that others people might not have (Ratner, 2002).
Hence, subjectivity is both a remarkable a strength and an impending weakness in
qualitative research.
A subjectivity account is a summary of profile of researchers that are in relative to
content and people they are reviewing (Preissle, 2008). Researchers develop these from
their personal pasts, specialized experiences and social worldviews. Technically, the
purpose of a subjectivity account is to benefit researchers to recognize about their
personal types, views, emotional state, cultural viewpoints, experiences, and professional
inclinations that might influence the research (Preissle, 2008). Besides, it also helps to
convey the important material to other researchers for their concern of the research's
trustworthiness, authenticity, and quality. Researcher subjectivities may perhaps
prejudice, distort, and bound accomplishments (Brenner, Koehler & Tversky, 1996).
However, it may also inspire and light up inquest.
Subjectivity is widely used (Willig & Stainton, 2008). Hence, it turns up a term
with several indirect of meaning. The most significance unbiased description will be
about idea of it is the opinions, emotional state, views, and wants that encompass an
individual's self-identity (Greene, 1994). With understanding of the subjective experience
as core objectives in most of the social science research, this enlarges further layers to the
correlation of subjectivity to qualitative research. Thus, this viewpoint is greatly reliant
on a persons epistemological view for depending on in what manner individual looks at
the action of deliberate.

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 Furthermore, Denzin and Lincoln (1994) provided a broad description of
qualitative research, that is "Qualitative research is multi-method comprising an
interpretive, naturalistic method to its subject matter. Thus, qualitative researchers study
things in their natural settings, trying to interpret phenomena in relations of the meanings
people bring to them". Hence, the characteristic of natural setting in qualitative research
proposed helps to clarify reason subjectivity in qualitative research. Natural setting is
basically a method that in what manner people classify the meaning of an issue based on
their experiences (Denzin & Lincoln, 2004). Therefore, the researchers may have to shift
into the culture in order to collect data information if they want to inspect certain human
culture. This will contribute to subjectivity since the researcher need to interview and
observe different people to collect the data information for further analysis.
Even though that qualitative research always deals with subjectivity, but there are
still ways to ensure the reliability and validity in qualitative research. What is the
meaning of reliability and validity in qualitative research? Reliability and validity are
tools of an essentially positivist epistemology (Watling as cited in Simco & Warin, 1997).
Validity and reliability are fundamental features of all type of research. Generally, Gibbs
has rightly asserted that validity in qualitative research provide the sense of the
investigator checks for the accurateness of the studies by using particular ways whereas
reliability in qualitative research point out the investigator's methodology is consistent
throughout different investigators and different tasks (Gibbs, 2007). These two concepts
of validity and reliability had been extensively defined in qualitative research. For
example, Le Comple and Goets (1982) in their studies of Problem of Reliability and
Validity in Ethnographic Research had stated that validity in research is focus on the
accurateness and truthfulness of scientific findings. It said that a valid research must
show what actually occurs. On the other hand, Selltiz (1976) offers the concepts of
reliability is concentrate on the consistency, stability and repeatability of the researchers
capability to assemble and documented the data information precisely. It mentions that
the capability of a research method to produce consistently the identical outcomes over
repetitive testing phases.