How to Become a Doctorate: Subjectivity and Objectivity in Thesis/Dissertation

One of the difficulties in not just PhD but any research writing, is how to be objective in your writings and not be opinionated.


Research articles and thesis are all written by you and through your understanding of knowledge available. So, subjectivity is bound to reflect in your writings.


But if it happens too much and too strongly, then your piece is not considered a good analysis. And a reader of your work will only feel that you are too biased or fixated at one point.


In the quest to help you strike a balance, I present the following pointers.

1. Subjectivity comes naturally. You are a living creature and your mind and behaviour works under the environment you are living under. So, subjectivity is not something you need to tell yourself or teach yourself. On the other hand, objectivity is something done consciously. And yet there are chances you will fail because its hard being objective.
2. Subjective knowledge is gained through ones own experience. Objective knowledge is gained through research.  Objective behaviour and writing comes when you analyse facts and figures and then come to a conclusion. Objectivity has nothing to do with intuition and experience, because that's the field of subjectivity.
3. Before you begin to read on a topic, your selection of literature itself may reflect subjectivity. So, be careful of what you are choosing for gaining knowledge. For example, if your research is on proving X and Y combination leading to JK, so don't select existing literature that only take you to your preferred conclusion. Read materials that talk the opposite and see how the researcher arrived at it. This exercise itself will widen your perspective and chances are you will begin to rethink your hypothesis.
4. One of the things you need to be careful of selecting literature and other materials like interview, etc. is being sure of the credibility of the source of knowledge. Internet is a vast zone of knowledge but what is credible and what is hoax is something you need to spend time on judging. A lot of times, information available is misunderstood which you never took notice of it and went ahead quoting them in your dissertation/thesis. Kindly don't make that mistake. Whatever you are quoting and whoever you are referring, must be re-checked by your Supervisor or those who you trust academically.
5. Statistics can play a good role in keeping your thoughts and writing objective. Statistics don't require intuition or personal interest or liking towards anything.
6. A trick I always follow to keep subjectivity at bay, is to include different perspectives on the chosen topic. So, I never exclude arguments and works or people who counter-argue my views. That way, I am not only able to say or conclude what I intend to, but I also show that I do understand the varied opinions and perspectives of others and yet, arrived at this particular conclusion.

I hope I was of any help to anyone who is out there jostling with the issue of subjectivity and objectivity.

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