Dear Kiran, 

You have raised a very valid issue. Your issue is:

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How can we improve objectivity, validity and reliability of literature research?

The products of research in science are valuable due to  its objectivity, validity and reliability. Literary research lacks all of three elements to a great extent. Please suggest some ways and means to improve the situation.

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Your comment that, unlike in scientific research, research in the field of literature lacks to a great extent objectivity, validity and reliability is not true. Any research, be it in the field of Science or in the field of Literature, must cater to objectivity, validity and reliability. An approved thesis in the field of Literature may have a subjective approach, but it must be well-argumented and withstand scan by the scholars. Unless this is done, the thesis will not be valid and will be rejected by the examiners. So far as reliability is concerned, researches in the field of Science are not always reliable. Hence, it is noticed that many drugs that are introduced after a great deal of research and trials are consequently withdrawn and even banned. The field of literature is wide open, and the literary works being mostly the outcome the litterateurs' perception of life are subjected to various examinations from different perspectives with the passage of time. Shakespeare is still now the subject of study from different angles including psychological. The mystery of W.H. is not yet solved. Often a study is contested and a new study comes. But the contest must be rationally established. T.S. Eliot's contention that Hamlet is ' an artistic failure' has been disputed by so many critics. Nowadays, inter-disciplinary research is much in vogue in the field of Literature. Theses are being linked with history, philosophy, psychology, politics and racial or ethnic cultures. The explorations must have rational bases, and this would characterize theses as valuable documents.

Sibaprasad Dutta

Dear, Kiran Grover

In my a short time as investigator, I have realized than to carry out objectivity and therefore validity and reliability of literature research, two actions are necessary essential. The first is identifying the keywords of investigation (in several languages) and the second is the consultation of primary and certified sources.

Regards

Dear Kiran, 

You have raised a very valid issue. Your issue is:

====================================================

How can we improve objectivity, validity and reliability of literature research?

The products of research in science are valuable due to  its objectivity, validity and reliability. Literary research lacks all of three elements to a great extent. Please suggest some ways and means to improve the situation.

=====================================================

Your comment that, unlike in scientific research, research in the field of literature lacks to a great extent objectivity, validity and reliability is not true. Any research, be it in the field of Science or in the field of Literature, must cater to objectivity, validity and reliability. An approved thesis in the field of Literature may have a subjective approach, but it must be well-argumented and withstand scan by the scholars. Unless this is done, the thesis will not be valid and will be rejected by the examiners. So far as reliability is concerned, researches in the field of Science are not always reliable. Hence, it is noticed that many drugs that are introduced after a great deal of research and trials are consequently withdrawn and even banned. The field of literature is wide open, and the literary works being mostly the outcome the litterateurs' perception of life are subjected to various examinations from different perspectives with the passage of time. Shakespeare is still now the subject of study from different angles including psychological. The mystery of W.H. is not yet solved. Often a study is contested and a new study comes. But the contest must be rationally established. T.S. Eliot's contention that Hamlet is ' an artistic failure' has been disputed by so many critics. Nowadays, inter-disciplinary research is much in vogue in the field of Literature. Theses are being linked with history, philosophy, psychology, politics and racial or ethnic cultures. The explorations must have rational bases, and this would characterize theses as valuable documents.

Sibaprasad Dutta

Dear Kiran, 

these three are heart , body and soul of research. I don't know why people differ research in Language and literature. I feel first of all they have a notion in the mind that literature means imagination. But it has  objectivity, validity and reliability. it is the source of regeneration and grow of civilization. with out literature, there is no validity and reliability on human beings. all our emotions and feelings are abstract. when they are put on words through literature they emerge as objects. 

I must agree with you in the fact that there is much nonsense in literature. But then again, that is why so many are attracted to it. There has been some ways of objectifying the research through a use of computers and also through the field known as quantitative literary studies. For instance, computers have been used to attempt to settle the authorship question in shakespeare studies. They have also been used to analyze the remarkable success of agatha christie, the world's most best-selling author. There was a search engine run by the university of idaho?, i think, called booklamp.org, which was bought by apple. Through the use of something called the "book genome project" it attempted to scan books in order to analyze their similarity. If you liked one sort of book, you could ask to be shown similar books. In hollywood, there are statisticians analyzing movie scripts, nick meaney and vinny bruzzese comes to mind.  Then there is the work of matthew jockers on literary history.......

If we at all agree that literary research lacks objectivity, validity and reliability, then the next aspect to agree will be that literary research has not been standardized.This however seems untrue because even in the non-sensical form there is always some truth that may be adding to the existing knowledge base.

In order to standardize the researches you may have to organize and direct the researchers and researches in well identified fields as well as yet to develop fields.

That is how scientific and industrial research has developed and that is perhaps the Way Ahead for research in literature.

Mirza Arshad Ali Beg

Former Director General Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research

Karachi, Pakistan

Mr Beg, would you really want to live in a world were there is a "standard way" of writing poetry? Or a "standard way" of reading it? We can use computers as a tool to enhance the reliability of our analysis, but as long as people differ, language must differ also. You must remember that computers can be programmed to perform many forms of analysis. There is no standard computer analysis of literature. 

Mr. Wynn, you have a point, yes. But the diversity is where you need organization and classification. At the outset let us sort out sense from nonsense and the intermediary. You may use the computer to do so. The computers do not work on their own; they have to have a brain (model) to work on. In this case it will have to be you take the uphilll task.

Now get started.

Reader Response Theory is an important part of literary research.  If only structures (structuralism) are considered to be of importance, then there will be ONE way to read any text.  The "baggage" of personal experience that readers bring to any text will be considered of no value.  That is, any differences among readers will be eliminated and we will have one reader.  If this sounds a bit top-down and authoritarian, you are correct in your reading of the above.

If you wish more data to mine about Reader Response Theory and other reading strategies,  please read Reading Texts: Reading, Responding, and Writing by McCormick, Waller, and Flower (Lexington, MA: Heath, 1987.)  Reader Response Theory.  Also, under socially constructed meaning.  You might also try Mikhail Bakhtin's The Dialogic Imagination Austin, TX: U Texas P, 1981.

Taking a reductionist view of literature in the mantra validity and reliability often leads to an illusion of science.  This approach seeks to re-establish 'structuralism' as the single way to read.  Many of the literary theorists have successfully shown that this approach de-values the reader in the process of creating meaning.  The reader becomes part of the 'mass' as opposed to the highlighted 'author' who is elevated and--oddly--also circumscribed. by categories made in fallible human minds.  At some point even the so-called cleanest digital search of text must be initiated by a human creating his (or in the unlikely event 'her') categories. Dartmouth literary theorist James E. Dobson has an essay called "Can the Algorithm be Disturbed?" on his Lab for Cultural Criticism web site's main page. Scroll down and click on screen image of this essay's title page.

http://www.cultcritlab.org/

In reviving the pre-1980s 'structuralist' approach to literature, there are social and political sub-texts that Dobson hopes to highlight into visibility.  Dobson will be presenting on April 7th 3:30 PM Transitional Office Bldg. at the University of Arizona, Tucson, for these in the area who may wish to hear him.  This talk may be video recorded and, if so, I will add a link. 

I hope this helps this ongoing discussion to which some are just entering, as the cultural theorist Kenneth Burke, once famous said of  'the rhetorical parlor.'  His full statement was that literary debates go on for generations, and in our lifetime, we enter the parlor, listen for awhile, and then place our oars into the water of the stream of conversation.

Gloria

Objectivity, when it is not a myth, can be addressed by application. Choose scholarly treatments that heighten objectivity and lower subjectivity, and then apply them evenly. Validity is harder. Often, favoring objectivity over subjectivity submerges validity, often the other way around. We should probably think of validity first, and then decide on the objectivity/subjectivity mix we want in order to achieve it. Finally, reliability can be as much a product of subjectivity as of objectivity depending upon the scholar and his/her relationship with the scholarship in question. Of the three, I think validity is the most overrated. A lot of erudition waits generations for "practical application". It is a good thing those scholars are not hung up on validity, but let curiosity and professionalism guide them forward. Let posterity worry about validity.   

Correction:

hope this helps this ongoing discussion to which some are just entering, as the cultural theorist Kenneth Burke, once famously said of  'the rhetorical parlor.'  His full statement was that literary debates go on for generations, and in our lifetime, we enter the parlor, listen for awhile, and then place our oars into the water of the stream of conversation.

Gloria

How can we improve objectivity, validity and reliability of literature research? - ResearchGate. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_can_we_improve_objectivity_validity_and_reliability_of_literature_research#view=56e0507eeeae395a896d1ab1 [accessed Mar 9, 2016].