Breaking down the question
This is a two-part question, and both parts must be answered fully. The first asks whether objectivity is "over-hyped" — a provocative word that invites you to take a position while defending it with argument. The second asks for a balanced assessment of non-positivist methods, weighing merits against demerits.
The two parts are connected. Doubts about objectivity are precisely what motivated the non-positivist tradition, so the question is really asking you to trace a single argument: if the positivist ideal of a detached, value-free social science is unattainable, what follows for method? The non-positivist methodologies tradition supplies the answer.
Avoid the trap of treating "over-hyped" as an invitation to abandon objectivity altogether. A sophisticated answer argues that the naive version of objectivity is over-hyped, while a chastened, reflexive version remains indispensable.
How to approach it
Begin by defining objectivity as the positivists conceived it — value-free, detached, mirroring the methods of natural science — and then present the case that this ideal is over-hyped. Marshal the standard critiques: the observer is part of the social world, values shape the choice and framing of problems, and the subject matter is meaningful rather than merely factual.
Then pivot to a qualification. Argue that discarding objectivity wholesale invites relativism and propaganda; what we need is Weber's value-neutrality in analysis combined with acknowledged value-relevance in choosing questions, and Gouldner's reflexivity.
Move to the second half with a clear merits-and-demerits structure for non-positivist methods, and close by linking the two parts.
Model answer
Objectivity, in its strong positivist sense, is indeed over-hyped — but the claim needs careful statement. Positivism, following Comte and Durkheim, held that social facts could be studied as external things, with the researcher standing outside the object like a chemist before a test tube, producing value-free, generalisable laws. This ideal treated the social sciences as continuous with the natural sciences and made detachment the badge of rigour.
Several considerations expose the limits of this ideal. First, the sociologist is a member of the society being studied, shaped by its language, class position and historical moment; there is no view from nowhere. Second, values inescapably enter research at the point of problem selection — why study caste discrimination rather than something else? — and in the concepts we deploy. Third, and most fundamentally, human beings act on meanings, so the subject matter itself differs from that of physics. A falling stone does not interpret its fall; a voter, a worshipper or a striker does. To grasp social action one must interpret meanings, and interpretation cannot be fully detached.
Alvin Gouldner attacked the "myth of a value-free sociology", arguing that the pretence of neutrality often masked the researcher's own commitments and served the status quo. Feminist and standpoint theorists extended the point, showing how ostensibly neutral research encoded the perspective of dominant groups. To this extent, the hype around pure objectivity is unwarranted.
Yet the conclusion is not that anything goes. Max Weber offers the most durable settlement. He distinguished value-relevance, which legitimately guides our choice of what to study, from value-neutrality, which must govern our analysis once the enquiry is under way. The researcher may care passionately about a problem, but must not let that commitment bend the evidence or dictate the conclusion. Gouldner's answer was reflexivity — not the abolition of objectivity but the disciplined acknowledgement of one's own position, so that bias becomes visible and correctable. Objectivity thus survives as an aspiration and a discipline, not as a claim to have achieved a god's-eye view. The naive version is over-hyped; the reflexive version is essential.
This scepticism about detached fact-gathering is exactly what animates the non-positivist methods, chiefly the interpretive tradition descending from Dilthey and Weber. Their central technique is Verstehen — empathetic understanding of the meanings actors attach to their conduct — pursued through participant observation, ethnography, in-depth interviews, life histories and the study of documents and symbols.
The merits of these methods are considerable. They access the actor's own point of view and so capture meaning, motive and context in a way that a questionnaire cannot. They are sensitive to the fine texture of social life, allowing the discovery of unexpected patterns rather than merely testing pre-set hypotheses. They excel at studying small groups, deviant subcultures, rituals and situations where trust and depth matter more than breadth. They are flexible, letting the researcher follow leads as understanding develops, and they treat respondents as knowing subjects rather than data points.
The demerits are equally real. Findings drawn from a single setting are hard to generalise, and small, purposive samples raise questions of representativeness. Reliability is a problem: another researcher might interpret the same scene differently, and studies are difficult to replicate. The very closeness that gives depth can produce "going native" and observer bias. Such research is time-consuming and resource-intensive, and its rich but unsystematic data can resist comparison and cumulative theory-building. Critics add that without explicit procedures, interpretation shades into the researcher's own storytelling.
The two halves of the answer meet here. Because pure objectivity is unattainable, non-positivist methods rightly foreground meaning and reflexivity; but because their subjectivity is also a liability, the wise course is methodological pluralism. Triangulating qualitative depth with quantitative breadth, and practising reflexivity throughout, retains the disciplined pursuit of truth that "objectivity" properly names, while abandoning the inflated claim to stand outside society altogether.
Examiner's perspective
Examiners look for candidates who answer both limbs of the question with roughly equal care; many write a strong essay on objectivity and then treat non-positivist methods as an afterthought, which caps the mark. The word "over-hyped" is a signal to take a defended position rather than sit on the fence.
The strongest answers avoid the two crude extremes — worshipping objectivity or dismissing it — and instead reach a Weberian middle position, using the value-relevance versus value-neutrality distinction with precision and bringing in Gouldner on reflexivity. On the second half, a clear point-by-point ledger of merits and demerits reads far better than vague praise for qualitative work. Concrete illustrations, such as an ethnographic study going native, and a closing plea for methodological pluralism, signal maturity and lift the answer into the top band.