Exploring the Reliability of Social and Environmental Disclosures Content Analysis *

Content Provider	Semantic Scholar
Author	Milne, Markus Adler, Roses Drummer Steven
Copyright Year	1998
Abstract	This paper reports the results of a study designed to explore the inter-rater reliability of annual report social and environmental disclosures content analysis. Using the sentence-based coding instruments and decision rules adopted in Hackston and Milne (1996), this study reports the co-agreement levels reached by three coders over five rounds of testing 49 annual reports. Included amongst the three coders was a complete novice to both content analysis and social and environmental disclosure research. Krippendorff's (1980) reliability scores for the three coders are reported for many of the typical decisions taken by social and environmental disclosures content analysts. The study also provides a commentary on the implications of formal reliability analysis for past and future social and environmental disclosures content analyses, and exposes the complexities of formal reliability measurement. The overall findings suggest that the coded output from inexperienced coders using the Hackston and Milne approach with little or no prior training can be relied upon for aggregate total disclosures analysis. For more detailed sub-category analysis, however, the findings suggest a period of training for the less experienced codes with at least twenty reports appears necessary before their coded output could be relied upon. EXPLORING THE RELIABILITY OF SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL DISCLOSURES CONTENT ANALYSIS __________________________________________________________________________________
File Format	PDF HTM / HTML
Alternate Webpage(s)	http://www3.bus.osaka-cu.ac.jp/apira98/archives/pdfs/07.pdf
Language	English
Access Restriction	Open
Subject Keyword	Aggregate data Annual Reports Behavior Clarify Classification Code Coder Device Component Contain (action) Disclosure Entity Name Part Qualifier - adopted Experience Forty Nine Instrument - device Inter-rater reliability Interpretation Process Numerical analysis Post's theorem Programmer Published Comment Qualitative comparative analysis Reliability engineering Requirements analysis Rule (guideline) standards characteristics
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article