Gathering Data for Archival, Field, Survey, and Experimental Accounting Research

In the published proceedings of the first Journal of Accounting Research Conference, Vatter [1966] lamented that "Gathering direct and original facts is a tedious and difficult task, and it is not surprising that such work is avoided." For the fiftieth JAR Conference, we introduce a framew...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of accounting research Vol. 54; no. 2; pp. 341 - 395
Main Authors: BLOOMFIELD, ROBERT, NELSON, MARK W., SOLTES, EUGENE
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Chicago Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.05.2016
Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
Subjects:
Ability
Accounting
archival
Archives & records
B40
C81
C90
C91
C92
C93
C99
Conferences
Data
Data collection
empirical methods
experiment
Experiments
field study
Financial reporting
Frame analysis
Laboratories
Literature
M40
M41
Methods
Polls & surveys
Research methodology
Researchers
Studies
survey
ISSN:0021-8456, 1475-679X
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:In the published proceedings of the first Journal of Accounting Research Conference, Vatter [1966] lamented that "Gathering direct and original facts is a tedious and difficult task, and it is not surprising that such work is avoided." For the fiftieth JAR Conference, we introduce a framework to help researchers understand the complementary value of seven empirical methods that gather data in different ways: prestructured archives, unstructured ("hand-collected") archives, field studies, field experiments, surveys, laboratory studies, and laboratory experiments. The framework spells out five goals of an empirical literature and defines the seven methods according to researchers' choices with respect to five data gathering tasks. We use the framework and examples of successful research studies in the financial reporting literature to clarify how data gathering choices affect a study's ability to achieve its goals, and conclude by showing how the complementary nature of different methods allows researchers to build a literature more effectively than they could with less diverse approaches to gathering data.
Bibliography:ark:/67375/WNG-ZX7JVHDG-8
ArticleID:JOAR12104
istex:7B81CDDCAC4ECA260769DF855D8B3FADDF2AA5BF
Conference. We thank Matthew Bloomfield, Scott Emett, Ryan Guggenmos, Anne Heinrichs, Scott Jackson, Bob Libby, Karthik Ramanna, Jennifer Tucker, Isabel Wang, Anastasia Zakolyukina, and participants at the 2015 JAR Conference for comments, and Rajesh Vijayaraghavan for his assistance gathering data on published accounting research.
Journal of Accounting Research
Accepted by Douglas Skinner. This paper has been prepared for the 2015
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ISSN:0021-8456
1475-679X
DOI:10.1111/1475-679X.12104