The DOI matches its Crossref record; 31 of the 31 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Methodological issues ‐ Reflections on quantification in corporate social reporting content analysis
Abstract
A key assumption underlying many corporate social reporting content analysis studies is that volume of disclosure signifies the relative importance of disclosures. Most of these studies have only quantified disclosures in annual reports, and there is disagreement within the literature regarding the best way to measure each individual disclosure. Based on observations made during the conduct of a 100‐year content analysis study, which examined a broad range of Shell’s corporate reports, this paper argues that an exclusive focus on annual reports is likely to result in an incomplete picture of reporting practices. It also contributes further insights to the debate on measurement techniques, arguing that while measurement in sentences may be carried out with greater accuracy than measurement in proportions of a page, the former is likely to give less relevant results than the latter.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Content Analysis: An Introduction to its Methodology.
Shelley, M., & Krippendorff, K. (1984) · Journal of the American Statistical Association · doi:10.2307/2288384 · Cited by 24,312
Content Analysis for the Social Sciences and Humanities.
Parker, E. B., & Holsti, O. R. (1970) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.2307/2093233 · Cited by 4,564
Gray, R., Kouhy, R., & Lavers, S. (1995) · Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal · doi:10.1108/09513579510146996 · Cited by 3,321
Some determinants of social and environmental disclosures in New Zealand companies
Hackston, D., & Milne, M. J. (1996) · Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal · doi:10.1108/09513579610109987 · Cited by 2,165
Managing Public Impressions: Environmental Disclosures in Annual Reports
Neu, D., Warsame, H., & Pedwell, K. (1998) · Accounting, Organizations and Society · doi:10.1016/s0361-3682(97)00008-1 · Cited by 1,809
A Study of the Environmental Disclosure Practices of Australian Corporations
Deegan, C., & Gordon, B. (1996) · Accounting and Business Research · doi:10.1080/00014788.1996.9729510 · Cited by 1,526
Corporate Social Reporting: A Rebuttal of Legitimacy Theory
Guthrie, J., & Parker, L. D. (1989) · Accounting and Business Research · doi:10.1080/00014788.1989.9728863 · Cited by 1,469
Exploring the reliability of social and environmental disclosures content analysis
Milne, M. J., & Adler, R. W. (1999) · Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal · doi:10.1108/09513579910270138 · Cited by 1,425
Gray, R., Owen, D., & Adams, C. A. (1996) · ENLIGHTEN (Jurnal Bimbingan dan Konseling Islam) · Cited by 1,257
Deegan, C., & Rankin, M. (1996) · Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal · doi:10.1108/09513579610116358 · Cited by 1,167
Cited by
O’Donovan, G. (2002) · Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal · doi:10.1108/09513570210435870 · Cited by 1,450
Using content analysis as a research method to inquire into intellectual capital reporting
Guthrie, J., Petty, R., Yongvanich, K., & Ricceri, F. (2004) · Journal of Intellectual Capital · doi:10.1108/14691930410533704 · Cited by 1,253
Risk reporting: A study of risk disclosures in the annual reports of UK companies
Linsley, P. M., & Shrives, P. J. (2006) · The British Accounting Review · doi:10.1016/j.bar.2006.05.002 · Cited by 776
Content analysis of social, environmental reporting: what is new?
Guthrie, J., & Abeysekera, I. (2006) · Journal of Human Resource Costing & Accounting · doi:10.1108/14013380610703120 · Cited by 503
Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting: A Content Analysis in Family and Non-family Firms
Campopiano, G., & De Massis, A. (2015) · Journal of Business Ethics · doi:10.1007/s10551-014-2174-z · Cited by 473
Metadata
- Authors
- Unerman, J.
- Venue
- Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal
- Publisher
- Emerald
- Published
- 2000-12-01
- Volume
- 13
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 667-681
- ISSN
- 0951-3574 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2028936493
- Cited by
- 936
- References
- 31
- FWCI
- 25.11
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Methodological issues ‐ Reflections on quantification in corporate social reporting content analysis. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1108/09513570010353756
- The paper
- Unerman, J. (2000). Methodological issues ‐ Reflections on quantification in corporate social reporting content analysis. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal. https://doi.org/10.1108/09513570010353756
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.