Development Of The Accounting Research Methods In Albania

Many researchers have revealed that the accounting research has evolved overtime from normative to positive research. Today, the main methodologies used by accounting researchers around the world are empirical or analytical but other methodologies are not excluded. The main purpose of our paper is to study the actual development of the accounting research methods in Albania. We present a brief, mainly exploratory review of main approaches in accounting research. We conducted a content analyses of the accounting related papers referred in the International Conferences organized by the Faculty of the Economics, by the Accounting department of the Faculty of the Economics and by the National Council of Accounting in a four years period (2008-2011). It results from our research that the main method used in accounting research in Albania is the empirical method (empirical-archival followed by empirical-case study and empirical survey). We plan to advance our project by adding further data from articles published in economic journals as well as by testing specific hypotheses. In addition, we plan to survey accounting researchers attitudes influenced by institutional differences in the academic systems. Meanwhile we hope this work will contribute some empirical and methodological insights to the ongoing methodological debate in accounting research.