Methods for the analysis of verbal reporting instruments - a comparison of different approaches

The quality of disclosures and other reporting instruments in written language cannot be measured directly. Based on the analysis of Spearman's rank correlation coefficients, this paper provides a comparison of different content analysis techniques by applying those to the reports regarding the internal control and risk management system relevant for the accounting process of the German DAX-30 companies for the fiscal year 2011. The results show that computerised measures lead to similar results as qualitative disclosure quality measures on a firm level (except for density of provided information). The exception for density might be driven by information overload or by the fact that the applied disclosure score does not capture all relevant information. However, on the item level the keyword analysis does not provide similar results as the disclosure score methodology. Therefore it seems to be indispensable to rely on researchers judgments if beyond disclosure quality on a firm level also the content should be examined.