On the use of content analysis (CA) in corporate social reporting (CSR): revisiting the debate on the units of analysis and the ways to define them

Abstract

This paper revisits the debate on the units of Content Analysis (CA) for the purposes of Corporate Social Reporting (CSR) research and also reviews a variety of approaches to defining/classifying those units. More specifically, firstly the theoretical arguments for a strictly quantitative, more restrictive view of CA vs. a broader, more qualitative view are considered, followed by a brief discussion on the two main types of CA approaches in the literature, index vs. volumetric studies. Then a review of the literature on the sampling, context and recording/coding units of CA is conducted. The discussion moves on to assessing the use of several classification attempts employed in the literature. With regards to coding, sentences along with derived page size data are suggested as an equally valid approach to the proportion of pages one, whilst with regards to the classification attempts, three particular distinctions, one on symbolic vs. substantive CSD and two thematic ones, are proposed as being able to make the use of CA in the CSR research more meaningful.