Deductive versus inductive content analysis: a methodological research note to disclosures studies in intellectual capital research

There is a wide range of accounting research that uses deductive content analysis to investigate intellectual capital disclosures in financial reporting. This chapter elaborates upon an alternative avenue for accounting researchers to take when considering content analysis for intellectual capital research, namely an inductive approach to content analysis. Inductive content analysis does not exclude items or categories like a precomposed disclosure scoreboard tends to do. Through describing the distinctive stages and considerations made to code and generate categories from raw data, we make distinctions between the inductive approach and the traditional deductive approach to content analysis studies. We discuss the process of inductive coding and assessing trustworthiness, as well as implications on writing the findings. In the concluding part, we consider the advantages and disadvantages of both methodologies comparing deductive and inductive content analysis.