Content analysis of secondary data: A study of courage in managerial decision making

Empirical studies in business ethics often rely on self-reported data, but this reliance is open to criticism. Responses to questionnaires and intervi ews may be influenced by the subject's view of what the researcher might wa nt to hear, by a reluctance to talk about sensitive ethical issues, and by imperfect recall. This paper reviews the extent to which published research in business ethics relies on interviews and questionnaires, and then explo res the possibilities of using secondary data, such as company documents an d newspaper reports, as a source for empirical studies in applied ethics. A specific example is then discussed, describing the source material, the me thod, the development of the research questions, and the way in which relia bility and validity were established. In the example, content analysis was used to examine the extent to which the executive virtue of courage was obs erved or called for in items published in four international daily newspape rs, and to explore the meaning which was attributed to "courage" in the pap ers.