Assessing Disclosure Quality A Methodological Issue.pdfVIP

JournalofModem AccountingandAuditing，September2015，Vo1．11，No．9，466—475 doi：l0．17265／1548—6583／2015．09．004 … … Na AssessingDisclosureQuality：AMethodologicalIssue DavideScaltrito UniversityofTurin，Tornio，Italy Thevoluntary disclosure studiesconducted untiltoday，in socialaccountnig and related fields，use different approachestoevaluatetheso—called d‘‘isclosurequality”．Disclosurequaliyt isnotsoeasytomeasure．anditis derivedfrom theapplicationofdifferentmethodologies．In particular，themethodologiestoassessthelevelof disclosurecouldbeclassifiedassubjectiveorobjective．Tothefirstcategorybelongallthe t‘o‘ols’’thatareused directlywithoutrelyingODtheanalysisoftheoriginalsourceoftheinformationstudiesrImhoff,1992；Coleman Eccles，1997；Welker，1995)．Theobjectivemeasurementsusedtoassessthedisclosurequalityare，instead，based onthedirectstudyofhteoriginalinformationsourceinordertoobtainhteinfomrationrequired(Krippendorff, 1980；Weber，1985；Botosan，1997；Lang Lundholm，2000)．Theaim ofthepaperistogivescholarsand researchersabriefframeworktounderstandhtedifferentmethodologiesusedinaccountnigliterautretoassessthe disclosurequality，providingexamplesofhteapplicationofthesameindifferentresearchcontexts． Keywords：voluntary disclosure qualiyt，disclosure sutdies methodologies，disclosure index，disclosure measurementstools Introduction Thedisclosureofvoluntary information isa “spotlight”topicforaccountingresearchersand scholars． Voluntary disclosurerefersto the discretionary releaseoffinancialand non—financialinfomr ationwhich companiesarenotobliged to discloseby a standard—settingaccountingbody．Theprovision ofadditional infomr ation，notspecific