Understandability and Transparency of the Financial Statements of ...

Research reports from other organisations including those from: the Centre for
Voluntary Action Studies at the University of Ulster; The Australian Centre for
Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies at Queensland University of Technology;
Governance, Performance Measurement and Accounting in Not-for-profit-
Organisations at Queen‟s University Belfast; and Johns Hopkins Center for Civil
Society Studies.
Secondary documents such as media reports from newspapers, television, radio and
webinars were also reviewed as they provided some of the current context for the
research.
Due to the overwhelming number of documents there was a need to develop a process
to assess the relevancy of these documents to the research question. This was achieved
by allocating a „grade‟ (Table 4-2) on the documents that initially split the documents
between those that were essential to include in the thesis, and those that have no
relevance to this study. If relevant to the study the document was then evaluated in
terms of how essential it was to be included in the thesis, especially if it directly shaped
some of the accounting methods.
Grade Documents
A Documents that must be included:
E.g. research paper on charities and regulatory documents, e.g.
SORP, that shapes the findings.
B Documents that should be included:
E.g. source document e.g. MED that should be used as reference.
C Documents that may be included:
E.g. research report that supports the research question.
D Documents from charities not relevant at the moment to PhD topic
N/A Of no relevance to the research
Table 4-2 Document review grades
Other documents, which were reviewed before approaching participants as part of the
interview process, related to whether the participants were linked to a specific charitable
organisation(s). If they were, a search of the charity‟s details was undertaken on the four
registers i.e. charities; incorporated societies; charitable trusts and company. Also, if the
financial statements were available, these were reviewed in terms of the four accounting
methods which are the focus of this study. Following is a discussion justifying the
interview process engaged in this research.
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