Understandability and Transparency of the Financial Statements of ...

4.5 Interviews
Previous studies on the financial statements of charities utilised questionnaires (Bird,
1985; Bird & Morgan-Jones, 1981; Blasch et al., 1994; Connolly & Hyndman, 2001;
Hyndman, 1990, 1991; Newberry, 1992; Palmer, 1997; Rees & Dixon, 1983) or
analysed the financial statements of charities (Charity Commission, 2004; Connolly &
Hyndman, 2000, 2004; Hines & Jones, 1992; Palmer et al., 2001; Williams & Palmer,
1998). This research aims to go beyond previous research by not only looking at what
actual transactions have been recorded but also why the preparer of the financial
statements chose that particular method. Connolly and Hyndman (2000, 2003, 2004)
considered that interviews would provide useful insights to explain the reasons for the
GAAP used.
Interviews were chosen for the collection of this data as they are the appropriate data
collection tool for qualitative researchers (Taylor & Bogdan, 1998). Of particular
interest for this study was where the people being interviewed were informants towards
learning about activities, such as the reason for particular accounting treatments, that
could not be observed directly (Taylor & Bogdan, 1998). An advantage of interviews
was that a more accurate and clearer picture of an interviewee‟s position could be
obtained. This was because participants were free to answer according to their own
thinking, rather than being constrained in a questionnaire that offered only a few
alternatives to choose from (Ghauri & Gronhaug, 2005). Interviews can be categorised
into different types including; unstructured interview, informal conversational
interview, interview guide approach, semi-structured interviews and the open-ended
interview (Ghauri & Gronhaug, 2005; Moll, Major, & Hoque, 2006; Patton, 2002;
Robson, 1993; Sekaran, 2003). This study used two types of interviews; semi-structured
and informal conversational. Also further informal conversations were held with
interviewees, which this study refers to as follow-up interviews.
The formal interviews for this study were semi-structured interviews, as the topics to be
covered had been identified through the literature review, in Chapter Two and Chapter
Three (Ghauri & Gronhaug, 2005; Robson, 1993), unlike an unstructured interview
where issues have yet to be identified (Sekaran, 2003). These interviews were guided by
key framing questions (Appendix Three) relating to these topics (Sekaran, 2003). An
advantage of semi-structured interviews was that there was consistency in the questions
that each interviewee was asked, ensuring comparability of responses, which facilitated
the analysis of the data (Patton, 2002). Another advantage was that a more accurate and
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