Sustainable Microfinance - Balanced Scorecard's added value for ...

Considering the inductive exploratory approach of this study great value has been
placed on the exact response of interviewees. Therefore, (1) all the questions of the
interviewer have been transcribed; (2) the verbalizations have been literally
transcribed; and (3) observations during the interview (e.g., sounds, pauses, and
other audible behaviours) have been transcribed (Schilling, 2006).
4.4.2 Step 2: Defining the Unit of Analysis
The unit of analysis refers to the basic unit of text to be classified during content
analysis. Messages have been unitized before they were coded, since differences in
the unit definition could affect the coding decision as well as the comparability of
outcomes with other similar studies (De Wever et al., 2006). Therefore, defining the
coding unit was one of the most fundamental and important decisions (Weber, 1990).
For the qualitative content analysis individual themes have been used as the unit for
analysis. By using themes as the coding unit, the emphasis was primarily on
indentifying expressions of ideas (Minichiello et al., 1990). Thus, codes have been
assigned to text chunks of any size, as long as that chunk represented a single
theme or issue of relevance to the research question(s).
4.4.3 Step 3: Developing Categories
Categories and have been derived from three sources: the data, previous related
studies, and theories. Inductively content analysis is particularly appropriate for
studies that intend to develop theory. While developing categories inductively from
raw data, the constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) was used. This
enabled to make differences between categories apparent and not only focus on
original insights. The essence of the constant comparative method is (1) the
systematic comparison of each text assigned to a category with each of those
already assigned to that category, in order to fully understand the theoretical
properties of the category; and (2) integrating categories and their properties through
the development of interpretive memos. This has been done according to the step
model of inductive category development (Mayring, 2000) (see figure 4.1)
Elmar Hoogendoorn 47
Sustainable Microfinance