Abstract - Quest for Global Competitiveness - Universidad de Puerto ...

s cheme had a total of 1 4 quest ions. T able one p resents theva r iable s and coding sc heme option.T he besides va r iable s p re viously m entioned, the codin g schemei ncluded demographic information, su ch a s f oundin g date, s tartedf ranch is in g date, headquarter and online s tore. Once the codebookand code forms we re deve loped, testin g and tra in i n g started.CodingF o r our st udy, we engaged in human codin g (i.e. human bein gs werec harged with the r esponsibilit y of a ssign in g the va lu es to eachva r iable , a cco rd in g to the codin g s c heme) a s opposed to m a chinec oding. T his wa s s o s ince there is no s in g le f ormat o r unique wo rd sthat m u st be f ollowed when m a king a website legally compliant,therefore a ce rtain degree of pers onal j udgm ent is necessary. Sixhuman coders were u sed, the t wo re searchers, t wo m aster s tudents,and two undergraduate students. All coders are profic ient in English.C oder t rainin g wa s b ased on N euendorf ’s (2 002) p roce ss. Codert ra in in g start ed after re vising the written c odebook. Re searcherse xplain ed coders the m ethod of content analysis, the co din g schemeand the va riables. Coders discussed the codebook. U sing n on -s ample f ood f ranchise website s, coders pract i ce d the codebooki ndividually but in the same computer lab. After codin g, the codersd is cussed the re sults and e n gaged i n c onsensus building. T hec odebook wa s revised and the c oders we re t rained usin g the newve r s ion. A gain , the c oders d id t he p i lot individually , but in the samel ab. F rom t ra in ing t o p ilo t, Ho ls ti’s intercoder re l iability impro vedf rom 0 .712 to 0.952. N euendorf (2002) su gge sted the u se of Ho lst i ’sm ethod when th e measures are ca tego r ic al.Sample co din g started once we had interc oder re l iability in the p ilotwe bsit e s. F i ve coders were in charge with an e quiva lent share ofunit s of random s ample f ood f ra nchise we bsite s. A ls o in the samewe ek, t wo re l iability coders , one of the re searc hers , and ani ndependent c oder c ro ss - coded 82 sample website s (3 2%). A s ac ontro l m easu re , o nly t he a uthors kn e w the identity of thei ndependent coder. Intercoder re l iabilit y wa s confirmed with aH o lst i ’s in tercoder re liabilit y of 0.953 .In t he n e xt sect ion we show the data a nalysis a nd resu lt s of ours tudies. First we p re sent our p rofile of f ra nch is in g we bsit e s, basedon descriptive statist ic s. Later we p resent our h ypothese s f or thiss tudy and wh i ch ones we re supported .14