Methodological Approaches to Study Internet Financial Communication

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to show how qualitative and quantitative approaches can be complementary to study internet financial communication in a thesis by papers and how grounded theory (GT) can be the link among the different papers of the thesis. The study context of our thesis was the unregulated markets of New York Stock What was the most specific on those markets and at the beginning of our problematic is that there is no obligation of communication. And so, we wondered, "Do listed firms on unregulated markets of Brussels make a voluntary effort of internet financial communication?". Other research questions followed this starting question.Our thesis was composed of four papers; each of them used a methodology to answer a specific research question.This paper aims at showing how qualitative and quantitative approaches can be complementary to study internet financial communication in a thesis by papers and how grounded theory (GT) can be the link among the different papers of the thesis. This paper is organized as follows: First, we present the context of the study: the unregulated markets of New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) Euronext Brussels and the problematic rose from this context. Then, we expose the different methodological approaches used in our researches: content analysis of websites and scoring, linear regression, paired sample, and interviews. Finally, we demonstrate how GT was the general methodological travel among the papers: Every article had for vocation to try to answer the questions raised by the previous article.