The challenge of researching dyadic phenomena – the comparison of dyadic data analysis and traditional statistical methods*

Abstract

The study of business relationships poses a number of challenges. This article focuses specifically on the methodological issues arising from the dyadic nature of relations. As a consequence of the dyadic nature, it is important that throughout the analyses the phenomena can be measured as embedded in the given relation and in this way, they can be studied without losing their unique context. A common criticism of using questionnaire surveys in examining business relations is that in research, the so-called single-ended operationalising or measure is dominant, and the data thus obtained is analysed by traditional mathematical-statistical methods. According to critical opinions in the literature, this methodological practice cannot lead to reliable results.The present article uses the database of a questionnaire survey to investigate whether the former standpoint is well founded. A specific research hypothesis is tested on the data obtained from paired query. In this process, the suggested methods for dyadic data analysis are used besides analyses carried out using various measures from traditional statistics. Dyadic data analysis provides extra value primarily in its perspective; regarding the results in the present study, it has not proved to be a major breakthrough.