The data collected from the interviews and the documents were analyzed as described below.
The data from the interviews were content-analyzed. Content analysis is a research technique for systematically examining the content of communications--in this instance, the interview data. Participants' responses to interview guide questions and the related issues that arose during the interview process were read and put together as complete quotations and filed according to the topic or issue addressed. The content analysis of the interview data was completed both manually and with computer assistance. Responses were analyzed thematically. Emergent themes were ranked by their frequency of mention and were finally categorized. Data obtained through the interviews were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. Quantitative data were used to provide the basic research evidence, while qualitative data were used to round out the picture and provide examples.
To assist in ensuring the reliability of the data analysis, the researchers invited a diversity expert to review the interview data from the interviews and identify the various diversity factors in the text. There was unanimous agreement between the researchers and the diversity expert regarding the factors identified in the text.
Documents were collected and analyzed prior to, during, and after the interviews. Corporate annual reports were collected and analyzed using a Annual Report Document Analysis Form (see Appendix B). An Annual Report Document Analysis Form was completed for each of the corporate annual reports. These reports were selected for this analysis because they were the only documents that were available by all the corporations in the study, were published in similar formats, and could be systematically analyzed.
In addition, a Related Documents Analysis Form was completed for each related document in the entire collection (see Appendix C). All together, a total of 47 related documents were analyzed. The Related Documents Analysis Forms were designed by the researchers to analyze the information collected that documented the diversity initiatives process within the corporations. Related documents obtained from the World Wide Web, corporate sources, books, journals, newspapers, newsletters, reports, and so forth were all included in individual files for each of the corporations in the study. The researchers coded the related documents by relevant topic as they related to the major research questions.
To assist in ensuring the reliability of the Annual Report Document Analysis Form, the researchers invited a diversity expert to review four of the annual reports using this form. The ratings of the diversity expert matched the researchers' ratings. The same procedure was followed for the Related Documents Analysis Form, which produced similar results.