Financial Reporting Interview-Based Research: A Field Research Primer with an Illustrative Example

ABSTRACT To better focus financial reporting research on key issues as seen by participants in the financial reporting process and to give added depth to the interpretation of archival and experimental results, there have been increased calls for financial reporting researchers to “enter the field.” As field research methods, especially interview-based, are rarely covered in accounting doctoral programs that focus on archival or experimental research, the goal of this article is to provide a basic primer on how to conduct positivist field-based research using qualitative interview methods. We assemble a set of resources that facilitate the transfer of knowledge about the interview method, both by reviewing the explicit knowledge that needs to be acquired, as well as by illustrating how we carried out a study on the earnings press release creation process. Such a “how to do” approach is well suited for the passing on of the tacit knowledge required by researchers beginning a qualitative research program. We hope to aid novice field researchers in financial reporting gain a basic fluency in qualitative interview-based methods. Increased fluency in the production of valid, reliable, field-based financial reporting research will benefit the financial reporting research community as a whole by leading to a greater appreciation of how financial reporting process participants see the world they are active in.