Construct validity continues to pose challenges in the organizational sciences. To capture difficult-to-measure constructs of interest, researchers have often relied on content analysis. One content analysis technique, computer-aided text analysis (CATA), is particularly attractive because of the ability to process large samples with high speeds and reliabilities. Unfortunately, inconsistent guidance exists to guide researchers through the use of this tool in a manner compatible with accepted methods used to validate constructs in a rigorous manner. The authors review research using content analysis to examine the extent to which such studies integrate methods for assessing content, external, discriminant, and predictive validity. To provide direction for organizational researchers interested in using CATA to measure theoretically based constructs relevant to the management field, they suggest a number of possible procedures to enhance construct validity. They illustrate these procedures using the construct of entrepreneurial orientation.
Autonomy is an important component of an entrepreneurial orientation (EO), but most studies that assess the EO construct do not include autonomy measures. This article first addresses the theoretical relevance of autonomy as an element of firm-level entrepreneurial behavior. After a review of existing autonomy measures, it then proposes scale items to test the autonomy dimension of EO. Finally, it reports the results of two studies of the proposed autonomy scale and addresses implications for future EO-related autonomy research.
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