Assessing Measurement Error in Key Informant Reports: A Methodological Note on Organizational Analysis in Marketing
研究了营销研究中组织特征测量的信度和效度，通过对506家批发分销公司的多位信息提供者数据进行分析，发现方法因素影响测量质量，特质方差常低于50%。
The author examines the reliability and validity of measures of organizational characteristics used in previous marketing studies in the areas of strategic planning and distribution channels. Key informants in 506 wholesale-distribution companies provided reports on (1) characteristics of the firm's product portfolio and (2) characteristics of the firm's power-dependence relations with its major suppliers and customers. In contrast to previous investigations, which sampled only a single informant per unit of analysis, data were collected from multiple informants in each firm. Results showed that informant reports often achieved convergent and discriminant validity when variance due to methods factors was explicitly modeled. However, partitioning of variance according to trait, method, and random error components showed that informant reports often exhibited less than 50% variance attributable to the trait factor under investigation. Implications of the findings are discussed for those marketing studies which focus on organizations or organizational subunits as the unit of analysis.