A Critical Exploration of Collected Data in Business Research: Is Data Trustworthy? A Comparison of a Survey and Interviews

Abstract

Despite its crucial role within a research community, trustworthiness in data collecting has received surprisingly little scientific attention in research articles. Therefore, the overall purpose of this paper is to explore and discuss trustworthiness in collected data through both interview and questionnaire methods. The results of these methods are reported as a methodological experiment. The answers from the questionnaires and the interviews were compared and illustrated using a “Divergence Index,” which illustrates the coherence (trustworthiness) of the two data-collection methods. The two data-collection methods tested in the study provided different results and hence present different factors of importance for SMEs. The present paper concludes that (1) there are few reflections on the trustworthiness of collected data in prior research, and (2) the responses for two data collection methods show great divergence, which can have consequences on CEOs’ and other decision-makers decisions based on collected data.