Validity and reliability

Two measures are usually taken into account, when the research quality is assessed -validity and reliability. Validity is "concerned with whether the findings are really about what they appear to be about" (Saunders, Lewis, Thornhill, 2000:101).

In order to assure validity, the research methodology and frame of reference for this study were adhered to. Multiple sources of data were used - three content-providers were interviewed and also their websites were observed in order to verify the data provided by the informants.

External validity - specifying the area, in which the conclusions from the study can be generalized (Yin, 1994:35-36) - had to be also taken into consideration because of the small number of informants. Three content providers, that were interviewed, cannot represent precisely the whole group of content providers on the Internet, which is very variable and diverse.

The chosen informants were affected by their backgrounds, type of business models they had, or opportunities offered at the market(s) they were active at. These factors had also impact on research reliability - assuring that the same results would be achieved when conducting another research (Saunders, Lewis, Thornhill, 2000:101).

For strengthening the reliability of the research, the same interview guide was used for all interviews, which were recorded and analyzed by two researchers in order not to miss out important information and to reduce interviewer bias and errors. To assure that informants did not omit important information for the research or altered the facts, observations were made at their websites before the interviews. Due to this, data gained by the interviews could be compared immediately with data from observations and potential differences were explained. Content providers were also not asked about sensitive data (such as their income) that they could be unwilling to share.

Still, it is not possible to generalize the findings and conclusions of this research to all content providers at the Internet. However, in its settings the research provides in-depth insight into the problem area and offers new perspective to the companies considering employing affiliate marketing. The work can be also used as a basis for further studies about the topic.

DATA PRESENTATION

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