Hello,
In my research, my unit of analysis is the organization (i.e. soccer sponsors) and data will be collected through interviews with a representative from each sponsoring brand. My question is, because these individuals will be speaking on behalf of the organization (they are representing the organization), is the unit of observation the individual or the organization?
Ok, I need to clarify some things.
1- I already know what the unit of analysis is. What I don't know is what the unit of observation is.
2-The context: I am interviewing just one representative from each organization about the risks of sponsoring soccer.
3-The interviewee will be speaking on behalf of the organization, not about himself.
The term "unit of analysis" is most useful in quantitative research, where you need to specify what population you are representing through your sample. If you are doing qualitative interviewing, it is less relevant and far less commonly used.
In your research, you're going to say something about the organizations. Not about the teams or individual employees. So the unit of analysis is the organization.
I don't know the rest of the context, but I wonder if one source within a company is representative? Otherwise you can aggregate multiple sources within an organization to the organizational level.
The unit of analysis refers to the thing that you are studying. Because you are studying organizations, your unit of analysis is still the organizations. The individuals are simply your respondents. As long as your subject matter is the organizations your unit of analysis should be the organizations.
Dear Bruno,
I would recommend looking at your research questions primarily. It doesn't matter, if your study participants will be talking about their own experience or their experience on behalf of the organization, as long as your research questions focus on organization, the unit of observation is the organization.
Good luck with your research!
Strictly speaking, when you collect data by talking to individual informants, your unit of observation is the individual informant, even though (as you are quite aware) your unit of analysis is the organization. However, I doubt that precisely identifying and labeling the "unit of observation" matters much, if at all, for purposes of your study. I also doubt that your observations come exclusively from the informants. Surely you will know some things about the organizations from other sources -- their location, their industry, their name, etc. -- and almost certainly some of that information will be used in formulating your conclusions. (You probably also have annual reports or other documents published by the organizations and will use data from those documents as well.) If you use any data at all that is from or about the organization but did not come from your informants, then the "unit of observation" for that part of your data is the organization, not the individual informant. But to repeat, it is not obvious to me why that linguistic distinction would matter much for purposes of your research.
If the respondent is representing his/her organization. Unit of analysis is the organization.
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