Quantifying the quality of tertiary education annual reports

Research methods for developing disclosure indices are evaluated in relation to measuring performance for tertiary education bodies. A critique of earlier unweighted, dichotomous studies such as Dixon, Coy and Tower [1991], reveals limitations of such an approach. An alternative method (AD‐Score) is advanced using 3‐point scales to differentiate for: i) the quality of disclosures and, ii) a weighting of the importance of each item. Annual reports from 33 New Zealand tertiary education bodies (1985‐90) were analyzed using both approaches. The results show that the AD‐Score is approximately 10 percentage points lower throughout. The AD‐Score also changed some of the rankings of the institutions. The scoring systems were found to be significantly different in 1990 (but not 1989). Suggestions for further improvements of the AD‐Score are also offered