EXAMINING AN UNOBTRUSIVE MEASURE: PATENT REFERENCES AS CITATIONS ?

Dana Wang Dana Wang ()
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Dana Wang Dana Wang: UTSA

Working Papers from College of Business, University of Texas at San Antonio

Abstract: Unobtrusive measures are desired in deductive research in the social sciences. Deductive research relies on sequential logical arguments and assumptions in order to test hypotheses. A key activity in deductive research is finding and using data that serve as proxies, representations, and measures of dependent or independent variables. Some researchers prefer to use unobtrusive data because of their belief that those who are studied do not alter their behavior and hence, the unobtrusive measures are not biased (Webb, Campbell, Schwartz, Sechrest 1966). An important unobtrusive data in the social sciences is U.S. patents. Researchers have extensively analyzed information listed under “References Cited,” treating them as records of the inventor’s or the applicant’s knowledge. Labeled “patent citations,” patent references have been subject of citation analysis and co-citation analysis. Citation analysis is premised on authors citing documents they consider to be important in the development of their research or work. Co-citation analysis is used to study the similarity of content in two documents.

Keywords: Unobtrusive measure; patent references (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2013
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