Empirical archival data sources and data issues for nonprofit accounting research

This chapter provides a brief review of empirical nonprofit research using archival data sources and addresses some issues when using these data. The introduction includes a brief history of empirical research in this area. The literature review section presents recent empirical nonprofit research in the areas of auditing, compensation, governance, managerial accounting and tax. We then describe each database in detail and provide examples of recent representative publications using that database. Data issues and how these issues have been treated by various researchers are discussed in the following section. In conclusion, we present a brief summary of the chapter and suggest areas for future nonprofit empirical research in the sector.