*3.3. Content Analysis Approach*

The CAA has been adopted to analyze the tender documents, so as to have a precise answer concerning the first question of the research: "what are the readability issues in the sub-contracting's tender documents?". The CAA is an observation-based research technique that is employed to systematically analyze the content of all the forms associated with the recorded communications [30]. Furthermore, it can be utilized with either the qualitative or quantitative information and in an inductive or deductive manner [31]. Owing to these features, the CAA has been employed extensively by the construction industry researchers to assist them to draw real data from the construction documentation, including reports, contracts, and news reports. This has been noted in the context of several important branches of the construction management researches, such as claims, PPP schemes, and prefabricated buildings (e.g., [27–29]).

To study the tender documents, a protocol of a three-step content analysis has been set. In the first step, the intention is to form an initial framework of the factors behind the readability issue in the sub-contracting's tender documentation. In this regard, the checklists of Chong and Zin [13] and Koc and Gurgun [15] have been relied upon as a guideline for exploring the readability issues in the assembled document packages. The registers of Chong and Zin [13] and Koc and Gurgun [15] have 15 and 18 risks influencing the construction contracts' readability, respectively. Moreover, they have 12 common risks, as has been mentioned in Koc and Gurgun [15]. More details pertinent to these two lists can be found in Chong and Zin [13] and Koc and Gurgun [15]. The reason for choosing these two checklists is that they have been developed following an accurate methodology, encompassing a comprehensive review of the relevant literature and validation with subject matter experts. Moreover, in addition to the lists of the readability issues of Chong and Zin [13] and Koc and Gurgun [15], to the best of the authors' knowledge, there is no other list, other than that of Chong and Oon [23]. However, the checklist of Chong and Oon [23] is completely similar to the checklist of Chong and Zin [13]. Therefore, the lists of Chong and Zin [13] and Koc and Gurgun [15] have been considered appropriate to direct the author when scrutinizing the tender documents.

Similar to the suggestion of Nguyen et al. [27], round one of the content analysis process has been based upon an initial set of the tender documentation. These documents belong to the tenders from 1–10 (see Table 1). This preliminary investigation is a very significant stage in the CAA to refine the checklists of Chong and Zin [13] and Koc and Gurgun [15], as they do not exemplify the readability issues of the sub-contracting's tender documentation. They, however, represent the construction contracts' readability risks. Appreciating this importance, the documents of each tender have been read in detail several times. According to Arshad et al. [32], this can help in realizing an objective understanding of the documentation content and preventing the author's subjectivity while extracting the result. At the end of studying the first 10 tender documents, 14 readability issues have been drawn. Table 2 presents these issues, illustrating that while 10 of the readability issues have been stated in the checklists of Chong and Zin [13] and Koc and Gurgun [15], the other 4 ones have been derived from analyzing the 10 tender documents. As a further refinement of the compiled list of the readability issues, the second step of the content analysis process has been started to examine the rest of the documentation (i.e., tenders from 11–34). Consequently, the possibility of adding any new unlisted issue is available. As has been followed in the prior step, the 24 documents packages have been carefully read multiple times. The finding indicated that the list of the readability issues of Table 2 is sufficient and no new issue has emerged.

In the third step of the content analysis, all the tender documents have been rechecked to reaffirm that no factor has been missed during the first and second rounds of scrutinizing the documents packages. Similar to the first and second steps of the content analysis procedure, the 34 tender documents have been accurately checked. The result of this stage affirmed that no new issue has been found, other than those mentioned in Table 2. This affirmation may be due to the precise investigation of the tender documentation during the first and second rounds of the content analysis process. These two rounds lasted for approximately 28 working hours over 2 weeks to extract the readability issues from the documents packages. Building on the finding of this step, all the found issues can be shown in Table 2, encompassing their negative impacts on the readability of the sub-contracting's tender documentation. In addition, it includes their sources, either from the relevant literature or the content analysis of the tender documents. It is worth mentioning that, in this step, for each readability issue, its Frequency of Appearance (FA), Relative Frequency of Appearance (RFA), and Ranking (R) have been defined for the statistical analysis. The FA of each readability issue has been determined by figuring up the number of times it appears in the tender documents. As for the RFA of each issue, it has been calculated by dividing its RA by the grand total of the RA of all the readability issues. Yet, for defining R, the issues have been ranked in a descending order of their RFA values, where the issue of the highest RFA receives the first rank. The FA of the readability issues can be found in Table 3, whereas their RFA and R appear in Table 4.


**Table 2.** Readability issues in the tender documents.


#### **Table 2.** *Cont.*

A: [13]; B: [15]; C: content analysis of the tender documents.

#### **Table 3.** Frequency of appearance of the readability issues in the tender documents.



**Table 3.** *Cont.*

**Table 4.** Relative frequency of appearance and ranking of the readability issues.

