The impact of the banking sector development on the financial performance of the communication sector in sierra leone

4.2 Research Design 
The study sought to investigate the relationship between banking development 
and that of the communication sector financial performance, the exploratory 
quantitative research design with an experimental approach is adopted. 
Explorative because there hasn
’t that much direct known variables and with 
less direct literature on the topic and experimental as it is aimed at establishing 
the cause and effect between selected economic variables. An exploratory 
study often set strong foundation for more research work to be done on a 
particular topic and provide an in-depth understanding on new topics. An 
experimental explorative research model shall try to established variables that 
would determine the relationship between the two sectors and highlight factors 
affecting the institutional financial performance in Sierra Leone. 

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This study investigates the impact of Banking sector development on the 
financial performance of the communication sector in Sierra Leone using panel 
data. The regression estimation model employed investigate whether the 
banking sector do contribute to the financial performance of the communication 
sector. Despite the key progress in banking sector development, financial 
performance of the communication sector in one way or the other influenced 
by other factors like inflation, exchange rate, government and political 
environment and other macro-economic factors. The model control variable 
would account for these factors. The Tests that would be conducted to 
ascertain the model’s viability, stability and validity are as follows: 
 Unit Root Test; a test for stationarity 
 Multicollinearity test 
 Cointegration test: a test for long-run relationship 
 Diagnostic tests to for Model Stability 
The Autoregressive distributed lag estimation model would be used on panel 
data from 2001-2020 to identify the impact of the banking sector on the 
financial performance of the communication sector in Sierra Leone and also 
tries to identify the role of interest rate on the loans and advances facilities 
granted to the selected communication institutions and further more evaluate 
the role of debt and its relationship with financial performance. This study is 
designed to investigate the impact of the banking development variables on 
financial performance on the selected communication institutions as it aimed 
to establish the relationship and supporting role of the banking sector to the 
communication sector. The hypothesis in the first chapter shall be tested using 
the selected model to establish the relationship between the variables after the 
abovementioned test and other diagnostic tests for model stability and validity 
has been made and the appropriate results ascertained.