The effect of experience on the auditor's organization and amount of knowledge

Article Abstract:

Research was undertaken to investigate how the acquisition of experience may change the auditor's knowledge of errors and irregularities. It was hypothesized that greater experience results in greater accuracy of error knowledge, knowledge of a wider variety of errors, and increased knowledge of atypical errors. It was also assumed that the salience of two characteristics of errors, that of the violated internal control objective and the department in which the error occurred, increases together with the auditor's experience. The study involved 72 auditors holding junior, senior and managerial positions and 23 students who were all asked to perform an unconstrained free recall task and a conditional prediction task. Results showed that the more experienced auditors recalled more errors and recognized more atypical errors. The salience of the two features of error was established.

Knowledge, Theory of, Epistemology, Experience

---

Recency effects in the auditor's belief-revision process

Article Abstract:

Auditors sequentially obtain and evaluate evidence that confirms or disproves certain assertions on financial statements. Recent research has suggested that the order of audit evidence has no effect on evaluation and judgement when evidence is consistent but a recency effect will be displayed when evidence is mixed. Four experiments involving 251 auditors were conducted, two using mixed evidence to determine the the presence of recency effects on the belief-revision process of auditors, and two using consistently positive and negative evidence, respectively, to determine the effect of a lack of order on auditors belief-revision process. The latter experiments reveal that order of evidence is not significant. In the experiments with mixed evidence, the order of evidence was significant in step-by-step response conditions but mixed in end-of-sequence response conditions.

---

An investigation of the influence of a nonstatistical decision aid on auditor sample size decisions

Article Abstract:

An experiment was conducted to measure the effects of a decision aid in the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Audit Sampling Audit Guide on auditors' non-statistical, judgmental sample size decisions. Auditors were given background information and assigned to one of three groups: an intuitive judgement group; a decision aid group using the formula from the AICPA guide; and a group provided with the formula's parameters. The experiment reveals that the sample sizes of the second group were larger than that of the first due to insensitive power considerations. The sample sizes of the third group were larger than those of the second due to the tendency of auditors to work backwards towards a sample size.

Psychological aspects

Similar abstracts:

• Abstracts: The effects of auditor change on audit fees: tests of price cutting and price recovery. A test of audit pricing in the small-client segment of the U.S. audit market
• Abstracts: Managerial influence in the implementation of new technology. Risk-return performance of diversified firms
• Abstracts: The effects of audit risk and information importance on auditor memory during working paper review. An experimental study of the effects of audit structure in uncertain task environments
• Abstracts: What is the difference between organizational culture and organizational climate? A native's point of view on a decade of paradigm wars
• Abstracts: AT&T says computer directory service won't be in use until at least summer. AT&T planning computer access to phone numbers: FCC seen clearing service to corporate customers for listings nationwide

This website is not affiliated with document authors or copyright owners. This page is provided for informational purposes only. Unintentional errors are possible.