Open Collections

An empirical study of judgments on internal control

University of British Columbia

A review of the literature in the area of audit judgment and cognitive style research forms the basis for the research study reported in this paper. Thirty-six independent auditors were required to complete a psychological test structured to measure cognitive complexity. They were also asked to judge weakness of internal control in a hypothetical company as a function of five yes/no questions representing partial judgments according to a full fractional factorial design. The analysis-of-variance version of the Brunswik lens model was used to analyze the subject responses. The results of the experiment indicated that the subjects' models of judgment is highly likely to stem from the fact that most of the subjects were concrete (cognitive simple) in their judgments. The usefulness of fractional factorial studies in human judgment research was also appraised, and it was found to be adequate in the experiment performed. Suggestions for further research applying the cue utilization methodology in audit and management information systems research were made. In addition, suggestions for a more naturalistic approach to audit research were proposed.

Text

2010-03-13

For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/21869

Business Administration

University of British Columbia

Graduate