ABSTRACT
The results of the previous chapter indicated, among other things, that there was a significant amount of unexplained variability in auditors’ decisions. Significant variability measured in terms of both ranges and coefficients of variation were observed in the five related experiments. More importantly perhaps, much of the observed variability was not attributable to either the experimental variables or the interpersonal differences. Analysis of variance showed that the two experimentally controlled variables (compliance test results and auditor guidance) accounted for only 10.0 to 23.6 percent of the observed variance in the auditors’ four scope decisions. These and other results imply that additional multivariate analysis may be useful regarding the way in which auditors weight various informational, organizational, and behavioral cues and combine them in order to reach a judgment.
