Frequency Judgments in an Auditing-Related Task

Abstract

The topic of frequency judgments is important to auditors because practically all auditing judgments use frequency data as one of the inputs in the decision-making process. For example, frequency judgments based on actual audit experience with a given company become part of audit planning on repeat engagements. In addition to the actual audit hours used in an area, the frequency of errors discovered in past audits may serve as a guide in allocating hours in the current audit plan. This possibility is supported by Kinney's [1979] results that adjustments made in prior years' audits were relatively accurate predictors of the current year's errors. Similarly, in evaluating internal controls, the auditor's judgments of the frequency with which different accounting processes generate errors should affect evaluations of the importance of control weaknesses discovered in the system. Libby, Artman, and Willingham [1985] found that the frequency with which subprocesses generate errors had a major impact on control risk assessments. The importance of frequency judgments was also demonstrated by Libby [1985], who showed that auditors rely on their judgments of frequency of occurrence of financial statement errors when generating hypotheses in an analytical review task.