Internal Control Judgments and Effects of Experience: Replications and Extensions

Abstract

Early studies of auditors' professional judgments focused on assessments of internal control for payroll systems (Ashton [1974a]), and the resulting effects on audit program plans (Joyce [1976]). This initial work has been extended to consider auditing students (Ashton and Kramer [1980]), changed cue sets (Ashton and Brown [1980], Hamilton and Wright [1980], and Reckers and Taylor [1979]), changed order of cue presentation (Ashton and Brown [1980]), and increased availability of cases (Ashton and Brown [1980]). Audit program planning judgment research has been extended to consider a larger cue set and the effects of guidance and review using a single situation evaluation by the auditor (Mock and Turner [1981]). Protocol analysis has been utilized to identify criteria auditors' use in evaluating internal controls (Biggs and Mock [1980]), and the tasks of audit program planning and internal control evaluation have been compared to investigate task effects (Gaumnitz et al. [1982]). Using a task and situation similar to the one used in the Ashton and Ashton et al. studies we extend this work by considering explicitly the relationship between years of experience and judgment consensus (interauditor agreement), the stability (reliability) of judgments, the relative