Within-subject Research Articles

How to Mitigate Auditor’s Conscious and Unconscious Bias? An Experimental Study

Increasing evidence of auditors’ failure to provide an independent opinion on true and fair view of financial position of firms during the financial crisis has reopened the debates about effective measures to ensure auditor’s independence. The purpose of this paper is to examine two prominent determinants of auditor’s biased opinion – financial incentives and personal relationship with a client that cause conscious and unconscious auditor’s bias. We hypothesise that contingent financial incentives elicit predominantly conscious bias, whereas personal relationship induces mainly unconscious bias. We conjecture that oversight, intended to mitigate biases, is effective only for conscious bias. To analyze the hypotheses we conduct a two period two-by-two between and with-in subject experiment with 176 students involving a choice task. We find that financial incentives have a significant effect on an auditor’s choice. While personal relationship appears to have no such overall effect, we find it significantly related to unconscious bias. Our results show that oversight can effectively mitigate auditor’s bias, because most of it is conscious. Unconscious bias is persistent throughout both rounds of the experiment and is unaffected by oversight. The results suggest that while oversight may effectively mitigate conscious bias it does not affect the unconscious one. The findings contribute to the recent regulatory discussions on measures to increase auditors’ independence. They show that in addition to oversight alternative solutions are needed to mitigate the unconscious bias. Audit firm rotation may prevent the effects of unconscious bias by terminating the long-term auditor-client relationship.

Short‐term test–retest reproducibility of urethral pressure profilometry in women with urodynamic stress incontinence with and without detrusor overactivity

To determine and compare reproducibility of urethral pressure profilometry (UPP) in women with urodynamic stress incontinence (USI) alone or together with detrusor overactivity (DO). Women were recruited from a urodynamic clinic diagnosed with USI using dual channel cystometry. UPP was performed with the technique described by Hilton and Stanton [Hilton P, Stanton SL. Br J Obstet Gynaecol 90:919-33,1983]. Different urethral function parameters were obtained. Two weeks later the tests were repeated. The precision and bias of the tests were measured using the Bland and Altman method [Bland JM, Altman DG. Lancet 1:307-10,1986]. The coefficient of variation (CV) value allowed direct comparison of repeatability of each test, with a lower value indicating less variation. Thirty-one women completed both visits. Fourteen women had USI, the other 17 diagnosed with USI with DO at the end of two visits. There was no significant difference between visits for all the parameters for all women recruited. The most reproducible parameter was functional urethral length and maximum urethral pressure as demonstrated by lowest CV. The women with USI group had more reproducible UPP parameters than those with mixed USI and DO in all parameters apart from pressure transmission ratio in Quartiles 2, 3, and 4. However, there was no significant difference between the two diagnostic groups. Tests of urethral function in urethral pressure profilometry are shown to have poor reproducibility in women with USI, but limit of agreement may be acceptable in some of the tests. The with-in subject CV appears to be higher in women with mixed USI and DO compared to USI only.

Measures of Reliability in the Kinematics of Maximal Undulatory Underwater Swimming

The purposes of this article were to establish the reliability of the kinematics of maximal undulatory underwater swimming (UUS) in skilled swimmers, to determine any requirement for familiarization trials, to establish the within-subject (WS) variability of the kinematics, and to calculate the number of cycles required to accurately represent UUS performance. Fifteen male swimmers performed 20 maximal UUS trials (two cycles per trial) during four sessions. The magnitude of any systematic bias present within the kinematic variables was calculated between session, trial, and cycle. Random error calculations were calculated to determine the WS variation. An iterative intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) process was used to determine the number of cycles required to achieve a stable representation of each kinematic variable. Significant differences were found between session 1 and all other sessions for several variables, indicating the requirement for a familiarization session. Results indicated a wide range of WS variation (coefficient of variation [CV] = 1.21%-12.42%). Reductions in WS variation were observed for all variables when the number of cycles of data used to calculate WS variation was increased. Using six cycles of data, including additional cycles of data, provided diminishing returns regarding the reduction of WS variation. The ICC analysis indicated that an average of nine cycles (mean ± SD = 9.47 ± 5.63) was required to achieve the maximum ICC values attained, and an average of four cycles (mean ± SD = 3.57 ± 2.09) was required to achieve an ICC of 0.95. After determining the systematic bias and establishing the requirement for a familiarization session, six cycles of data were found to be sufficient to provide high levels of reliability (CV(TE) = 0.86-8.92; ICC = 0.811-0.996) for each of the UUS kinematic variables.

Individual differences in auditory‐evoked responses: Second report

Last spring we reported to this meeting findings from a series of auditory‐evoked response (AER) tests designed for studying individual differences in AER's by comparing between‐subject (BS) variability with within‐subject (WS) variability. The series involved a repeated‐measures design, where seven young adult subjects were tested weekly for eight sessions; in each session, AER's were collected for right monaural, left monaural, and binaural click stimulation. Continuing analysis of the brain stem data, focusing on comparisons of binaural versus monaural responses, shows further examples of: (1) clear differences between the two types of variability; (2) distinct patterns, or “profiles,” of individual performance that are articulated both in terms of differences according to ear of stimulation and peak of the response; (3) striking degree of replicability of individual patterns of performance; (4) deviations from replicability that most often take one of two forms—(a) increases in stability with continued testing, and/or (b) “emergence” of response patterns that may result in the response profile of one subject coming to resemble that shown by other individuals. [Work supported, in part, by AFOSR 84‐0335 and 85‐0379.]