Previous studies of audit task structure and auditor knowledge structure have concluded that judgment performance is improved when a match between structures exists. Auditing Standard No. 5, An Audit of Internal Control Over Financial Reporting That is Integrated with an Audit of Financial Statements (2007) (AS No. 5) establishes a top-down task structure on the audit of internal control over financial reporting. The new AS No. 5 structure, unlike most other internal control task structures, includes a hierarchical analysis of both schematically and taxonomically organized information. Prior research suggests that auditor knowledge structures of internal controls are organized both schematically by transaction flow and taxonomically by audit objective. This study investigates how an auditing task characteristic (task structure) interacts with decision maker characteristics (attention and knowledge structure) to examine whether the new AS No. 5 task structure of internal control evaluation affects governmental auditors' processing of internal controls in three audit tasks: control risk assessment, analytic risk assessment, and pattern identification. Results indicate that auditors were better able to sort internal controls according to a traditional internal control task format as compared to the new AS No. 5 task format. However, results also suggest that in a weak control environment, the task format of AS No. 5 affected auditor ability to weight cues, as evidenced by control risk assessments and assessments of the probability of misstatement, such that risk assessments were greater in the AS No. 5 treatment than those of auditors using a categorical task structure. Finally, study findings support prior literature that suggests that as task complexity increases, auditor problem-solving ability correlates with improved decision performance. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Accounting in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2009. / Date of Defense: October 28, 2008. / Auditing Standard No. 5, Risk assessment, Decision-making, Pattern identification, Auditing / Includes bibliographical references. / Gregory J. Gerard, Professor Directing Dissertation; K. Anders Ericsson, Outside Committee Member; William A. Hillison, Committee Member; Jessen L. Hobson, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_168991 |
| Contributors | August-Crook, Tamara A. (Tamara Ann) (authoraut), Gerard, Gregory J. (professor directing dissertation), Ericsson, K. Anders (outside committee member), Hillison, William A. (committee member), Hobson, Jessen L. (committee member), Department of Accounting (degree granting department), Florida State University (degree granting institution) |
| Publisher | Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text |
| Format | 1 online resource, computer, application/pdf |
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