Nordic Accounting Research Network

DOCTORAL COURSE
REG506b DESIGN OF EXPERIMENTS IN
AUDITING RESEARCH

The Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration (NHH) invites participants to a course at the doctoral level in research methods in audit research.  The course consists of three sessions in Fall 2008.  It will take place in the facilities of NHH in Bergen.  The course is primarily intended for PhD students in accounting at NHH and in the Nordic countries.

Course responsibility: Professor Iris Stuart (iris.stuart@nhh.no)
Instructors: Professor Iris Stuart, NHH, 47 55 95 9348; Don Cram, Cram Associates
Program of Study: PhD program, NHH
Readings: Selected journal articles
Required: Class participation, assigned exercises, and final project
Study Points: 7,5
Teaching Language: English

Course dates
The course is divided into three sessions, each of three days (Wednesday – Friday):
Session I:    October 1-3
Session II:    November 5-7
Session III:    December 3-5

Overall course objective
The purpose of the course is to provide an introduction to research methods used in audit research and to become familiar with several research areas in audit research.

Topics
Section I covers an introduction to auditing research, including audit practices, auditor judgments, auditor litigation, fraud, audit committee impact, audit fees, audit quality, auditor changes, audit qualifications and financial distress.  Section II covers various research methods used in auditing research including:  regression analysis, ANOVA, PROBIT, and LOGIT.  Topics related to hypothesis testing and preparation of experimental questionnaires will be considered.  Students will have access to datasets and will use SPSS or SAS to solve problems developed by course instructors.  During Session III, students will use techniques learned in the prior session to analyze data, developing hypotheses to test and using research methods to analyze data in one of the research areas discussed in session I.

Requirements
This course is conducted primarily as a seminar class combining discussion of the papers with presentations by the faculty.  The participants are responsible for:  reading the assigned papers, preparing solutions to the exercises, and actively participating in class discussions to pass the course.

Each participant will be assigned papers for presentation and discussion.  When reviewing and preparing a discussion of a research paper, the student should be prepared to address the following issues:
1.    What is the “story” being told in the research paper?
2.    What is the research question being addressed in the study?
3.    Why is the question interesting to the profession and practice of auditing?
4.    What hypotheses are examined in the paper?
5.    What is the general approach taken to examine the research question?
6.    What data source is used in the study?
7.    What statistical methods are used to test the hypotheses?
8.    What are the key findings of the paper?
9.    What are the implications of the study for the profession?
10.    What are the limitations or weaknesses of the study?
11.    What follow-up research would you suggest?

Participants will be asked to present a description of an original research idea pertaining to auditing research.  Particular emphasis should be made on the research question, the hypotheses tested, and the research method used to answer the research question.

Costs
There will be no fee for participating in the course. Students attending the class should be registered in PhD programs.