A Meta-Analysis of Studies on Internal Control Judgments
用元分析方法，综合审计师在评估内部控制和确定实质性测试水平方面的研究，检验不同研究间看似矛盾的结果是否只是统计假象。
The level of consensus among auditors in evaluating internal control quality and determining level of substantive testing required has been studied more than any other topic in audit decision making (Ashton [1983] and Libby, Artman, and Willingham [1985]). Most studies in this area have replicated or extended work of Ashton [1974] and Joyce [1976] with purpose of testing generalizability of Ashton study or reconciling Ashton's finding of high mean consensus for internal control evaluations with Joyce's finding of low mean consensus for audithour estimates. Earlier literature reviews in this area concluded that while there was reasonable consensus among auditors on evaluation of internal control, there was little consensus with respect to planning of substantive tests (for example, Joyce and Libby [1982] and Ashton [1982]). However, with benefit of subsequent work by Gaumnitz et al. [1982] and Kaplan [1985], recent reviews suggest that the results are still very tentative (Felix and Niles [1988]). The apparent conflict between different studies has been accompanied by continued calls for further research (Kaplan [1985]). The purpose of this paper is to use meta-analysis to examine possibility that apparently conflicting findings across internal control judgment studies are purely artifactual. Meta-analysis quantitatively