Abstract The auditor's analytical review has recently been the focus of numerous articles and discussions, yet little knowledge is available on the practice of analytical reviews. This study reports the results of a survey administered to 127 auditors from a large metropolitan area. The purpose of the survey was to obtain some insight about auditors' experience with analytical reviews. The findings indicated that a large percentage of auditors used judgmental procedures such as scanning the data and standard ratio analysis in analytical reviews. The more quantitative procedures (e.g., regression analysis and time series modeling) were used by a small percentage of auditors, and those who had used them tended to be the least experienced auditors. The findings also support prior research indicating the significance of analytical reviews in detecting financial statement errors. Finally, a number of implications for both practice and research are discussed.
Biggs et al. (Thu,) studied this question.