Abstract Recent research has examined user understanding of various types of auditor reports. Generally, this research has found a high level of agreement among sophisticated users (bankers) and auditors from Big 8 CPA firms on the intended message of an unqualified audit report. However, there appears to be less agreement on the messages contained in limited assurance reports. Our research extends previous studies by examining the agreement on messages contained in nine types of reports, including compilations and reviews, across a more diverse group of CPAs and bankers than those examined in prior studies. Multidimensional scaling and factor analysis were utilized to analyze similarity ratings and adjective phrases describing various audit reports. Our results indicate some differences between bankers and CPA perceptions of the reports. The differences appear to be associated with the size of the bank and CPA firm of the subjects.
Nair et al. (Tue,) studied this question.