Measuring Auditors' Reliance on Internal Auditors: A Test of Prior Scales and a New Proposal.

Use of the work and/or personnel of a client's internal audit department in the annual independent audit is commonly termed “reliance.” Reliance in experimental cases is often measured with a simple, ad hoc scale. This study examines whether auditors actually think of reliance activities in terms of a single scale of increasing values. The question is addressed by attempting to create a reliance scale from 52 subjects' paired comparisons of seven reliance scenarios. A consistent scale resulted suggesting the subjects shared a common concept of reliance. The findings supported the use of Likert and interval scales of reliance in previous studies and provide an illustrated scale for future use.