Abstract This paper examines a multiple-criteria, pairwise-weighting method -- the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) -- as an aid in planning the nature and extent of audit procedures. An accounts receivable audit example is examined comparing the procedures of analytic review, confirmations, and test of subsequent collections along three evaluation criteria: reliability, cost, and validity. As a guide for allocating audit resources (time), the AHP would suggest both the ranking and weighting of the procedures based upon the auditor's judgmental input data. This method can also be applied to audit decisions in selecting different audit programs, internal control procedures, statistical sampling techniques, and analytic review techniques. Empirical evidence is needed to compare the AHP along various dimensions to other multiple criteria methods.
Lin et al. (Sat,) studied this question.