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Saunders, Lewis amd Thornhill: Research Methods for Business Students, 5th edition, Additional Case Studies
reports also suggested that some companies were disclosing that they were releasing their Prelims after the final audit had been completed. Tony and Jim knew that these assumptions could be tested. If it was found that these reports were based on incorrect assumptions, this could significantly undermine the validity of many of the recommendations they were making. They decided to re-examine the data to see if they could find more evidence that is specific about the extent to which Prelims were audited. Although the Prelims contained very little mention of the audit, the associated (and subsequent) full annual report and accounts included the date upon which the audit had been signed off. This represented the end of the audit work. Since they already had the date of the release of the Prelims, they simply had to go back and compare this date with the date the audit report was signed. They found was that the majority (56%) of Prelims had been issued after the audit report had been signed. This appeared to be fairly strong evidence that the assumption the audit of the accounts was incomplete when the majority of Prelims were released was not correct.
Questions
1 a. Identify data sources used by Tony and Jim in this research? b. Which of these are secondary data and which are primary data? c. Give reasons for your answers. 2 a. What other methods (if any) do you think Tony and Jim could have used to obtain the data they needed to test their hypothesis? b. Give reasons for your answer. 3 What were the problems faced by Tony and Jim in using these secondary data? 4 What lessons can you learn from Tony and Jim's experience?