EXTERNAL AUDIT

Effectiveness and the Quality of External Audits in UK and Nigerian Financial Reporting

Chapter No. 4 Analysis and Discussion

Analysis

The data has been collected from the employees and members of audit committees, through the interviews. Data was collected on-site across different days of the week and at different hours of the day. While interviews and distribution of questionnaires to the UK companies were on a face-to-face basis, for Nigeria, questionnaires were distributed via email and interviews conducted over the phone. A random sampling method was used for the external auditors and audit committee members in this study. Randomization in this case came from conducting research at different times of the day and on different days of the week. These strategies resulted in more diverse data. However, a good portion of the survey instrument is qualitative.

Analysis Technique

Both qualitative and quantitative analysis techniques were used. Qualitative data was analyzed using the Content Analysis technique while Quantitative data was analyzed using the SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences). Different statistical operations were applied on the data set suck as (Chi-Square test, Cross Tabs and Descriptives) to find out the effectiveness and the quality of external audits in UK and Nigerian financial reporting.

Descriptive Statistics

Descriptive statistics are commonly encountered, relatively simple, and for the most part easily understood. Most of the statistics encountered in daily life, in newspapers and magazines, in television, radio, and Internet news reports, and so forth, are descriptive in nature rather than inferential. Compared with the logic of inferential statistics, most descriptive statistics are somewhat intuitive. We have applied the descriptive on the demographics part our survey which is represented by Section A in the questionnaire.

The table below shows the descriptive statistics for the variable of gender, the results in the table shows that 58% of the respondents of the survey were male.

Gender

Frequency

Percent

Valid Percent

Cumulative Percent

Valid

Female

42

42.0

42.0

42.0

Male

58

58.0

58.0

100.0

Total

100

100.0

100.0

To find out the overall picture of the age group, we would consider the table below. This table shows the age group of the survey's respondents, it can be seen from the results that 29% of the total respondents belong to the age group of 31-40, this means that majority of the respondents have enough maturity level to tactfully complete the given questionnaire.

AgeGroup

Frequency

Percent

Valid Percent

Cumulative Percent

Valid

20 - 30

18

18.0

18.0

18.0

31 - 40

29

29.0

29.0

47.0

41 - 50

19

19.0

19.0

66.0

51 - 60

16

16.0

16.0

82.0

60 & above

18

18.0

18.0

100.0

Total

100

100.0

100.0

The results shows that all the other age groups are approximately evenly distributed, which shows that the data collected from the survey is normally distributed. Descriptive statistical methods are also foundational in the sense that inferential methods are conceptually dependent on them and use them as their building blocks. One must, for example, understand the concept of variance before learning how analysis of variance or t tests are used for statistical inference.

HowLong

Frequency

Percent

Valid Percent

Cumulative Percent

Valid

Less than a year

16

16.0

16.0

16.0

1- 2 years

28

28.0

28.0

44.0

3-5 years

24

24.0

24.0

68.0

5-10 years

16

16.0

16.0

84.0

More than 10 years

16

16.0

16.0

100.0

Total

100

100.0

100.0

The table above shows how long an individual has served his/her organization, it can be seen that 28% of the total respondents have served for 1-2 years in their respective organizations. While cumulatively 32% of the total respondents ...