The readability of international illustration of auditor's report: An advanced reflection on the compromise between normative principles and linguistic requirements/Legibilidad de la ilustracion internacional de los informes de auditoria: una reflexion avanzada sobre el compromiso entre los principios normativos y los requisitos linguisticos.
| Autor | Fakhfakh, Mondher |
| Cargo | Article |
-
Introduction
Independent auditors prepare periodic reports that communicate several audit information. Audit professionals produce texts that summarize the work of control and audit results. Several empirical studies have shown that the reports of the independent financial auditors are not understood by many readers of the financial statements (Barnett & Leoffler, 1979; Hay, 1998 and Fakhfakh, 2013). In addition, accounting research has discussed the problem of expectation gap which results from the misunderstanding of the significance and the direction of the audit opinion formulations. This misunderstanding was empirically confirmed by several studies that underlined the interpretations heterogeneity of the accounting reports by the internal and external stakeholders (Holt & Moizer, 1990; Gonthier, 1996; and Hatherly, Innes, & Brown, 1997).
Readability of audit reports is a language feature that determines the quality of financial information. As a linguistic measure, readability tests the performance of the written information and the effectiveness of instruments of financial communication. Previously, we published an article that focuses on the readability of audit reports in Tunisia. Furthermore the subject of comprehensibility, we analyzed the length of the reports of the independent auditors. The same article shows that the Tunisian audit reports do not comply with the linguistic formulas including readability indexes.
The incompleteness of previous research leads us to perform a more advanced study. The deepening of this study supports the assessment of professional competence and the development of communication skills. The imperfection of previous research leads us to achieve a new empirical investigation. This investigation requires detailed measurement of the length of the audit reports.
Audit quality reporting influences the interpretation of financial statements. The number of audit information is a factor explaining the behavior of users of financial statements (managers, owners, employees, institutional investors, financial institutions, government, general mass and media). Investors reacted with understandable reports (Fakhfakh, 2013). The length of audit reports is a sign of informational relevance.
The length of the auditors' reports can be seen as a characteristic that determines the relevance of the financial audit (Zeghal, 1999). Large reports are considered as a source of information that reassures users of financial statements (Hatherly et al., 1997). Periodically, these users require relevant and reliable audit information. The synthesis of audit information is based on international standards on auditor's report. This standard provides several illustrations that model the report of the independent auditor. Despite standardization efforts, the linguistic quality of the illustrations could be questioned (Fakhfakh, 2014).
Linguistically, the structure of audit reports must comply with the qualitative principles that develop financial reporting. Conceptual frameworks for financial accounting stipulate that the accounting information should refer to the qualitative characteristics of financial statements (such as comparability, objectivity, utility, and understandability). Linguistic analyzers provide several formulas that measure the comprehensibility of audit reports. Such analyzes will be imperfect when structural characteristics will be neglected (length, lexical richness, clarity). The credibility of linguistic analysis enforces the reliability of statistics that summarize the structure and the text size.
Towards the obligations of compliance with auditing standards and language requirements, the independent auditors must optimize the quality of audit reports. This optimization requires the minimization of the informational constraints that hamper performance audit reports. In this article, we analyze the organization of audit reports standardized by the International Federation of Accountants. The detailed study of these reports allows measuring the length of audit information. Such a measure is necessary for the detection of determinants of the incomprehensibility of audit reports.
The organisation of this paper is as follows: after the introduction, there is an overview of conceptual framework for the readability of auditing information. The third section provides an analysis of normative requirements about the wording of the reports of the independent auditors. The fourth section focuses on the linguistic performance of the reports standardised by the International Federation of Accountants. This section describes the methodology and the sample used in the empirical study. The fifth section analyses the importance of compromise between the principles of auditing and linguistic rules. The sixth section discusses the implications of research findings. This section is devoted to drawing the main conclusions.
-
Linguistic framework for the wording of auditor's report
2.1. The linguistic requirements for the structure of auditor's report
With regard to the structural efficiency of audit reports several linguistic norms governing the organization and the formal presentation of the corpus. More specifically, the attention of all analyzers is given to the length of reports and their components (word length, the size of sentences and paragraphs).
The word, as a component of sentences is the core text. The word consists of a sequence of graphic characters which form a semantic unit. The number of characters is a reliable measure of the word length. The classification of words (short words, means words, long words) is influenced by readability statistics that show the average lengths. The word length reflects the degree of difficulty of reading. Beyond 9 letters, words will be judged illegible (Table 1.1).
The number of syllables is also a measure of word length. When the number of syllables is high, the word length will significant. Beyond three syllables, the word is considered complicated. The plurality of syllables reflects the level of complexity of words (Table 1.2). All readability formulas consider the word length. Word size is a variable that affects the comprehensibility of texts and communications performance.
Sentence length is a criterion of readability. It indicates the syntactic and semantic difficulty of the text. Most readability formulas are based on the length of phrases. The length of the phrases that can be measured by number of words can predict the degree of difficulty of reading (Table 1.3).
The texts are more readable when sentences are short. Conversely, a text is more difficult if the sentences are long. In addition, short sentences determine the thematic coherence. According to linguistic research, the length of sentences is considered an index of quality of written texts. Reducing the size of the sentence promotes the quality of information. In order to clarify the text, linguistic rules advocate the inclusion of sentences not exceeding 20 words (Table 1.3).
Personal skills influence the quality and length of sentences. The level of education determines the size and structure of sentences. Besides the length of sentences, several factors favor the comprehensibility of texts (grammatical and lexical cohesion, complexity of vocabulary, syntactic difficulty). According to linguistic principles, the sentence should not include more than 15 words. Clarity of sentences is violated when the number of words is increased.
2.2. The normative readability of auditor's report
Readability is a fundamental characteristic that is always stipulated in writing techniques and theories of communication. This characteristic is a principal component of Text Analyzer Tools. Most texts analyzers display several statistical indicators that measure the readability of documents.
Linguistic literature offers a multitude of definitions for readability and its meanings. These definitions are made by several authors and experts who continuously work on the theme of understandability. According to DuBay (2004), readability is what makes some texts easier to read than others. It is often confused with legibility which concerns typeface and layout. Klare (1963) defines readability as the ease of understanding or comprehension due to the style of writing. This definition focuses on writing style as separate from issues such as content, coherence, and organisation.
In a similar manner, Hargis et al. (1998) state that readability is the ease of reading words and sentences and is an attribute of clarity. McLaughlin (1969) defines readability as the degree to which a given class of people finds certain reading matter compelling and comprehensible. This definition stresses the interaction between the text and a class of readers of known characteristics such as reading skill, prior knowledge, and motivation.
Readability is the ease in which text can be read and understood. It incorporates a set of factors that interact to provide ease of understanding of print (DuBay, 2004). Readability research has resulted in the development of formulas to estimate the relative success of legibility of written messages without requiring the reader to actually read it and be tested.
The first aim of the formulas readability was to develop practical methods to match reading materials with the abilities of students and adults. These efforts centered on making easily applied readability formulas that teachers and librarians could use.
Historically, the first readability formulas were proposed by researchers in reading. These formulas have been developed and used in several areas: education, industry and the military. These measures assist the publication of texts and predict the readability of documents. The linguistic experts have proposed several formulas that measure the ease of reading such as the Flesch Reading Ease (Flesch, 1948). Other researchers have developed formulas to predict the level of...
Para continuar leyendo
Solicita tu pruebaCOPYRIGHT GALE, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
