Doing Good Field Research: Assessing the Quality of Audit Field Research

Abstract

Field research is increasingly being employed by audit researchers around the world including in North America. However, given that many doctoral programs, especially in North America, devote little or no time to this method, understanding what constitutes good auditing field research is problematic for many editors and reviewers. Hence, the goal of this article is simple: to provide editors and reviewers with a set of guidelines that can be employed to assess the quality of auditing field research as field research, not as an experiment or an archival study. In addition, this article might be helpful to those audit researchers who are teaching themselves field research methods to calibrate their understanding of rigorous and trustworthy field based research methods as well as for doctoral students and accounting departments interested in expanding their scope of course offerings. To achieve this goal we pose and answer ten questions about field research quality illustrating our responses with best practices observed in currently published or forthcoming papers. We also identify various methodological resources that will assist editors, reviewers and authors in developing a greater appreciation for and an ability to evaluate auditing research based on this method.

Keywords: Accounting Research, Auditing research, Corporate Governance, Field research, Field study, Case study, Interpretivism, Positivism, Qualitative methods and methodology

JEL Classification: M4