High School Teachers’ Perceptions and Opinions on Professional Accountants: The Turkey Case

In recent literature on professional accountancy, there have been certain studies that relate to the thoughts and/or perceptions of the public or the community on professional accountants in the different countries. Inspiring from those, it is aimed to find out the perceptions of the high school teachers working in Istanbul on the Turkish Professional Accountants. Teachers, particularly high school teachers have been important factors affecting on high school graduates. Besides being teachers, they have been fathers or mothers, sisters or brothers, leaders or advisors of all students. Having more than hundred years background in practice, the Professional Accounting Law of Turkey is almost seventeen years old. It was one of the main reasons to conduct this study. There have been three main research questions of the study: to determine the thoughts of the teachers on the duties conducted by the Turkish professional accountants, to determine the factors affecting on their thoughts, and to find out whether they have any idea about the differences of the duties conducted by different levels of accounting profession in Turkey. For the objectives of the study, a structured questionnaire was utilized in 2005. Four different groups of questions were asked to the respondents. The format was a type of Likert scale for the measurement of the thoughts and perceptions of the respondents. Responses were analyzed through the SPSS Software Package. Findings of the study are very interesting themselves, and also might be very interesting for particular people to make comparative studies.