How Users Actually Use Financial Statements: A New Tool for Research in Experimental Accounting

This thesis presents a new methodology based on directly measuring user behavior and making decisions based on experimental results. I have built and tested a tool which will enable researchers to use the methodology to determine whether particular financial statement presentations are more beneficial than others. The tool records user movement on a computer screen with mouse tracking, which allows researchers to track user behavior in greater detail than ever before. The methodology was tested on a subject pool of non-professional financial analysts and junior professionals, who were presented with a company’s financial data in the current GAAP and a new proposed FASB presentation format. The results show that this methodology could be useful in differentiating between present GAAP and proposed alternatives.