Statistical Risk Control Strategies Used to Evaluate Substantive Audit Tests

Discusses alternative strategies which may be employed when differences arise between achieved audit‐sampling results and planned results, which means that risk levels used in ex post decision making may be different from planned levels. Contrasts a conventional strategy — which is to fix the risk of incorrect acceptance at a planned level and to ignore the risk of incorrect rejection or to accept the minimum available level of that risk which is consistent, after the fact, with the planned level of risk of incorrect acceptance — with a theoretically appealing strategy which balances both risk levels in proportion to their perceived disutility. Reports on the results of an experiment involving these two strategies, in which all subjects were auditors with statistical audit experience. Suggests that the most important statistically significant finding is that, in certain circumstances, these auditors are more willing to base audit decisions on statistical evidence after the alternative strategy is explained and available for their use.