Twenty-Five-Year Overview of Experimental Auditing Research: Trends and Links to Audit Quality

ABSTRACT
We examine 468 experimental auditing research papers that were published in ten leading accounting and auditing journals from 1991–2015 to address three key issues. First, we consider the trends in experimental auditing research and find that while the total number of papers published in the leading journals has expanded, the percentage of experimental auditing papers has decreased substantially. Second, in order to support evidence-based standard-setting and regulation, and to identify the audit quality issues that have been addressed, we map this research to the IAASB Framework for Audit Quality. We find that the majority of studies have concentrated on the processing stage of the Framework and at both the engagement and firm levels. Third, breaking our period of study into five five-year blocks, we observe a significant evolution in experimental research over the 25 years of our study, as evidenced by trends in the topics examined, types of participants used, and data collection approaches used.