Human Resource Accounting Information: A Reply Concerning Demand Characteristics.
The article presents a reply by the author of an article related to human resource accounting information to the comments made by Professor of accounting, Doug Snowball. According to the author, Snowball's first DC concern is the use of student subjects. He asserts that student subjects often have participated previously in laboratory experiments and, thus, are likely to view them as games in which their task is to determine the true purpose of the experiment. The subjects' knowledge of the experimental purpose then may cause them to give biased responses to contribute to the "success" of the study. The above reasoning is unsound in relation to business laboratory experiments. In the discipline of psychology, student subjects may have had frequent prior exposure to laboratory experiments because of the large number of experiments conducted. Prior exposure to business laboratory experiments is unlikely because relatively few laboratory experiments have been conducted.