This paper investigates factors associated with audit firm positions on Auditing Standards Board issues during the three-year period ending during 1984. The major finding is that firms with relatively structured audit technologies tend to favor proposed statements while firms with relatively unstructured technologies do not. Audit firm size is not associated with firm position. Also, Big 8 firms favoring proposed statements have lower staff-to-partner ratios and concentrate less in auditing. The staff-to-partner ratio is negatively associated with technology. The results' implications for auditing profession organization studies and auditing and financial reporting research are investigated.

This paper discusses an approach to Introducing empirical accounting research design to Ph.D. Students. The approach includes a framework for evaluating accounting experiments as well as studies based on passive observation of subjects or data. Alternative methods of isolating the effect of the "independent" variable of interest from effects of prior-to-the-study-period variables and contemporaneous variables are discussed along with the advantages and limitations of each method. Also discussed is the relationship between type I and type II error risks, sample size, and research design. The importance of research design, including theory development and means for mitigating the effects of extraneous variables, is emphasized as perhaps the only practical way to achieve research objectives in empirical research 'in accounting.

[This paper discusses an approach to introducing empirical accounting research design to Ph.D. students. The approach includes a framework for evaluating accounting experiments as well as studies based on passive observation of subjects or data. Alternative methods of isolating the effect of the "independent" variable of interest from effects of prior-to-the-study-period variables and contemporaneous variables are discussed along with the advantages and limitations of each method. Also discussed is the relationship between type I and type II error risks, sample size, and research design. The importance of research design, including theory development and means for mitigating the effects of extraneous variables, is emphasized as perhaps the only practical way to achieve research objectives in empirical research in accounting.]