The Construction of a Rule-Based Expert System as a Method for Studying Materiality Judgments.
This paper describes the construction of an expert system for making planning-stage materiality judgments. The purpose of the study was to investigate how various types of qualitative and qualitative information influence those judgments. A rule-based expert system was built as a vehicle for this descriptive research because its use of If-Then rules to represent domain knowledge makes both the role played by various pieces of information and the reason for using that information explicit. The system's judgment model breaks down the materiality judgment process into two separate decisions: (1) a choice of the appropriate base. Examination of the rules used by the system indicates that information about (a) the nature of the client, (b) future plans of the client, and (c) perceptions of the needs of financial statement users influences the choice of a materiality base. Information about the intended use of the financial statements and the nature of the audit engagement affects the selection of the percentage rate.
- DOI
- 10.2308/tar-18791738
- Volume
- 62 (1)
- Pages
- 97-116
- Language
- en
- Export
- BibTeX
- Sources
- openalex crossref