Accounting Students' Sensitivity to Attributes of Information Integrity

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study investigates how students incorporate information integrity impairments into judgments and judgment confidence. The effects of four information integrity attributes (completeness, currency, accuracy, and authorization) were examined. Our results show that accounting students incorporate some information integrity attributes into their judgments and judgment confidence. As the severity of the integrity impairments increased, accounting students assigned more weight to information integrity impairments in judging the performance of division managers. We find that accounting students' judgments are incorrectly influenced by information integrity. Performance judgments were positively correlated with the level of information integrity as if the accounting students were rewarding or penalizing managers for the integrity of the information. Our results indicate that as information integrity impairments increase, students are more interested in postponing their judgments to seek additional information. Given the importance of information integrity in the accounting profession, it is critical that accounting students develop the ability to appropriately consider information integrity impairments when making judgments. The results of this study are important to accounting instructors that teach information integrity issues in their courses.