EXPLORING DIFFERENT MEASUREMENT CHOICES IN FINANCIAL RESTATEMENT RESEARCH

Abstract

This paper presents an integrated pedagogical approach for a doctoral research seminar that focuses on operationalizing measurement choices, with particular emphasis on the likelihood of financial restatement as a proxy for audit quality. The approach utilizes a guided replication exercise to help students understand the importance of measurement operationalization choices and the need for clarity in scholarly writing. The exercise involves students reviewing and analyzing three research articles with varying restatement measurement approaches. Student teams identify the different approaches and explore the relationship between the research question proposed and the measurement approach employed. Further, the exercise requires students to assess the clarity of writing in these articles and propose guidelines for describing measurement choices in academic writing. The approach reinforces the need for scholars to critically examine these choices as both producers and consumers of published research. The guidelines provided in this paper for choosing the measurement approach that best applies to the research question at hand can be easily adapted to other settings, such as financial, managerial or tax seminars. The intended audience of this paper includes doctoral students of accounting and finance, as well as instructors teaching doctoral research seminars across various disciplines