Formative assessment in accounting education and some initial evidence on its use for instructional sequencing

Formative assessment (FA) provides instructors and students with feedback to improve learning. Across a variety of education settings FA is one of the most effective classroom interventions for improving student learning outcomes. Yet the accounting education literature is almost devoid of any work related to FA. One barrier for developing FA in accounting education is the significant background knowledge needed to implement FA successfully. The purpose of this paper is to provide some of that background. The paper includes conceptual discussion from the general education literature to explain how FA improves learning and discussion of research that has identified features that affect the efficacy of FA practice. One of these features is how instructors use FA data to adjust instruction. An empirical study illustrates that accounting educators can use FA data to inform a decision about instructional sequencing. Instructional sequencing principles have been used to develop new accounting curricula and courses, and accounting education research has used empirical data to inform an instructional sequencing decision. The current study tests, using a sample of introductory accounting students, alternate versions of two FA tasks to determine which version is better for identifying deficiencies in student learning outcomes. Results suggest that one version of each task is better for identifying deficiencies, but an adjustment to instructional sequencing may be needed to ensure efficacy of one of the tasks, depending on how the FA practice is implemented.     

Career concerns for revealing misreporting

Review of Accounting Studies - We examine whether revealing misreporting affects the careers of executives and independent directors. To isolate the effects of revealing misreporting from the...     

Time-on-the-Market as a Sign of Quality

The inferences a prospective home buyer can make about the quality of a house from the amount of time it spends on the market and the seller"s optimal strategy in light of these inferences are investigated. Depending upon the information structure, the seller may have an incentive to post an inordinately high initial price (in order to "dampen" the signal transmitted to future prospective buyers) or an inordinately low initial price (in order to make an early sale and avoid consumer "herding"). It is shown that the sellers of high-quality homes do best when inspection outcomes are publicly recorded and do worst when inspection outcomes are not public and the price history is not observable. Costly inspections create more adverse selection but deter consumer herding.     

Who Initiates Recalls and Who Cares? Evidence from the Automobile Industry

In this paper, we investigate two questions. First, we explore which entity (the NHTSA or the manufacturer) is more likely to initiate a given auto safety recall campaign. Second, we analyze the determinants of owner response rates to safety recalls. Our data spans nineteen years (1980–1998) for the six largest auto manufacturers. We find evidence that the government initiates larger, less hazardous recalls involving older models and financially weak firms. Inexpensive recalls are more likely to be manufacturer initiated. The largest owner repair responses are associated with newsworthy hazardous defects of new domestic vehicles in their inaugural model year.     

Attitudes and recycling: Does the measurement of affect enhance behavioral prediction?

Recent attempts to improve the influence of social marketing have often focused on behavioral strategies, largely neglecting the concept of attitude. This is understandable given the weak performance of attitudinal variables as a predictor in past studies of proenvironmental behavior. However, we suggest that part of the reason for the poor association between attitudes and such behavior is the possibility that many altruistic acts such as recycling are subject to affective influences that may not be fully captured by commonly employed attitude measures. We also suggest that attitude strength might moderate the extent to which affective reactions account for additional variance in behavior. Specifically, it is predicted that affect is more important for weak than for strong attitudes. Empirical results are presented to support these suggestions. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

A driver focused truck crash prediction model

This paper advances a driver focused truck crash prediction model. The model investigates the contribution of driver factors on the number of state reportable crashes in which the driver was involved. The findings suggest that the following factors are significantly related to the likelihood of a crash occurrence: driver age, weight, height, gender, and employment stability as well as previous driver and vehicle violations and past crashes. The results have significance regarding the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration imperative to improve safety.