Students enrolled in undergraduate and graduate auditing courses at
three universities selected the nonfraud competitors and collected NFM
data for our sample of fraud firms. Emulating audit practice, we asked the
students to assume the role of staff assistant, with each student assigned to a
different auditee (i.e., fraud firm). They were informed that their audit task
involved NFM collection for the client and a competitor of their choice. The
students were also told the current fiscal year-end under audit (initial fraud
year) and the prior fiscal year-end (pre-fraud year). The students were not aware of the study’s hypotheses, they did not collect revenue data, and they
were not evaluated on whether the data was consistent with the hypotheses.
They were evaluated solely on their ability to collect NFM data.