Audit committee effectiveness and internal audit effectiveness were each measured
with five items modified from Leblanc (2007) (Cronbach’s a ¼ 0.93 and 0.90,
respectively). Tone at the top was measured with five items (Cronbach’s a ¼ 0.92) and
receipt of a qualified audit report with two (Cronbach’s a ¼ 0.84). All of the items in
these four variables were ranked on a Likert scale that ranged from 1 (“strongly
disagree”) to 5 (“strongly agree”). Ethical guidelines/policy was measured on a category
scale of 1 (“adhered to by employees”) and 0 (otherwise). Organization employs auditors
with prior success in fraud detection was also measured on a category scale of 1 (“Yes”)
and 0 (“No”), as was Auditor type (1 ¼ Big4 auditor) (0 ¼ Non-Big4 auditor).The second
part of the questionnaire asked the respondents for basic demographic information.
A number of pre-tests were carried out on the questionnaire, and as the results were
found to be satisfactory, ambiguity was not a concern. Hence, the questionnaire is
considered to have a high degree of content validity (Cavana et al., 2001).