For the mining, oil, and gas industry, there are six companies (67 percent) with high quality of earnings, one company with low quality of earnings, and two companies with questionable measure for the quality of earnings.
For the services industry, there are 15 companies (54 percent) with high quality of earnings, one company with low quality of earnings, and 12 companies (43 percent) their quality of earnings is questionable.
For banks, insurance, and investment industry, there is one company with high quality of earnings, one company with low quality of earnings, and 13 companies (87 percent) with questionable quality of earnings.
For the technology industry, there are four companies (57 percent) with high quality of earnings, and three companies (43 percent) with questionable quality of earnings.
These results suggest that the financial analysts and the government before reaching any conclusion about the quality of earnings for one company, they should have a complete consistency among different measures from different prospective, other wise the quality of earnings needs more investigations and research.
6. Conclusion This research presents an empirical study about the use of different measure of quality of earnings on different industries. The notion is; since there is no agreed-upon definition or technique to measure the quality of earnings, one company or one industry cannot be labeled as having low quality of earnings based on one technique of measurement.
In another words, the company or the industry can be judged as having low or high quality or earnings only if there is consistency among the results of more than one approach or technique for measurement.
This research concludes that the financial analysts and any governmental agency dealing with the company should apply more than one measure for the quality of earning in order to have strong evidence about the level of quality before taking any corrective action or making any decision related to that company. If one company is having low quality of earning according to one technique and high quality of earnings according to another, the stakeholders cannot have a final conclusion about that company and they need more investigations and analysis to assess the quality of earnings.