H01. There is no significant difference in the cognitive (factor) structures within which the meaning of “cash” is held between each of the three financial reporting groups.
As previously discussed, shared cognitive structure is a necessary but not sufficient condition for establishing shared connotative meaning (Houghton, 1988). As clarified by Houghton and Messier (1990), there are two component parts to shared meaning in a communications process. First, parties must share the same “cognitive structure” (e.g. perhaps all sharing a three‐dimensional factor structure conforming to the classic EPA structure), and second, all must have similar factor scores on each dimension of their respective cognitive structures (e.g. all parties view cash as being equally positive on the evaluative dimension, all view cash as being equally dynamic on the activity dimension, etc.). For this reason, a second hypothesis is required to provide a basis for determining possible differences in the measured meaning between the three participant groups of the old and new definitions of cash, respectively: