ECOM5005 Business Analytics and Data Visualisation :
Business Analytics and Data Visualisation Business Report – Semester 1, 2023
The Certified Practising Accountant (CPA) Australia carried out a research to investigate the correlation between a company’s internal audit function and its external audit fees. This study is significant in the current era where strong corporate governance practices are emphasized. The aim of this research is to determine how both internal and external auditing work together to ensure the overall financial reporting of a company is reliable. The results of this research will be beneficial for companies and audit firms, as it will reveal whether firms utilize the presence of internal audit to complement their external audit function and strengthen their control/monitoring environment.
The study collected data from 300 exchange-listed companies in Australia for the year 2022, including audit fees paid, firm turnover, and the presence of internal audit function within the company. This data is stored in the file “ECOM5005_BR_2023_s1_data.xls”, containing the following variables.
Column A: Firm ID
- This refers to assigning a unique identification number to each company included in the sample, with the IDs ranging from Firm 1 to Firm 300.
Column B: Audit fees
- This indicates the overall amount paid by the company to their external auditor/s for their auditing service during the fiscal year ending 2022.
Column C: Turnover
- The term “Turnover” relates to the yearly revenue earned by the company and it has been classified into three different categories.
1 = firms with turnover less than $30 million (small businesses).
2 = firms with turnover between $30 million and under $300 million (mid-sized businesses). 3 = firms with turnover more than $500 million (large businesses).
Column D: Internal audit function
- This determines whether a company has its own internal audit function or not Y = the firm has an internal audit function.
N = the firm does not have an internal audit function.
Present a report of your findings (by answering three questions below) to the CPA Australia.
- Do the audit fees vary among the three turnover categories?
- Does the internal audit function of the company relate to its turnover?
- Is there any indication that firms with an internal audit function pay higher audit fees compared to those without it?
DUE DATE
Your ECOM5005 Business Analytics and Data Visualisation report is due on Monday 22 May 2023 at 9am (Perth time).
- There are two components of your business report that need to be submitted: written report and Excel working file. They should be submitted in Blackboard
o The name of your Excel file should be
“YourStudentID_LastName_Excel_workings.xlxs”
- The written report is the Turnitin assignment, designed to prevent plagiarism. Further information about Turnitin can be found on the university website: https://academicintegrity.curtin.edu.au/students/Turnitin_student.cfm
- There should be no assignment coversheet for the written report. You should put your name, student ID and email address in the header of the written report.
- When submit to Blackboard, you should convert your written report to pdf file, and the name of your report should be “YourStudentID_LastName_report.pdf”
- The location of Blackboard submission points for the written report and Excel workings is “Assessments \ Assessments 2: Business Report [40%]”
If business reports are not submitted by the due date,
- a deduction of 5% of the total marks allocated (i.e. 5% of 40 = 2 marks) for the business report will be deducted from the assessment mark if the reports are submitted within the first 24 hours of the due date,
- for each additional 24-hour period, an additional penalty of 10% (i.e. 10% of 40 = 4 marks) of the total marks allocated for the business report will be deducted from the assessment mark, and
- zero mark will be recorded after seven (7) days from the due date.
FUTHER INSTRUCTIONS for Business Analytics
- The report covers hypothesis tests from Module 5 to Module 8. However, Module 4 which contains data collection and sampling should be also discussed in your report.
- The report should have the following structure: Introduction, Statistical Analyses (where you perform hypothesis tests for each of the four questions) and Conclusions (where you summarize the findings and discuss the limitations)
- Your report should also include technique identification and any underlying assumptions required (with checking for the required assumptions).
- Why do you use a particular technique? Consider the types of data – quantitative, qualitative or ranked? How many samples? Are these samples independent?
- What are the underlying assumptions? Have you checked the assumptions?
- Checking for normal distribution will be done by observing the histogram and discuss its shape.
- If the histogram does not show normal distribution for the sample, you keep doing the test with the underlying assumptions, but need to discuss this as one of your limitations in the overall conclusion.
- The parameter of interests and populations must be clearly defined.
- Checking normal distributions by observing histograms
- Histograms are obtained from Excel
- Excel automatically produce the histogram with gap (default at 150%). You need to reduce the gap to 0% (right click to the histogram, then choose Format Data Series, then reduce the Gap Width to 0%)
- Students can see the following video recording for creating a histogram in Excel
https://echo360.net.au/media/b0ab790e-b6af-4383-a770-29f9ca35d0c8/public
- For each of the tests, you need to perform at 3 significance levels (1%, 5% and 10%) and the decision to reject or accept the null hypothesis must refer to all 3 significance levels.
- This is a computing assignment. You are expected to use Excel to perform relevant tests (t-test and F-test). Descriptive statistics are also obtained from Excel.
- In the report, you need to describe the procedure of obtaining relevant tests.
- The results obtained from Excel are presented in the report. The tables must be clear to read. Each test has to be performed for 3 levels of statistical significance (1%, 5% and 10%).
- Do not present 3 tables for each significant level. Please condense all the results in one table only.
- For t-tests, Excel reports the results for one-tailed and two-tailed tests. You need to report only the critical value of one-tailed test or two-tailed test, but not both.
- The following tests are not embedded in Excel: testing for the difference between two proportions, and chi-square test.
- You can use Excel for calculations based on textbook formulae, then find critical values from Appendix A of the textbook.
- The report (including tables, calculations and histograms) must not exceed 12 pages; marks will be deducted for exceeding the limit. Pages must be correctly numbered throughout.
- For each question above, perform separate statistical tests to answer the questions. This assignment should be presented in a professional manner and you need to demonstrate that considerable thought has gone into the analysis of data.
- The marking criteria for each of the question should be as follows:
- Technique identification: why should you use a certain technique?
- Define the populations and parameters of interest
- Checking the conditions of the chosen technique: If a certain condition is not met, you keep doing the test as usual but need to discuss the limitation in the Conclusions part
- Following 6 steps in the hypothesis testing procedure
- Describe the procedure to obtain the relevant tests
- Present Excel results in table
- Clearly mention the test statistic, rejection region
- Decision to reject or accept the null hypothesis must be referred to all 3 significance levels, that is, 1%, 5% and 10%.
Mark Allocation:
- The total marks for the assignment is 40 (account for 25% of your final mark)
- Each question from 1) to 3) is worth 10 marks
- 3 marks for presentation
- Your report should be clear for reading, presented in a good format with separate sections for (original) Introduction, Statistical Analyses and Conclusions.
- Please use the font size 12, Times New Roman, 1.25 line spacing.
- You should put your name, student ID and email address in the header of the written report.
- 3 marks for the Excel workings file.
o The Excel workings file should have a separate tab for each of the three questions
- 4 marks for an overall summary of your results, interpretations and any limitations.
- The summary should be an evaluative response of the results of significant differences found amongst the variables conducted in the tests and any qualifying statements made about the nature of the testing data used.
- Limitations of the tests should be discussed.
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