Data on selfـــefficacy  and its sources during the COVID-19 crisis:  A Saudi auditor’s perspective

Introduction

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a health pandemic that disrupts the lives of humans and corporate businesses. Hay, Shires, and Dyk (2021) advocate that the COVID-19 crisis is more likely to affect the auditing profession. In this crisis, auditors were put in an unprecedented situation to deliver their audit activities, as they used to carry out most audit activities in the present, which became impossible during the pandemic due to social distancing and homestay requirements (Baatwah & Al-Ansi, 2022). Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic requires audit firms across the world to revise their assessment of material misstatement risks (Al-Qadasi, Baatwah, & Omer, 2023). According to the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) and the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), the COVID-19 pandemic has introduced new risks of material misstatements that require auditors to redesign their audit approaches and execute extensive efforts to reduce these risks (IAASB, 2020; FRC, 2020). Audit practitioners have also acknowledged several difficulties in conducting audit activities during the COVID-19 pandemic (PwC, 2020; KPMG, 2020).

Although the COVID-19 crisis raised concerns about the quality of audits and increased the risk of material misstatement, there have not been many studies addressing how accounting scholars have collectively contributed to our understanding of the challenges created by the COVID-19 (Mgammal, Al-Matari, & Bardai, 2022; Rinaldi, 2022). This article describes the status of external auditors during the COVID-19 pandemic in Saudi Arabia. In particular, this data article elaborates on auditors’ self-efficacy during COVID-19 and its traditional sources, and the degree of proficiency in using virtual audits for Saudi auditors. The accounting and audit profession in Saudi Arabia has recently witnessed considerable development in regulatory frameworks and practices. For example, international accounting standards and international audit standards are references for firms and auditors to practice auditing and accounting activities. It also formulated an independent regulatory body, SCOPA, to develop and monitor auditing accounting practices in Saudi Arabia. However, similar to auditors in other countries, Saudi auditors experienced anomalies in conducting audit activities during the pandemic. Thus, several groups, such as regulators, those using financial data, policymakers, and researchers, may be more interested in this dataset.

Methods

Due to COVID-19, several individuals and corporate businesses have experienced difficulties in conducting their activities as they did prior to the crisis. Auditors are professional audit service providers that face greater challenges in conducting their audit activities (Mgammal & Al-Matari, 2021; Baatwah & Al-Ansi, 2022; Rinaldi, 2022). These challenges have raised doubts regarding the ability of professional providers to deliver high-quality services (Arnold, 2020). Thus, this dataset can be used to assess the status and factors that most likely help auditors overcome the challenges of COVID-19. We surveyed external auditors from Saudi Arabia to assess four constructs related to auditors’ perceptions of the sources of self-efficacy, self-efficacy during COVID-19, and virtual audit proficiency.

We identified all registered Saudi auditors as our population framework. SOCPA, the accounting and audit profession regulatory body in Saudi Arabia, provides a list of registered auditors and their information. As of April 2021, the list of registered auditors includes 25 audit firms/offices associated with 417 auditors, including audit partners and audit managers. Thus, all registered Saudi auditors were our population in this study, and they all had the chance to participate in this study. Specifically, the questionnaire targeted 417 registered auditors of 25 audit firms or offices with SOCPA as of April 2021. The online questionnaire was shared by email with all registered firms requesting each firm or office to distribute the questionnaire to all auditors. To increase the number of participants, we emailed audit firms and offices with two gentle reminders. Between April and August 2021, researchers gathered data from 193 auditors in Saudi Arabia, comprising 46% of the entire population. We assigned two researchers to review all responses for incompleteness and for inappropriateness of answers. This review concluded that 193 responses were usable for analysis. Furthermore, the researchers verified the potential non-response bias issue by comparing the responses received in April with those received in August. Using a two-tailed t-test, the researchers found no variation in the responses across the two groups, suggesting the absence of this issue.

In designing the questionnaire, we extensively reviewed the related prior research. For example, we used the social cognitive theory developed by Bandura [4] and adapted items from education studies (e.g. Usher & Pajares, 2009; Peura et al., 2021; Zhang, Zhu, & Su, 2023) to develop items related to self-efficacy and its traditional sources because studies on self-efficacy in the context of auditing are limited (Mohd Sanusi, Iskandar, Monroe, & Saleh, 2018). Furthermore, we referred to Teeter et al.’s (2010) analytical framework to create items on virtual audit proficiency. Given that the questionnaire items are used in prior literature from other domains, the adaption of these items involves wording modifications to fit the auditing context. However, the adaptation of these items was shared with professors and experienced audit partners.

Drawing on existing literature, we identified eight key items to explore auditor self-efficacy during COVID-19. These items are measured using eight statements on a five-point Likert scale ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” Similarly, we adapted existing measures for the four factors that influence self-efficacy: mastery experiences (3 items), verbal and social persuasion (4 items), vicarious experiences (3 items), and physiological and emotional states (3 items). These items also used a five-point Likert scale, ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” In addition, we developed six new statements to assess how well auditors can use advanced technologies in their work (virtual audit proficiency). These items were rated on a five-point Likert scale ranging from “rarely” to “always.” The specific wording of all the items is provided in Tables 2 and 3. As in any survey study, we included a section providing general information or demographic attributes of the respondents. These include the audit firm’s position, age, education, experience, type of affiliated audit firm, and client type. Table 1 presents the respondents’ demographic attributes.

Before sharing the questionnaire with auditors, we took several steps to improve our instrument’s readability, validity, and reliability. First, the questionnaire was shared with four audit professors, four audit partners, and two senior auditors to measure the reliability and readability of the content. Based on these comments and suggestions, we amended the questionnaire. Second, given that the first draft of the questionnaire was in English, in consultation with experts, we translated the questionnaire into Arabic, as this is the native language of most auditors in Saudi Arabia. Finally, we filled out all questionnaire items in a Google Form and created a Google Form link to be shared with auditors because social distance restrictions and the preferences of individuals communicating remotely were common at the time of developing this questionnaire. Furthermore, using a Google Form link is a common method for collecting data in survey-based studies as it is associated with less effort and fewer errors. Thus, all 25 registered audit firms in Saudi Arabia received an online questionnaire via email using contact information obtained from the SOCPA website.¹

Credit author statement

Baatwah, Saeed were responsible for the research methodology, data curation, and writing the results and discussion sections. Al-Ansi, Ali contributed to the initial draft, and provided review and editing support. Mgammal, Mahfoudh Hussein played a key role in conceptualizing the research, conducting the investigation, and editing the final manuscript.