PERFORMANCE IN AUDITING: THE EFFECT OF THE ACCOUNTING INFORMATION 43 Performance in Auditing: The Effect of the Accounting Information Systems Course

In 1986, the Audit Education Committee of the Audit Section of the world’s foremost accounting scholarly association – the American Accounting Association – concluded that knowledge of business systems was important to the study of auditing but best acquired prior to taking auditing. Although the close relationship between the accounting information systems (AIS) and auditing courses has been recognized, the linkage has not been empirically confirmed. This study examines the relationship between the AIS course and the auditing course. The value of AIS performance in modeling subsequent performance in auditing was tested and confirmed in two different universities having similar curricula but distinctly different student populations. The AIS grade was found to be a highly significant predictor of subsequent performance in the auditing course for students at both universities, even after considering more general determinants of academic performance such as cumulative GPA and selected demographic variables.