International Archival Auditing and Assurance Research: Trends, Methodological Issues and Opportunities

We present a comprehensive review of the 130 international archival auditing and assurance research articles that were published in eight leading accounting and auditing journals for 1995-2014. In order to support evidence-based international standard setting and regulation, and to identify what has been learned to date, we map this research to the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board's (IAASB) Framework for Audit Quality. For the areas that have been well researched, we provide a summary of the findings and outline how they can inform standard setters and regulators. We also observe a significant evolution in international archival research over the 20 years of our study, as evidenced by the measures of audit quality, data sources used, and approaches used to address endogeneity concerns. Finally, we identify some challenges in undertaking international archival auditing and assurance research and identify opportunities for future research. Our review is of interest to researchers, practitioners, and standard setters/regulators involved in international auditing and assurance activities.