An International Meeting of the American Accounting Association American Accounting Association 2006 Annual Meeting August 6–9, 2006 Washington, D.C.

James L. Bierstaker
Villanova University

Richard G. Brody
University of South Florida St. Petersburg

Carl Pacini
Florida Gulf Coast University

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to examine accountants’ use of fraud prevention and detection methods and their perceptions regarding the effectiveness of these methods. The results indicate that firewalls, virus and password protection, and internal control review and improvement are quite commonly used to combat fraud. However, discovery sampling, data mining, forensic accountants, and digital analysis software are not often used, despite receiving high ratings of effectiveness. In particular, organizational use of forensic accountants and digital analysis were the least often used of any anti-fraud method but had the highest mean effectiveness ratings. The lack of use of these highly effective methods may be driven by lack of firm resources.

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