Proceedings

measurements and, for fair value measurements using significant unobservable inputs
(Level 3), the effect of the measurements on profit or loss or other comprehensive
income for the period.
2. HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPMENT
2.1. Research Design
The main objective of the research is the analysis of the extent to which new adopted
accounting values, and especially the fair value, answer to the need of informational
for users that do not only want to know what were the results for the previous
financial period, but they’d like to be able to anticipate future trends based on
information released by the financial statements. Alternatively, we analyzed and tried
to group and summarize the main criticisms or proposals developed by the IASB
improvements project and we tried to determine whether the responses analyzed in
homogeneous classes of respondents are consistent. Our assumptions were that
respondents (by category) will identify the same problems and propose the same
changes, but these assumptions have been contradicted in some respects by the
research conducted. We have also tried to draw a conclusion with regards of how fair
value will be accepted after IFRS publishes a standard for measuring it, and to
consider "maturity" as its concept.
2.2. Sample selection
In order to infer the results found after analyzing letters of comments received by
IASB, we used typical methods of descriptive statistics. The population was made up
of letters of comments received by IASB as a result of the questions published by
IASB on its own site (www.ifrs.org or www.iasb.org). Comments came from a
questionnaire containing 13 questions and any interested person could have expressed
their views. Number of individuals in the population (in our case the number of letters
published) was 160. The research was conducted on a sample basis, the number of
individuals in the sample was 100 (i.e. 62.5% of total population) and by that we
made sure that we have selected a sufficient number of responses from all categories
we have previously identified. Thanks to the high population we believe that the
sample is representative for the population and so we can draw conclusions relevant to
this level.
We usually avoided the letters from individuals, noting from past experience that they
do not have full capacity to respond to all issues in the questionnaire (which in
principle we wanted) or they generally tend to agree or disagree with the IASB project
without, however, bringing qualitative arguments for their opinion. In contrast, with
exceptions, are entities famous or at least well known in their category (such as
regulatory bodies, banks and universities) that have been able to justify their
arguments for a response, pro or contrary to the belief of IASB.
Sampling was done by using a stratification method. The population was then divided
into layers and from those layers either all individuals were chosen or we have applied
a controlled selection for that layer. The reasons for choosing this method were as
follows: the investigator knew the population (the letters were numbered and
respondents were identified by name and / or institution, the country they came from
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