Proceedings

have its place in the repertoire of survey researchers. There shouldn’t be ignored the
advantages of e-mail survey like:
� a shorter response time,
� considerably lower survey cost,
� capability of reaching a large sample of respondents,
� knowledge about whether an e-mail survey has been delivered to the correct email
address, etc.
Shih and Fan (2009) sustain that these unique characteristics of e-mail survey make it
a significant tool for survey researchers in some research situations, in spite of its
inferiority in terms of survey response rate currently shown in the recent literature.
As could be noticed from Table no.3, from the total of our final sample of
respondents, 70,8% were represented by members of Chambers of Financial Auditors
of Romania (CAFR) working on internal auditor position, while 29,2% state they are
working as external auditor. From the final sample, there had been removed the
questionnaires completed by respondents working on other positions like manager,
due to the main objectives of this study – the investigation of auditors’ perception
over the internal audit’s role and good practices.
Analysing their professional experience, as it is presented in Table no.3, over 70% of
our respondents state they have a professional experience on the audit activity over 5
years. We assume that this significant proportion of the respondents with relevant
professional experience could be considered as an important argument in considering
the findings of this survey as a good starting point in developing an integrated
framework of good practices in the context of corporate governance.
The respondents’ position
Table 3. The professional experience of respondents
under 2 years
Professional experience
~ 55 ~
between 2 and 5
years over 5 years Total
Internal auditor 8,3% 12,5% 50,0% 70,8%
External auditor
8,3%
0.0%
20,8% 29,2%
Total 16,7% 12,5% 70,8% 100,0%
(Source: a projection made by the author by using SPSS 16)
For all internal audit practices mentioned above in Table no.1, the purpose of this
study was to investigate the auditors’ perception from the point of view of:
� Their proposal for inclusion into a set of good practices for internal audit
activity. Thus the respondents had the possibility to express their agreement or
disagreement about the proposals of internal audit practices by using Likert
Scale where:
(1) – Strongly disagree;
(2) – Disagree;
(3) – Not sure;
(4) – Agree;
(5) – Strongly agree.