Investigating the effect of gender on the relationship between stress and audit quality

Activities such as auditing require judgment that is more influenced by individual values ​​and characteristics. In this regard, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of gender on the relationship between stress and audit quality.

The final sample used for this study included390 questionnaires (332 males, 58 females) collected from members of the Society of Certified Public Accountants. At the descriptive level of data analysis, mean and standard deviation statistics wereanalysis of the data, from the inferential tests of Kolmograph-Smirnov correction in order to check the all-distribution of the two communities or to check the fit of the distribution; Spearman test was analyzed using SPSS25 software to examine the correlation between audit variables and stress in two groups of men and women, as well as linear regression to examine the effect of gender on the relationship between stress and audit quality.

The results of data analysis showed that stress has a decreasing role on audit quality. The results also showed that while there is a significant difference between job stress and audit quality of male and female auditors, the gender adjusting variable also plays a decreasing role on the relationship between job stress and audit quality. In addition, it was found that the negative impact of job stress on women on audit quality is greater than men.

 The results of this study can help identify individual factors affecting the judgment and interpretation of auditors and in addition to developing behavioral accounting literature to explain ways to increase the quality and judgment of the decision.