The Semantic Differential: A Device for Measuring the Interprofessional Communication of Selected Accounting Concepts

Accounting, as a service discipline, should be communicative. The greater the amount of communication between interested parties, the more effective should be any decision making based upon that information, and the better the rapport between parties (which facilitates, but does not insure, effective communication).. Generally, the amount of communication contained in a message is inversely proportional to the scaler distance between sender and receiver meanings for a given message stimulus. This research uses the Semantic Differential (S.D.) techniques to measure the semantic meaning of eight selected important accounting concepts.3 Seven selected professional groups involved in the production and use of accounting data were sampled to obtain information concerning the relative communication among and between groups. The purpose of the study is to determine whether there exists a confounding lack of communication with regard to this set of accounting concepts.