TESTING THE ROBUSTNESS OF MULTIATTRIBUTE UTILITY THEORY IN AN APPLIED SETTING

Multiattribute utility theory (MAUT) was employed to model the professional judgments of external auditors. Fully developed MAUT models elicited from each subject according to keeney and Raiffa's [6] procedures were used to predict the internal control systems evaluations made by auditor-subjects. Correlation analyses were used to compare the predictive ability of the “correct” MAUT models to the accuracy of models developed under simplifications of the MAUT procedures. One simplified model resulted from relaxing the requirements for attribute independence that determine the functional forms. A second modified MAUT function was formed using unitary weightings on conditional utility functions instead of elicited scaling constants. Tests showed essentially no significant differences in predictive accuracy among the models in the contact of this study.