The Significant Role of Critical Thinking in Predicting Auditing Students' Performance

Abstract

Prior studies establish past academic performance, measured by grade point average (GPA), as a significant determinant of student performance in financial, principles, and intermediate accounting. Findings have been mixed, however, on the influence of gender and age. This study uses multiple regression analysis to assess the importance of the cognitive construct, critical thinking, in addition to the aforementioned factors, in predicting student performance in an upper-division auditing course. The results indicate that students with higher measures of critical thinking skills and past academic performance outperformed other students on both the third exam and a comprehensive final examination in auditing. Gender and age proved insignificant explanators across all auditing examination scores. Only GPA proved significant in predicting performance on the first two course exams.