Examination of key audit issues with different readability indexes: An application in Borsa İstanbul

The independent audit process consists of a process in which the claims regarding economic activities are evaluated accurately and impartially by the auditors and delivered to all financial information users through the audit report. Auditors prepare the audit report in accordance with administrative regulations such as laws, decrees, regulations and the issues included in the existing auditing standards. In order to keep pace with developing economic conditions, new audit standards may be added to the independent audit standards or published audit standards may be updated. By changing independent auditing standards or publishing new auditing standards, audit quality is increased and the auditing process progresses more smoothly. In order to respond to the new needs of independent auditing, an auditing standard titled "Communication of key audit matters in the independent auditor's report" has been published with the code BDS 701. According to BDS 701, the independent auditor reports the matters that are of most importance in her professional judgment as key audit matters. This study aims to calculate the readability levels of the key audit matters paragraphs in independent audit reports and to determine their effects on the readability levels of independent audit reports by taking into account various variables (such as the auditor's gender, education level, title). For this purpose, data belonging to 562 companies traded on Borsa Istanbul in 2022 were examined by making sectoral distinctions. Readability analysis of paragraphs containing key audit topics were performed with Çetinkaya-Uzun (2010), Ateşman (1997), Flesch (1948) and ARI (1967) readability formulas. With these readability scores, textual expressions were converted into numerical expressions and statistical tests were applied to these scores. As a result of the analysis; the readability levels of the key audit issues paragraphs are higher in Turkish indexes, According to Çetinkaya-Uzun (2010) and ARI (1967) index scores, significant differences were observed between the gender of the auditors and the readability of the CRAs. It has been determined that some variable factors such as sector and auditor title have significant effects on the readability of the CRA.