the threshold between"remote" and"reasonably possible."

Chesley(1986) conducted two experiments with accounting students to address several questions related to the interpretation of uncertainty expressions. Consistent with results in the psychology literature, he found a low degree of group consistency for most expressions and a lack of symmetry in complementary words.

Reimers(1992) conducted an inter-group study to determine whether samples of auditors, engineering managers, marketing managers, and graduate students interpret 30 uncertainty expressions, including those of SFAS 5, in the same way. She found that many of the expressions were interpreted as synonyms. She also found that the range of probability covered by the three expressions in SFAS 5 indicates a range of uncertainty between“remote” and “reasonably possible” not covered by those expressions. Using both practicing accountants and accounting students, Davidson(1989) found similar results and he concluded that the SFAS 5 set of probability expressions is not optimal. He suggested that“reasonably possible,” which is perceived as quite similar to“probable,” should be replaced with a term such as“sometimes” that might better convey a level of probability that is closer to the midpoint between“remote” and “probable.”

Amer, Hackenbrack, and Nelson(1994) asked auditing managers to provide numerical interpretations of 23 uncertainty phrases placed in an auditing context. They also found that multiple phrases have similar numerical interpretations. Similar mean results were obtained for six phrases common with Reimers, even though her study was not in context. Amer, Hackenbrack, and Nelson(1994) also found that the inter-subject variability inherent in

assigning probability to uncertainty expressions decreased when moving from phrases that