Introduction
Welcome to the Practice Guide on Sampling Methodology for Performance Audits
The purpose of this Practice Guide is to provide guidance for public sector auditors, both internal and external, on how to use sampling techniques in performance audits1. Specifically, this Practice Guide aims to provide guidance on how to:
- select appropriate sampling approaches and methods
- implement sampling plans
- report results obtained through sampling
While extensive material already exists on the appropriate use of generalizable sampling (also known as probabilistic, representative, or statistical sampling), guidance on purposeful sampling is more limited. This Practice Guide reviews basic concepts and techniques of generalizable sampling useful to performance auditors while exploring various theoretical and practical aspects of purposeful sampling. It takes recent developments in the standardization of purposeful sampling methods from the discipline of program evaluation and applies this knowledge to performance auditing.
Scope of the Practice Guide
This Practice Guide covers the basic concepts, approaches, and methods that auditors should be familiar with to select and apply appropriate sampling methodology in performance audits. For example, it includes discussions of:
- the main types of sampling approaches and methods that can be used in performance audits
- the key factors that affect sampling
- the steps that need to be taken in the planning and examination phases of performance audits to select and apply appropriate sampling approaches and methods
- the limitations and risks of using sampling as an audit procedure
- what to consider when reporting the results obtained from a sample
This Practice Guide is not meant to be a comprehensive textbook on sampling in the context of audits. It does not cover all the intricacies of statistical theory or fully describe all the sampling techniques available, although it has tried to cover the ones useful for performance auditors. Furthermore, it does not cover sampling methods for financial audits in any detail.
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The first part of the Guide provides useful contextual information on the mining sector, including information on:
The second part of the Guide provides guidance on audit methodology that will help auditors to plan and conduct audits of mining revenues or audits of financial assurances for mining site remediation. For each of these two topics, the Guide provides:
The second part of the Guide also includes a short section on the Reporting Phase of the audit process. This section provides guidance on setting the context of the audit and on drafting recommendations. |
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Finally, the Practice Guide includes a Glossary of important terms and a Bibliography for further reading.
Using the Practice Guide
The Practice Guide is a flexible tool to be used within each audit office’s existing processes and procedures, in accordance with auditing and assurance standards. It is therefore a complement to current audit methodology.
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