Spreadsheet error detection: an empirical examination in the context of Greece

The personal computers era made advanced programming tasks available to end users. Spreadsheet models are one of the most widely used applications that can produce valuable results with minimal training and effort. However, errors contained in most spreadsheets may be catastrophic and difficult to d...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Dimitrios Maditinos, Dimitrios Chatzoudes, Charalampos Tsairidis
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Vilnius Gediminas Technical University 2012-06-01
Series:Business, Management and Education
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mla.vgtu.lt/index.php/BME/article/view/4663
Description
Summary:The personal computers era made advanced programming tasks available to end users. Spreadsheet models are one of the most widely used applications that can produce valuable results with minimal training and effort. However, errors contained in most spreadsheets may be catastrophic and difficult to detect. This study attempts to investigate the influence of experience and spreadsheet presentation on the error finding performance by end users. To reach the target of the study, 216 business and finance students participated in a task of finding errors in a simple free cash flow model. The findings of the study reveal that presentation of the spreadsheet is of major importance as far as the error finding performance is concerned, while experience does not seem to affect students on their performance. Further research proposals and limitations of the study are, moreover, discussed.
ISSN:2029-7491
2029-6169