INTERNAL AUDIT—THE POOR RELATION OF THE PUBLIC SERVICE*

In considering the Public Accounts Committee in relation to internal audit, it should be stated that the duties imposed on the Committee by the Public Accounts Committee Act require it to examine the accounts of the receipts and expenditure of the Commonwealth Government and each statement and report transmitted to the Parliament by the Auditor-General. Inherent in the Committee's functions therefore is a strong association with the audit function.     

The Limits of the Preponderance of the Evidence Standard: Justifiably Naked Statistical Evidence and Multiple Causation

The preponderance-of-the-evidence standard usually is understood to mean that the plaintiff must show that the probability that the defendant is in fact liable exceeds 1/2. Several commentators and at least one court have suggested that in some situations it may be preferable to make each defendant pay plaintiff's damages discounted by the probability that the defendant in question is in fact liable. This article analyzes these and other decision rules from the standpoint of statistical decision theory. It argues that in most cases involving only one potential defendant, the conventional interpretation of the preponderance standard is appropriate, but it notes an important exception. The article also considers cases involving many defendants, only one of whom could have caused the injury to plaintiff. It argues that ordinarily the single defendant most likely to have been responsible should be liable for all the damages, even when the probability associated with this defendant is less than 1/2. At the same time, it identifies certain multiple-defendant cases in which the rule that weights each defendant's damages by the probability of that defendant's liability should apply.     

Cognitive information levels,voter preferences,and local partisan political activity: A field experimental study on the effects of timing and order of message presentation

This article is based upon a factorial design field experiment conducted during the 1980 election campaign. The experiment was conducted to assess whether there is an optimal message strategy available to local party workers in their efforts to inform and persuade voters. The study assesses whether the timing of communications, i.e., near or distant to election day, and the order of message presentation, i.e., whether presenting important information early or late in a communication, have any effects upon voters' information levels and electoral decisions. The analysis supports an interpretation of recency effects, i.e., information presented last in a partisan appeal was more likely to facilitate information and persuasion effects than information positioned first. However, this finding was conditioned upon the timing of message presentation with appeals referencing familiar partisan material only effective near to election day and appeals referencing less familiar and nonpartisan material only effective further from election day.