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The purpose of this paper is to approach, both theoretically and empirically, public sector reporting at European Union (EU) level. It contributes to the accounting harmonisation literature by revealing the actual status of governmental reporting at the national level.

The paper carried out an exploratory data analysis of the harmonisation of statistical, budgetary and financial reporting at the EU level. A mapping visualisation offers a comprehensive overview of the current state of connections between these reporting systems.

The results reveal the complexity of governments’ reporting systems homogeneity, although all stakeholders recognise the struggle for the principles of performance and transparency in the public sector. Thus, these are following the EU Commission’s study, which concludes that there is significant heterogeneity in the accounting and reporting practices applied transversely throughout all Member States.

The relevance of the study is comprehensive, from the economic environment to the practitioners, from the international regulatory bodies to the national ones, all can assess and quantify the significance of the past, present and future changes, considering their needs. The limitations of the research regard the documentation background because uniformly accessing some information presented by the EU Member States is relatively tricky. Future research might focus on the effects of these changes as they occur.

The study contributes to the scientific literature in the public sector through a comprehensive, well-supported and statistically grounded analysis performed at EU level, able to provide reliable results and to support valuable future recommendations towards harmonised reporting. Moreover, it supports and encourages all national and international efforts for improving the comparability of financial, budgetary and aggregated statistical reports.

The purpose of this study was to review research published by Journal of Educational Administration (JEA) and the Educational Administration Quarterly (EAQ) over the past ten years to examine the type of research reported and to determine if confidence intervals and effect sizes were being reported as recommended by the American Psychological Association (APA) Publication Manual.

The authors examined 95 volumes of the identified journals over the most recent ten‐year timeframe. Each empirical study was coded for decisions made during the analysis and information reported. A total of 473 journal articles were examined and included in the study. Descriptive measures were employed to provide insight into the use and frequency of reported confidence intervals, effect sizes, and the type of research that is currently published.

The results indicated that effect size was being reported in the majority of quantitative studies with limited interpretation. In contrast, no quantitative study examined over the ten‐year timeframe reported confidence intervals despite the recommendations of the APA Task Force on Statistical Inference and guidelines outlined in the most recent edition of the APA Publication Manual. Recommendations for statistical reform in reporting quantitative results in the JEA and EAQ are presented and future direction is discussed.

This paper is valuable for researchers wanting to place their findings in the proper context. By not reporting confidence intervals and effect size information, one does not know the true meaning of their results.

Among the gold standards in human resource development (HRD) research are studies that test theoretically developed hypotheses and use experimental designs. A somewhat typical experimental design would involve collecting pretest and posttest data on individuals assigned to a control or experimental group. Data from such a design that considered if training made a difference in knowledge, skills or attitudes, for example, could help advance practice. Using simulated datasets, situated in the example of a scenario-planning intervention, this paper aims to show that choosing a data analysis path that does not consider the associated assumptions can misrepresent findings and resulting conclusions. A review of HRD articles in a select set of journals indicated that some researchers reporting on pretest-posttest designs with two groups were not reporting associated statistical assumptions and reported results from repeated-measures analysis of variance that are considered of minimal utility.

Using heuristic datasets, situated in the example of a scenario-planning intervention, this paper will show that choosing a data analysis path that does not consider the associated assumptions can misrepresent findings and resulting conclusions. Journals in the HRD field that conducted pretest-posttest control group designs were coded.

The authors' illustrations provide evidence for the importance of testing assumptions and the need for researchers to consider alternate analyses when assumptions fail, particularly the homogeneity of regression slopes assumption.

This paper provides guidance to researchers faced with analyzing data from a pretest-posttest control group experimental design, so that they may select the most parsimonious solution that honors the ecological validity of the data.

This paper considers the accounting and accountability practices of the UK government’s response to COVID-19 for England, focussing on the first wave of the pandemic in 2020.

Based on a close reading of the news media and official reports from government departments, Parliament select committees and the National Audit Office, among others, this paper frames the UK government's uses of accounting and accountability in its response to COVID-19. This is by using the categories of “apparatuses of security”, Foucault's schematic of government for economising on the uses of state power.

The paper shows that an important role for accounting is in the process of enabling the government to gauge the extent of the crisis and produce calculations to underpin its response, what Foucault called “normalisation”. This role was unlike statistics and economics. The government relied most on monthly statistical reporting and budgeting flexibilities. By contrast, the multi-year Spending Review and financial reporting were not timely enough. That said, financial reporting fed into financial sustainability projections and enabled audit that could provide potential accountability regarding regularity, probity, value for money and fairness. The authors’ findings suggest that, conceptually, accountability should be added to the object–subject element of Foucault's apparatuses of security because of its significance for governments' ability to pursue crisis objectives that require popular assent.

In view of the ongoing uncertainty, with the crisis extending over longer budget and financial reporting periods, a Spending Review is becoming ever more necessary for better planning, without limiting, however, the budget flexibilities that have proven so useful for rapid government responses. Moreover, the government should continue its accounting reforms post COVID-19 so that improved accountability and audit can contribute to enhanced future financial resilience.

This is the first paper to apply Foucault's notion of apparatuses of security to an analysis of government accounting and accountability practices.

Aims to examine financial risk management. The UK valuation profession has been criticised for inconsistencies and failures to reflect risk and uncertainty in certain valuation assignments such as the pricing of urban regeneration land. Also the Investment Property Forum/Investment Property Databank specifically concluded that a new approach is needed which combines conventional analysis of returns uncertainty with a more comprehensive survey of business risks. This debate has been brought into sharper focus by the publication of the Carsberg Report, which emphasised the need for more acceptable methods of expressing uncertainty, particularly when pricing in thin markets.

The paper commences with an examination of risk analysis within investment decision making and the property industry, drawing on the findings of the most recent literature that assesses the utilisation of risk management approaches.

Financial risk management is examined and the workings of the D&B credit rating model illustrated. The paper explains the decision‐making framework within which the property risk score is applied.

The aim of this paper is to present an alternative paradigm for the reporting of risk based on techniques utilised within business applications. In particular it applies a standard credit‐rating technique, based on the D&B model, to report the level of risk within property pricing – property risk scoring (PRS).

Librarians have been involved in collecting and disseminating statistics for many years. Utilizing statistics to describe and assess the operation of library activities as a part of library tradition has received growing attention from researchers, policymakers, library managers, and professionals. However, few studies have investigated how statistics are used in libraries. This report compares directors’ uses of statistics provided by national agencies in the USA and China to highlight differences and similarities of the uses the two countries’ directors make of statistics and the statistical information that directors find particular useful. The results are intended to provide library administrators with an insight of how library statistics are used in the managerial process and may also help the national statistical providers to obtain an understanding of the characteristics and pattern of use of their products.

Librarians have been involved in collecting and disseminating statistics for many years. Utilising statistics to describe and assess the operation of library activities as a part of library tradition has received growing attention from researchers, policymakers, library managers, and professionals. However, few studies have investigated how statistics are used in libraries. This report compares directors’ uses of statistics provided by national agencies in the USA and China to highlight the differences and similarities between the ways in which the two groups of directors make use of statistics, and the statistical information that directors find particularly useful. The results are intended to provide library administrators with an insight of how library statistics are used in the managerial process, and may also help the national statistical providers to obtain an understanding of the characteristics and pattern of use of their products.

This paper aims to examine the extent of mandatory non-financial information disclosed by Spanish state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and barriers to and/or drivers of such disclosures.

To accomplish this task, three data sources were used. To study the extent of non-financial information disclosed and the influence exerted by some variables of such disclosures, the authors performed a content analysis of website disclosures of all Spanish SOEs identified by the General Intervention Board of the State Administration. Likewise, reports published by such companies on their web pages were also examined. To investigate the barriers to the disclosure of non-financial information by Spanish SOEs, the data were collected through interviews with key personnel.

Results showed that the disclosure of mandatory non-financial information by Spanish SOEs is lagging behind when compared to private companies. The key personnel revealed different reasons for the low level of disclosures such as the lack of an accountability awareness in Spain. The institutional size was the variable that most significantly affects the disclosure of mandatory non-financial information by Spanish SOEs.

The main contribution of this research was to examine the influence of some variables on the amount of mandatory non-financial information disclosed by Spanish SOEs. Previous studies have been focused on exploring the level of non-financial information disclosed voluntarily by these companies.

Within the last decade many projects have been implemented in order to provide technical assistance (TA) to countries, which have initiated their transition from centrally planned to market economies (mainly countries of Central and Eastern Europe being previously under the Soviet regime). The monitoring and evaluation exercise aims at assisting these TA projects in achieving their objectives, by providing management information on the projects’ implementation, so that structured management decisions can be taken, if and when needed. In this framework, the necessity for creation of an overall M&E database system emerged. The IMES was developed for the needs of the European commission (DGLA) and its main objective was to improve the Management Reporting on Tacis progress and results, by extracting relevant information on projects’ performance from the monitoring and evaluation reports and by producing overall statistics at NIS (New Independent States) level.

For decades, standards on library statistics have provided a solid knowledge base for collecting, reporting and comparing statistical data and therefore been widely respected by libraries nation‐ and world‐wide as an extremely useful and important framework. As electronic resources have established their place besides traditional media, the statistics of library collections and their use have become increasingly complex, partially incomplete and even inconsistent. In this environment, many libraries are facing difficulties in collecting and making use of the data for management decisions and planning. By analysing the environment and its practical, formal and technical obstructions, this contribution tries to identify issues and perspectives for future standardization of library statistics.