95 AUDITING: A JOURNAL OF PRACTICE & THEORY American Accounting Association Vol. 28, No. 1 DOI: 10.2308 / aud.2009.28.1.95 May 2009 pp. 95–111 The Effects of Audit Review Format on Review Team Judgments Christopher P. Agoglia, Richard C. Hatfield, and Joseph F. Brazel SUMMARY: The promulgation of standards (e.g., PCAOB 2004b; IFAC 2008b) high- lights the importance of workpaper documentation quality and its influence on audit quality. Our study matches audit workpaper preparers with reviewers to examine how alternative workpaper review methods affect sequential audit review team judgments through their impact on preparer workpaper documentation. While reviewers maintain the option of reviewing workpapers on site (‘‘face-to-face review’’), they can now also perform their reviews electronically from remote locations (‘‘electronic review’’) because of technological advancements such as email and electronic workpapers. Recent re- search has found that review mode can affect the judgments of auditors preparing the workpapers. Our study extends the literature by examining the extent to which review mode (electronic versus face-to-face) affects the quality of documentation in the work- papers and whether reviewers are able to discern and compensate for these docu- mentation quality issues. Our results indicate that reviewers’ judgments are ultimately affected by the form of review expected by their preparer. We test two alternative mediation models to provide insight into why the review format affects reviewer judg- ment quality. Mediation analyses suggest that the effect of review mode on reviewer judgments is mediated by a documentation quality assessment gap. Specifically, with electronic review, reviewers’ burden to recognize and compensate for lower-quality documentation was generally greater, often resulting in lower-quality reviewer judg- ments than when the mode of review was face-to-face. These results suggest that the effect of review mode can persist to the reviewer’s judgment through its influence on preparer workpaper documentation and the resulting documentation quality assess- ment gap. Keywords: documentation; review process; judgment quality; electronic review; face- to-face review. Christopher P. Agoglia is an Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Richard C. Hatfield is an Associate Professor at The University of Alabama, and Joseph F. Brazel is an Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University. We thank Brian Daugherty, Michael Favere-Marchesi, Michael Grayson, Diane Matson, Steve Salterio, Ken Trotman, Rick Tubbs, two anonymous reviewers, and workshop participants at the 2005 International Symposium on Audit Research, 2006 AAA Auditing Section Midyear Meeting, and 2006 AAA Annual Meeting for their helpful comments. Professor Agoglia thanks Drexel University for financial support. We appreciate the support of the audit professionals who participated in this study. Editor’s note: Accepted by Ken Trotman. Submitted: November 2006 Accepted: September 2008 Published Online: May 2009