Which of the Following Claims Is Amenable to Attestation? What

Question

Examlex · Accepted Answer

The Answer is a. "Smith Company's total assets grew 13% compared to last year."
i) While this is a fairly clear assertion, the criteria for evaluating the assertion must be objective. Clearly, the independent verifier must have the means to obtain adequate, diagnostic evidence to measure both last year's total assets and the current year's total assets. If the data are available, then this claim is amenable to attestation.
b. "Diet Rite's market share in 2005 increased 46%."
i) The issue here is, first, understanding the assertion and, second, obtaining adequate, diagnostic evidence to verify the assertion. What is Diet Rite's market? Does it include only diet carbonated drinks, or all carbonated drinks, or all diet drinks whether carbonated or not carbonated? Are data on such figures available? What are the measurement criteria? Total sales in dollars or in units? What are the appropriate measurement units (bottles (what size?) or gallons of syrup, for example)? If the measurement criteria are agreed upon and the data are available, then this claim is amenable to attestation.
c. "Pepsi's products are the best soft drinks available."
i) Here, the difficulty is most likely the lack of agreed-upon and objective criteria to measure what is "best." Should taste be measured? Volume of sales? Are opinions objective and verifiable or should only quantitative measures be used? This assertion could be difficult to verify.
d. "My business lunch expenses today were $43.29."
i) Lunch expenses, given appropriate documentation are fairly easy to verify. However, most companies have agreed-upon and objective criteria for reporting and verifying expenses. If the criteria are well designed and employees follow the criteria, then attestation as to the actual expenses can be done. However, in some situations adequate evidence may be difficult to obtain, depending on the quality of the documentation, for example.
e. "The Jones Manufacturing Company is in compliance with all OSHA standards."
i) Given an agreement on objective criteria/standards as well as inspectors who are properly trained, this claim may be amenable to attestation. The difficulty in verification may vary widely, though, given the wide variety of manufacturing companies in both nature and size. Perhaps, the number of trained inspectors is too small to inspect a reasonable number of companies, as well.
f. "Our new drug will provide the best chance for cancer patients."
i) This assertion is difficult to support without scientific testing which may involve human subjects. Of course, this assertion is being made by one party (a company), and its accuracy is of interest to another party (FDA, public, etc.). However, generally quantitative measurement will be desired. Therefore, the verifier must not only have the ability to test the claim but must also know what "best chance" is supposed to mean and what other drugs this drug must be compared to. Without objective criteria, this claim is not particularly amenable to attestation.
g. "Our lotion reduces the appearance of wrinkles due to aging better than competing products."
i) How is the appearance of wrinkles measured?
ii) This assertion may not be amenable to attestation due to the difficulty of identifying a common unit of measure and measurement technology.

Which of the Following Claims Is Amenable to Attestation? What

Definitions: