Respondents’ Background RESEARCH OBJECTIVE RESEARCH METHOD 1

1200 Table 1 - Derivation of Sample Size for Accounting Academicians 195 No. List of Public Universities Acctg. No. of Acctg. Sample Program Lecturers 1 Universiti Malaya UM  31 16 2 Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia UKM  40 20 3 Universiti Teknologi Mara UiTM  86 43 4 International Islamic University IIUM  34 17 5 Universiti Putra Malaysia UPM  38 19 6 Universiti Utara Malaysia UUM  126 63 7 Universiti Sains Malaysia USM  9 5 8 Universiti Darul Iman Malaysia UDM  10 5 Total PopulationSample 374 187 The second population for this study is Muslim audit practitioners. The listing of the auditors has been extracted from the list of delegates to the National Accounting Conference NAC 2006 which was held in November 2006. The list of delegates has been published in the website of the Malaysian Institute of Accountants MIA. In addition, the researcher utilize several contact persons of the practical training audit firms listing from Department of Accounting, IIUM, to make up a bigger sample size. Table 2 - Composition of Audit Practitioners Participating in this Study The third population of this study is the members of the Shari‘ah Committee or Shari‘ah Supervisory Board SSB of the Islamic commercial banks ICB and Islamic subsidiaries of commercial banks ISCB in Malaysia. Based on the data published by Bank Negara Malaysia, as in November 2006, there are two Islamic commercial banks and eight Islamic subsidiaries of commercial banks in Malaysia. Since the population is small, the sample size would consist of the entire population. The details of the population group are derived from the websites of respective Islamic commercial banks and Islamic subsidiaries of commercial banks in Malaysia. To obtain a high response rate, since we believe that most of SSB members are not working full time in IFIs and most of them are lecturers in various academic institutions in Malaysia, hence we also mailed the questionnaires to their respective universities. For those who are not known 195 Data presented here was retrieved on November 2006. No Audit Practitioners No. of Respondents 1. Partners 41 2. Principals 3 3. Managers 48 4. Audit Seniors 27 5. Others 7 Total 126 1201 what their permanent job positions are, the researcher then only mail the questionnaires to the respective banks where they are sitting as the members of SSB. Table 3 – PopulationSample Size of Shari’ah Committee Members No. of Shariah Committee Members 1 Bank Islam 7 2 Bank Muamalat 4 3 HSBC Amanah 4 4 CIMB Islamic 5 5 Kuwait Finance House 6 6 RHB Islamic Bank 4 7 Affin Islamic Bank 4 8 AmIslamic Bank 3 9 Hong Leong Islamic Bank 3 10 EONCAP Islamic Bank 5 Total PopulationSample 45 No. ICBISCB 3.3. Questionnaire Design The questionnaire is divided into six sections. The first section, Part A, aims at answering the first research question of the study. The second part of the questionnaire, Part B, intends to gauge the perceptions of the respondents on the appointment of Shari‘ah auditors and their qualification requirements, which is the second research question. Part C of the questionnaire is to address the research question number three which is what should be the scope and the scale of Shari‘ah audit. The last research question of this study on the regulatory framework for Shari‘ah audit is inculcated in the Part D of the questionnaire. Part E of the questionnaire is an open-ended question where the respondents are asked whether they have any suggestion or recommendation pertaining to Shari‘ah audit. Finally, the last section of the questionnaire aims at identifying the demographic background of respondents.

4. FINDINGS ANALYSIS

The responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics from SPSS for Windows version 11. To conduct ―between-groups‖ analysis, this study will utilize Kruskal-Wallis Test, the non-parametric alternative to a one-way between-groups analysis of variance. Pallant 2003 highlighted that this type of non-parametric statistic allows the comparison of the scores on some continuous variables for three or more groups. Based on the Kruskal- Wallis test, if the significant level presented as Asymp. Sig. is a value less than .05 then 1202 it can be concluded that there is a statistically significant difference across the three groups Pallant, 2003. 4.1 Response Rate The questionnaires were mailed to 187 accounting lecturers, 126 audit practitioners, and 45 Shari‘ah committee members of Islamic Commercial Banks and Islamic Subsidiaries of Commercial banks in peninsular Malaysia please refer to the previous section for details of sample derivation. Out of the total of 359 questionnaires distributed, 100 were returned which results in an overall response rate of 28 percent. Of the total questionnaires returned, two questionnaires were intentionally left unanswered by the respondents and only few were incomplete. The incomplete questionnaires were considered usable in this study since the incompletion of certain parts of the questionnaires is regarded as minimal and does not affect the overall analysis. Table 4 provides the summary of the overall response rate for each group of respondents. Table 4 - Response Rate No. Respondents Total Distributed Total Received Total Used Response Rate No No No 1. Accounting lectures 187 52.1 62 62 60 61.2 33.2 2. Auditors 126 35.1 27 27 27 27.6 21.4 3. Shari‘ah Committee 46 12.8 11 11 11 11.2 23.9 Total 359 100 100 100 98 100 27.9

4.2 Demographic Analysis

To identify demographic information of the respondents, the respondents were requested to answer eight basic questions regarding gender, age, jobposition, organization, highest qualification, specialization, professional qualification in accounting, and working experience. Since the information on job position, organization, and specialization are mostly unanswered by the respondents, these three particulars will not be presented in this section. Table 5, 6, and 7 summarize the demographic background of the respondents. From Table 5, it can be seen that in overall, 45.9 percent of the respondents are male and 47.9 percent are female. Based on the group classification, accounting lecturers are however dominated by female respondents, whereby most of the respondents for the auditors and the Shari‘ah scholars are male. In term of the age of the respondents, nearly