Conceptual frameworks of university students regarding accounting

Abstract

This paper aims at ascertaining the conceptual frameworks of university students regarding accounting. In
order to fulfil this aim, a word association test was applied to 119 students who had studied accounting before
in Turkey. Ten key concepts (accounting, balance sheet, account, cost, inventory, payable, receivable, profit,
loss, finance) were constructed for the word association test. Frequency tables were formed using the answers
of the students and concept mapsp were drawn according to the values in these tables. On the concept maps it
is observed that the correlations are mostly found between the concepts accounting and account. Furthermore,
it is found that there is a convolute correlation between the concepts of accounting in the form of a network.
Additionally, it is discovered that the students have some misconceptions about accounting. The research
findings demonstrate that word association testing can be used to measure students’ conceptual framework
regarding accounting.