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This paper reports empirical results on the definition and diffusion of expert systems (ESs). The findings are based on a questionnaire that was sent to Belgian external audit firms in June 1993. Audit firms were chosen as the questionnaire's target group because another part of the survey was aimed at gathering information concerning the audit of ESs. The definition section deals with the importance of several ES characteristics as seen by the sample of practitioners. Results are compared with opinions from theoretical literature and reveal significant differences. The section on diffusion of ESs is intended to provide an indication of the extent of development and usage of ESs in todays business life. On the basis of the sample of audit firms that reported on their auditees' situations, diffusion rates are rather low. Each of these sections is introduced by a short literature review. As both sections are largely based on the results of a survey, relevant details are included in the first section.

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The belief-function representation of statistical evidence has always been a problematic issue. This problem is of particular importance to auditing because it is an application domain that fits the belief-function framework very well, but that is also confronted with the frequent use of statistical evidence as well as nonstatistical evidence. Hence, there is a need for methods to represent statistical evidence as belief functions to combine them with belief functions from other evidence types and to obtain belief in final conclusions. This paper proposes such a method designed for application in an auditing context, although it can be useful in other contexts as well. The explanation of this method, as well as the comparison of its properties with those of other existing methods is the subject of this paper. ᮊ