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 maps 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.

Key words: Accounting education, word association test, concept maps, misconceptions.