Students as Surrogates for Managers: Evidence from a Replicated Experiment

Using students as surrogates for managers in experiments is commonplace, yet this practice is not always valid. To explore when the use of student samples is appropriate, we replicate an experiment previously conducted employing a sample of senior managers involved in financial reporting. The result is that although student and manager responses are significantly different from a statistical perspective, both samples lead to the same conclusion for this experiment. The findings suggest that having some disassociation between students and the target population they are meant to represent does not necessarily make them inappropriate surrogates. To examine when inferences are best supported, we explore the comparability for student sub-groups and managers.