The US Centre for Audit Quality (CAQ) has announced funding for three academic research projects focusing on the issues around audit quality, professional scepticism and objectivity.

A team from Texas A&M University will be looking at audit quality, audit committee networks and audit evaluation. Researchers at Tulane University will examine how auditors cope with attempts by clients to persuade them, while the University of Massachusetts Amherst project is an experimental study of how cultural mindsets have an impact on auditor scepticism in fair value accounting.

All three projects are designed to have practical applications to the work of public company auditors. They were chosen from nearly 50 proposals submitted in response to CAQ's fifth round of requests for independent auditing-related research. CAQ funded five such projects in 2009, three in 2010, five in 2011 and five projects in 2012.

CAQ executive director Cindy Fornelli said: 'The CAQ is committed to providing support for independent research that will inform the profession's efforts to continuously improve audit quality.'