Part (c) for 3 marks required candidates to define audit sampling and to explain the need for this. Performance on this question was mixed.

Many candidates struggled to provide a definition of sampling with many providing answers such as “sampling is when an auditor tests a sample”, this would not score any marks. In addition a minority of candidates wrote at length about the different methods for obtaining a sample, when this was not required. In terms of why auditors need to sample, many candidates were able to suggest that testing 100% of items was not feasible; however they did not explain why this was the case i.e. due to time or cost constraints.