Compreensibilidade das contas públicas: uma análise a partir do entendimento dos usuários da informação

Abstract

The transparency of public actions, as foundation of democracy, is increasingly relevant for the use of citizens in social control. The main point in transparency is the quality of the provided information, since the disclosure, in itself, does not mean that the citizens will be able to utilize this information, or even that they are appropriate to the level of knowledge and characteristics of this citizens. The information must be accessible, clear, accurate, written in simple and comprehensible parlance; the effective communication depends on the sharing of common meaning between emitter and receiver. Furthermore, the understandability of information is attached to the readability, and, therefore, depends, among other aspects, on the instruction level, academic education and professional formation of the reader. In this way, considering that the potential users of the information provided by the public sector are all the citizens, facing the argued concern about the importance of providing to this users financial reports that are indeed understandable, and based on the communication theory, this work has the intent of identifying the variables associated with the understandability of the demonstrations made by the public sector from the point of view of the users of this information, using the variables attributed to the characteristics of the individuals, the quality of the text, in particular the readability, and the criteria of quality of information. A questionnaire was elaborated, based on the theoretical reference gathered and disclosed through the internet, with the aid of partnerships, aiming to achieve the widest and most diversified possible public of repliers. The obtained sample was of 653 repliers, from which 415 completed the whole questionnaire. Statistically significant relationships were found between the understandability of the demonstrations and the variables age, gender, instruction level and academic formation. Most of the repliers claim to not have knowledge in accounting in the public sector, but declared to understand the information presented, this was also a variable that presented a statistical significant relationship. A relationship among readability, measured by Flesch test, instruction level and understandability of information was also found, agreeing with the literature on this subject. It is also important to highlight that, although the repliers claimed the information was possible to understand, over 80% of the repliers admitted the importance of the utilization of plain language elements and of the quality of information. The results obtained concerning the readability and understandability imply the need of improvement in the means of disclosure and communication of information of the public sector, which can be obtained, for instance, through the supply of different reports for the specialized public and to common citizens.