在經歷 1930 年代經濟大蕭條後,美國國會為了確保市場的公平、透明及穩定性而制定與通過了 1934 年的證券交易法,該法案的出現賦予了美國證券交易委員會(SEC)管理監督與標準制定的權限。依據法條中的申報規定,資產在 1000 萬美元以上且股東人數超過 500 人的公司 需提供年度報告及其他定期財務報告(主要為 Form 10-K、10-Q 及 8-K)給 SEC,而這些報告皆可於 SEC 提供的資料庫 EDGAR 中查詢。然而,受限於 SEC EDGAR 本身提供的搜尋功能只有簡單的財報搜尋,對於想要取得更深入資訊的使用者來說沒辦法輕易的達成,過去也有研究提到許多重要的資訊往往是分散在多個財報之中,例如說是希望了解一份財務報告相較去年時期的改變。在這個研究之中,我們首先基於 SEC EDGAR 的系統重新設計與實作了一套新的資訊系統 MAD EDGAR 輔助使用者閱讀 10-K 年報,我們的系統將年報中兩年間的變化以紅色及綠色的醒目提示呈現在報告之中以 輔助使用者閱讀。其次,為了系統成效的評估我們也設計了兩套實驗與任務並招募了 20 名受測者實際操作系統。我們的研究結果顯示,當任務涉及到跨年報的資訊時,MAD EDGAR 在回答問題的效率上確實表現的比 SEC EDGAR 更加良好。
This paper addresses the problem of SEC EDGAR's limitations in identifying year-over-year differences among financial reports. We presented Making A Difference for SEC EDGAR (MAD EDGAR), a new web-based information system that facilitates the analysis of year-over-year modifications in 10-K reports. MAD EDGAR highlights the differences between 10-K reports to help investors efficiently comprehend the modifications in documents. The year-over-year differences in a 10-K report are presented in a colorized format, where the color green stands for new statements added in the current year of the report, while the color red stands for deletion from the previous year on the contrary. Twenty graduate students from four universities were recruited and observed while completing two types of tasks specifically designed to evaluate MAD EDGAR's usefulness during the experiment. The results indicated that our system out-performed SEC EDGAR in terms of identifying year-over-year changes.