A Contabilidade Pública como instrumento de controle social: um estudo sobre a compreensão dos elementos contábeis pelos conselheiros municipais do orçamento participativo do município de João Pessoa

Abstract

The formation of individuals who are more aware of the use of public resources and policies practiced by their government promotes the exercise of citizenship and social control. The social control is practiced in João Pessoa, Brazil, through Participatory Budgeting which elects municipal councilors to represent the entire population. In this context, the understanding of the accounting elements is necessary as a guarantee that the information on the government financial statements will be interpreted in its fullness and the demands of the population will be required correctly. Thereby, this study aims to verify if the level of understanding of the municipal councilors of the Participatory Budgeting who represent the population of João Pessoa, Brazil about accounting elements contained in the government budget. Firstly, the concepts of social control and participatory budgeting were placed as well as explained the functioning of the participatory budgeting in João Pessoa. Then, in order to fulfill the objective, a descriptive, qualitative and field research was conducted. The research made use of the questionnaire as a tool for data collection and the questionnaire was answered by 7 councilors and 6 alternates. The data analysis was made by tabulating spreadsheets and the frequency and percentage of the answers were obtained, which allowed the interpretation of the respondents' perception. The results indicated that although half of the respondents have little or no knowledge about public accounting information, most of them frequently seek out information about public expenditure and there is a great interest in the contents of account-giving. As a result of this, it’s possible to realize that it’s indispensable that the knowledge about accounting elements have to be improved so the social control can be fully practiced.