## 3 Materials and Methods
The questionnaire had the following structure:  
* Part I, general questions, their role being to provide a more accurate picture of the personal profile of the respondents in the sample (experience gained in the field, gender, legal form of organization of the economic entity, field of activity, membership of national and international professional organizations);
* Part II, questions on the extent to which IT technologies are integrated into financial accounting and the perception of them as a solution to pandemic health crisis situations;
* Part III, questions on the role of the professional accountant in the context of the digitalization of accounting and, in this context, the change of accounting paradigm. The typology of the respondents was determined according to the following variables:  
1. Regarding the respondents, they were analyzed according to: the position held in the economic entities, the seniority in the respective position/function, and biological age. 2. Regarding the entities, the subject of the research, we were interested in: the size of the entities according to the classification in the Romanian legislation, as well as the main field of activity. In terms of positions/functions, the distribution of the sample was 56.06% economists/accountants (162 people), 24.56% economic/financial accounting directors (71 people), and 19.38% accounting experts (56 people). The graphical representation is shown below in Figure 4.  
The respondents carried out the activity and made decisions for 179 micro-entities (61.94%), 63 small entities (21.80%), and 47 medium and large entities (16.26%) distributed on fields of activity highlighted in Table 1.  
Table 1 shows that the largest share was held by entities that carry out professional activities, intermediation, and technical and logistical support, which is 47.05% of all entities, respectively. For the other fields of activity, the distribution was relatively the same. The collected data were processed using the IBM SPSS v26 program, and the following statistical tests were performed: Reliability test, Chi-squared, and K related samples. The usefulness of each test is given by the possibilities of processing the data and interpreting the characteristic results, as follows:  
1. Reliability test--is used to determine the consistency of the data by applying the Cronbach's alpha coefficient test method. The reliability test is valid if the calculated Cronbach's alpha coefficient is greater than 0.7. 2. Chi-squared--is used to determine the probability that the variables investigated are independent. This test checks if two variables are associated and if the association is significant. A significance threshold of 0.05 indicates that there is a 5% chance that the collected data will appear randomly. 3. K related samples (Friedman Test)--is used to analyze non-parametric data, ordinal data in this case, if there are more than two dependent samples. This test is used to test the difference in rank in the case of a variable measured repeatedly, more than twice, on the same group of subjects. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline  & \multicolumn{6}{c}{**Entity Type**} \\ \cline{2-9}
**Fields of Activity** & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Micro-Entities**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Small Entities**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Medium and Large Entities**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Total**} \\ \cline{2-9}  & **Number** & **Percentage** & **Number** & **Percentage** & **Number** & **Percentage** & **Number** & **Percentage** \\ \hline Production & 25 & 50.0\% & 16 & 32.0\% & 9 & 18.0\% & 50 & 100.0\% \\ Trade & 35 & 61.4\% & 14 & 24.6\% & 8 & 14.0\% & 57 & 100.0\% \\ Other services & 24 & 52.2\% & 11 & 23.9\% & 11 & 23.9\% & 46 & 100.0\% \\ Professional, intermediation, technical and logistical support activities & 95 & 69.9\% & 22 & 16.2\% & 19 & 14.0\% & 136 & 100.0\% \\ \hline Total & 179 & 61.9\% & 63 & 21.8\% & 47 & 16.3\% & 289 & 100.0\% \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Crosstabulation between entity type and field of activity.