Audit committee are a vital mechanism that institutions need to monitor management’s behavior in the firm in order to enhance a proactive oversight of financial compliance, reporting and disclosure process. This study sought to identify the effect of audit committee characteristics on the audit expectation gap within the public sector in Kenya. The study was anchored on the institutional theory and the agency theory. The study adopted a descriptive research design in solving the research problem. The target population for the research was pooled from all the 119 state parastatals as well as 119 select personnel within state corporations who are users of the audit reports. The study relied on primary and secondary data. The collected data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings of the study indicated that there is a statistically significant effect of audit committee characteristics on the audit expectation gap within state corporations in Kenya
Keywords: Audit Expectation Gap, audit committee composition, audit committee independence
