Valuing stock-based compensation using which measure of volatility?

During my time with Big 4 audit I have seen companies pretty much determine volatility to be whatever they like when computing stock-based compensation.

So how should volatility for a small public company be determined? Lets say one issued options on April 1, 2013. Should volatility be determined taking a history of stock prices equivalent to the life of the option? Say, 3 years? Shorter? Longer? And in addition to this should they be taking into account stochastic volatility or just using bread and butter standard deviation calc as a measure? Should the changes in stock price be measured on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis? As all of these measures change volatility considerably and like-wise the amount the company can expense, I am very interested to hear what you monkeys think.

Cheers,

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