We claim that academic dishonesty is positively correlated to peer pressure and negatively correlated to perceived self-efficacy. We support our claim through a ...
UNDERSTANDING MISCONDUCT. A QUANTITATIVE INQUIRY INTO ACADEMIC DISHONESTY, PEER PRESSURE AND PERCEIVED SELF-EFFICACY Dan Stănescu, Loredana Radu National University for Political Studies and Public Administration (ROMANIA)
Abstract Debates on cheating and other forms of academic dishonesty have gained momentum worldwide, with Internet and other open sources putting additional pressures on an already messy academic conduct. For example, in a study done by the Gallup Organization (October 6-9, 2000), the top two problems facing the United States are: 1) Education, and 2) Decline in Ethics (both were ranked over crime, poverty, drugs, taxes, guns, environment, and racism, to name just a few). Surprisingly, the rate of students who admit to cheating at least once in their college careers has been rather constant around 75%, with very small variations – since the first major survey on cheating in higher education in 1963 [1]. This means that the envisaged solutions to tackle this issue have been rather ineffective or simply inappropriate. The paper seeks to investigate the complex relationship between academic dishonesty (i.e. fraudulence, plagiarism, falsification, delinquency, unauthorized help), peer pressure, and perceived self-efficacy. We claim that academic dishonesty is positively correlated to peer pressure and negatively correlated to perceived self-efficacy. We support our claim through a quantitative research implemented in a publicly-funded Romanian university by means of three questionnaire types – the Perceived Self-Efficacy subscale from the Student Approaches to Learning [2]; the Peer Pressure Questionnaire Adapted from National Institute of Ghild Help and Human Develipment (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development; and the Academic Dishonesty Questionnaire consisted of 39 items adapted from Pavela [3], and Cizek [4] descriptors. Our findings are based on the answers provided by 153 undergraduate and postgraduate students. We also aimed at presenting the prevalence of the phenomena, the associated motivations and the role of contextual factors such as peer pressure. This research provides some valuable insights on how educational institutions and other relevant stakeholders might develop or adjust relevant policies, so that the roots and not only the effects of academic dishonesty are properly approached. Keywords: academic dishonesty, self-efficacy, peer pressure.
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ACADEMIC DISHONESTY
1.1 What is academic dishonesty? There is little doubt that academic dishonesty has been a persistent problem in higher education for quite some time [5]. According to the literature [6] [7], it appears that academic dishonesty is epidemic across most universities, and the majority of students have engaged in it in some degrees at some point in their academic careers. Although academic dishonesty has been a concern in higher education for about seven decades [8], "a concerted research effort" has been made only for the last three decades with more than 100 published studies [7]. Those studies indicates that cheating occurs at all educational levels, starting from elementary school children, in middle and high school [9], and as late as college [10] and even graduate school. On average, it was estimated that 70% of students engage at least once during their college enrollment in some form of academically dishonest behavior [11]. In a survey of marketing students, it was found that 49% admitted to some form of cheating [12]. In another anonymous survey of students at a major public university, the findings showed that over two-thirds reported cheating at least once [13]. Other research has shown that academic dishonesty is pervasive on most of the college campuses, with the majority of students having engaged in it at some point during their college career. Depending
Proceedings of INTED2016 Conference 7th-9th March 2016, Valencia, Spain
7663
ISBN: 978-84-608-5617-7
on the type of survey used, reported percentages of undergraduate and graduate students who admit to having cheated has ranged from 9% to as high as 90% [7]. Evans and Craig [14] found that people do not always agree on what constitutes academic cheating, and, as such, developing a definition is thorny. In this vein, it is important to clarify the very concept of “cheating”, so that we are further able to draw the line between cheaters and non-cheaters. For example, Symaco and Marcelo considered cheating as "a violation of rules and regulations, a phenomenon most people abhor yet profess to have committed at one time or another" [15]. Cizek provides a less limiting definition. He states that cheating behaviors fall into three categories: (1) "giving, taking, or receiving information," (2), "using any prohibited materials," and (3) "capitalizing on the weaknesses of persons, procedures, or processes to gain an advantage" on academic work [4]. From the reviewed literature, there can be distinguished several different forms of academic dishonesty. One instructive categorization is made by Pavela, who showed that there are four general areas that comprise academic dishonesty: cheating by using unauthorized materials on any academic activity, such as assignments, tests etc.; fabrication of information, references, or results; plagiarism; and helping other students engaged in academic dishonesty (i.e. facilitating), such as allowing other student to copy their work, memorizing questions on a quiz etc. [3] Student academic dishonesty includes, but is not limited to, lying, cheating on exams, copying or using other people’s work without permission, altering or forging documents, buying papers, plagiarism, altering research results, providing false excuses for missed tests and assignments, making up sources, and so on [16]. William L. Kibler defined academic dishonesty as “forms of cheating and plagiarism that involve students giving or receiving unauthorized assistance in an academic exercise or receiving credit for work that is not their own” [17]. According to him, cheating is “intentionally using or attempting to use unauthorized materials, information, or study aids in any academic exercise”. He defines fabrication as “intentional and unauthorized falsification or invention of any information or citation in an academic exercise”. Facilitating academic dishonesty is defined as “intentionally or knowingly helping or attempting to help another to commit an act of academic dishonesty”, and plagiarism is defined as “intentionally or knowingly representing the word of another as one’s own in any academic exercise”. McCabe et al. documented the amount of cheating behaviors in different contexts. "A serious test cheater is defined as someone who admits to one or more instances of copying from another student on a test or exam, using unauthorized crib or cheat notes on a test or exam, or helping someone else cheat on a test or exam" [18]. Serious cheating on written work includes "plagiarism, fabricating or falsifying a bibliography, turning in work done by someone else, and copying a few sentences of material without footnoting them" [18].
1.2 Why is academic dishonesty so prevalent? Academic dishonesty is often evaluated through the lenses of its negative effects on the quality and fairness of education. However, a limited scholarly attention has been paid to the underlining causes that might determine students to adopt such behaviors. As Aaron admits, “research into the causes of academic dishonesty has been largely focused on describing relationships between variables without regard to theoretical integration or explanation of the phenomenon” [19]. In deed, research has helped us profile the academic cheater – at least as far as the US model is concerned: male, usually enrolled at state-universities; furthermore, sorority or fraternity membership, the absence of self-control, as well as peer approval of dishonesty have been repeatedly reported as being predictors of an unethical academic behavior [19]. However, most of the research on this topic is mainly linked to the individual traits of the potential cheaters, and less to the factors that have shaped those incriminated individual traits. By changing the focus from the individual cheater to the wider personal and contextual factors which might favor or, on the contrary, impede academic dishonesty, we believe that the probability of finding feasible solutions for coping with this phenomenon could increase. Because, at the end of the day, our purpose, as educators, is to find good ways to help students escape the academic dishonesty trap. In this sense, some relevant research findings reveal that, for example, changing “student attitudes toward academic dishonesty would seem to have a higher likelihood of success at a much lower cost” [19] than implementing all sorts of limiting and controlling conditions, such as a greater surveillance. Furthermore, understanding academic dishonesty means probing into students’ motivation for learning, or more specifically, exploring some key questions that students might ask themselves before deciding to cheat: ““What is my goal?”, “Can I do this?”, and “What are the costs?”” [20].
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As Murdock and Anderman observed, “students may respond to low self-efficacy or high needs for achievement by being dishonest, rather than simply by increasing or decreasing effort, changing their learning strategies, or self-handicapping.” [20] Thus, elements such as a low perceived self-effficacy or a higher sense of self-promotion – expressed, for instance, through an irresistible desire to have good grades - might determine students to cheat. In this note, we wanted to test whether a low perceived self-efficacy as well as peer-pressure are involved in cheating practices among Romanian students. If peer-pressure is aknolwedged as one of the factors that determine cheating behaviors, research on the links between self-efficacy and academic misconduct is rather scarce. According to A. Bandura's social cognitive theory, how people assess their own self-efficacy play a significant role in the decisions they make and the courses of action they pursue [21]. In other words, individuals tend to engage in tasks about which they feel competent and confident and avoid those in which they do not. Drawing on Bandura’s theory, Marsh et. al [2] developed the notion of self-concept, suggesting that students’ academic self-concept does not only comprise a self-evaluative/cognitive dimension but also an affective/motivational one. The affective need to be accepted and valued by your own peers (i.e. peer-pressure) determines higher levels of self-efficacy. We build on this concept to test the assumption that academic misconduct should be negatively correlated to self-efficacy and positively correlated to peer-pressure.
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METHODOLOGY
In researching academic dishonesty, as with any study on deviant behavior that uses a self-report questionnaire approach, underreporting due to social desirability is a real concern [22]. However, surveys were the most common method used in this kind of studies [11]. Despite this possible source of error, there is evidence that in many situations self-reports of dishonest behaviors can be also accurate [23]. Our study was conducted using a survey method of 153 students at a public university in Bucharest (age M= 21.52, SD=3.20; 25 males and 128 females) from graduate and post-graduate level. The prevalence of female participants is an artifact, which can be explained by the nature of the faculty specialization itself, being well known that communication, public relations, psychology and human resources are usually gender-biased occupations. A non-random, convenience sampling design involving a wide array of students was used. Students were asked to participate in the study by voluntarily completing the survey. The Academic Dishonesty Questionnaire consisted of 39 items adapted from Pavela (1978) and Cizek (2003) descriptors. Out of those, 23 measure dishonest behavior clustered in five scales: cheating / fraudulence, fabrication / falsification, facilitating / unauthorized help, plagiarism and misconduct; 10 items are dealing with possible motivations and 4 are factual items (gender, college level etc.). In addition they were invited to complete the Peer Pressure Questionnaire adapted from NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development FLV01X5 (NICHD, 2006), and Perceived Self-Efficacy subscale from the Student Approaches to Learning [2].
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FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
In general, descriptive statistics in Table 1 report low levels of perceived self-efficacy. Not surprisingly, students are reluctant in admitting that they engage in unethical practices (the self-assessment scale comprised 4 levels, where 1 = almost never, 2 = sometimes; 3 = often; 4 = almost always; the statistic mean is below 2). However, the most prevalent types of unethical behavior - as self-reported by students - are cheating (Mean = 1.74), facilitation (Mean = 1.85), and plagiarism (Mean = 1,63).
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Table 1. Descriptive Statistics N
Mean
Std. Deviation
Skewness
Kurtosis
Statistic
Statistic
Statistic
Statistic
Std. Err
Statistic
Std. Err
peerpressure
153
16.53
1.91265
.633
.196
1.042
.390
selfeffic
153
11.33
2.53657
.134
.196
-.350
.390
cheating
153
1.74
.48793
.537
.196
.469
.390
fabrication
153
1.31
.30339
1.168
.196
1.102
.390
facilitation
153
1.85
.38127
.131
.196
-.367
.390
plagiarism
153
1.63
.53267
1.054
.196
1.410
.390
misconduct
153
1.35
.34529
1.476
.196
3.845
.390
Regarding the main objective of the study we have determined the Pearson correlations between selfefficacy and self-reported cheating behaviors (Table 2). The results confirm the association between a low degree of perceived self-efficacy, on the one hand, and two types of cheating behaviors – cheating and facilitation. Therefore, participants with low scores on the self-efficacy scale are more likely to engage in acts of academic dishonesty, the variables being negatively correlated (r=-.174, p
