Academic dishonesty is a major problem and is thus a highly relevant area of inquiry. Considerable research has shown that key traits from the Big Five model of personality are associated with various forms of anti-social behaviour. To date, however, relatively little research interest has been devoted to study the relationship between personality traits and plagiarism. This study attempts to fill this gap by examining the relationship between the Big Five personality traits and the inclination to commit plagiarism by undergraduate (...) students. The main conclusion is that the inclination to plagiarize is negatively associated with Conscientiousness and Agreeableness traits. Neuroticism was not found to be related to the inclination to plagiarize. Implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

Faculty continue to address academic dishonesty in their classes. In this follow-up to an earlier study on general perceived faculty student cheating, using a sample of business school faculty, we compared three levels of faculty classification: full-time non-tenure track, full-time tenured/tenure-track, and part-time adjuncts. Results showed that NTTs perceived higher levels for three different types of student cheating, i.e., paper-based, forbidden teamwork, and hiring someone to take an exam. In addition, NTTs were more likely to report a student for cheating. (...) NTTs reported a higher course load and average class size, and average class size was positively related to all five types of cheating measured. Given the predicted increase in NTTs across all disciplines, making sure that all faculty,, have the resources needed to deter student cheating is important. All faculty have an obligation to hold students accountable for their behavior. Individual integrity is paramount; and it is what employers expect. Regardless of the chosen field or discipline, an employer’s expectations, in terms of character, is to hire individuals who possess a level of honesty that is above reproach. Addressing cheating is an obligation that all faculty need to address purposefully. Providing resources to help faculty address cheating is critical. Resources might include conflict resolution training to provide instructors with the necessary guidance so that they can better handle these difficult situations. This is important not only for the student while in school, but also for a university/college’s reputation. (shrink)

The current study examined the longitudinal relationships between goal contents and academic cheating (serious versus minor cheating) among representative college students. Based on the framework of goal contents theory within self-determination theory, wealth, fame, affiliation, self-growth, social-concern, and leisure goals were tested as predictive factors of two types of academic cheating. Participants were 2,360 representative college students from the Korean Education Longitudinal Study majoring in business, humanities, social sciences, engineering, education, arts, and medicine. They answered survey questionnaires twice at 1-year (...) intervals. Hierarchical regression analysis found that self-growth negatively predicted serious as well as minor cheating, and the wealth goal was positively correlated with minor cheating after controlling for previous cheating behaviors and gender. The results support goal contents theory and show that classifying academic cheating by severity permits a deeper understanding of students’ academic cheating. Educators and practitioners seeking to encourage students’ ethical behavior should pay closer attention to the goal contents they pursue to provide appropriate guidelines. (shrink)

Student academic dishonesty is a pervasive problem for universities all over the world. The development of innovative practices and interventions for decreasing dishonest behaviour requires understanding factors influencing academic dishonesty. Previous research showed that personal, environmental, and situational factors affect dishonest behaviour at a university. The set of factors and the strength of their influence can differ across countries. There is a lack of research on factors affecting student dishonesty in Russia. A sample of 15,159 undergraduate students from eight Russian (...) highly selective universities was surveyed to understand what factors influence their decision to engage in dishonest behaviour. Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour was employed to explain dishonest behaviour among students. The explained variance in the engagement in academic dishonesty equals 48% in the model for the full sample, and reaches 69% in the model for one of the considered institutions. The major findings of this study were: subjective norms appeared to dominate as the strongest predictor of academic dishonesty across the Russian universities; perceived behavioural control, appeared to be positively related to the dishonest behaviour. In the majority of universities, this factor was found to be insignificant. This finding indicates a specific feature of Russian students’ an ethical decision-making process discussed in the last part of the paper. (shrink)

Academic misconduct is widespread in schools, colleges, and universities and it appears to be an international phenomenon that also spills over into the workplace. To this end, while a great deal of research has investigated various individual components such as, demographic, personality and situational factors that contribute to cheating, research has yet to examine why students help others cheat and which students are being asked to help others cheat. In this study, we investigated if the closeness of the relationship to (...) the individual requesting help in cheating to the individual being asked to help cheat, influenced the decision to help cheat. We also investigated if past cheating behavior predicted how an individual would respond to requests to cheat. Additionally, we sought to answer the following questions; whether minor cheating is more prevalent than serious cheating, what personality factors predict helping others cheat, who is helped, and how people rationalize helping others cheat. Results indicate minor cheating to be more prevalent, prudent personalities are less likely to have cheated or to help others cheat, individuals are more likely to help friends cheat than to help strangers, and past cheating behaviors is indicative of helping others to cheat. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

The incidence and moral implications of cheating depend on how it is defined and measured. Research that defines and operationalizes cheating as an inventory of acts, that is, “cheating in any form,” has often fueled concern that cheating is reaching “epidemic proportions.” Such inventory measures appear, however, to conflate moral and administrative conceptions of the problem. Inasmuch as the immorality of behavior is a function of moral judgment, academic misconduct is immoral only when it is intentional, and the greatest moral (...) weight should be ascribed to violations that students judge to be the most “serious.”. (shrink)

This article examines the process of one institution’s efforts to develop an educational academic integrity seminar through an ethnographic study approach. The educational program developed allowed the institution to transition from a punitive sanctioning system to an educational one. The institution cultivated cross-campus partnerships to develop the program. Both quantitative and qualitative data revealed that students had a positive experience attending the program and found it useful. This article serves as a framework for institutions to utilize when building their own (...) educational-based academic integrity on-campus seminar and sanctioning program. (shrink)