Abstract: | Academic dishonesty is a common phenomenon among students of universities and
colleges, involving behaviors aimed at
obtaining, receiving or conveying information from others, using unauthorized materials or
information and bypassing the adopted assessment process.
Multifactorial determinants of committing fraud by students in the academic environment
make it very difficult to predict academic dishonesty and taking action to prevent it. This fact
makes distinguishing profiles of people, who in certain situations are more likely to undertake
academic fraud, an important element in developing effective programs to prevent dishonesty
among students.
This paper is devoted to the analysis of selected psychological determinants of
committing fraud by students, correlates of making decision to cheat, as well as possible
actions leading to reduction of academic dishonesty among students. These objectives were
achieved by carrying out three separate studies, the first of which was devoted to
psychological determinants, the second one to prediction and the third one to possible way of
prevention of academic dishonesty among students.
The first study, conducted on a group of 390 students of Polish universities using
cross-sectional design, was devoted to analyzing the relationship between declared academic
dishonesty and selected personality traits, factors related to motivation, explicit attitude
towards academic dishonesty, moral orientation, the field of study and perceived contextual
factors. The strongest predictors of the declared academic dishonesty were: mastery-oriented
motivation, disinhibition and explicit attitude towards dishonesty. The obtained data allowed
also to distinguish four profiles of people committing academic fraud: motivated idealists,
ineffective idealists, psychopathic relativists and unmotivated relativists. The conducted
analysis of mediation and moderation made it possible to describe the relationship between
factors related to the declared academic dishonesty.
In the second study, conducted on 64 students of Silesian universities and colleges, to
predict the likelihood of committing four types of cheating on the test or exam model of
planned behavior was used, extended by measurement of the implicit attitude towards
cheating on a test or exam. The obtained results indicate that the applied model explains from
57% to 59% of the variance in intention to cheat on the test or exam and from 13% to 43% of
the variance in the probability of cheating on the test or exam. The strongest predictors of
intention were: behavioral control over cheating and moral obligation towards honest
behavior, and the strongest predictors of the likelihood of cheating on a test or exam were:
cheating in the past, intention to cheat and behavioral control over cheating. In addition, the
probability of cheating on the test or exam turned out to be the highest in the case of helping
another person who asks for the right answer, and in situations where other students do not
cheat, the risk of cheating is low, and the difficulty of the task is high.
In the third study, the impact of signing honor codes on the declared frequency of
committing academic fraud in a group of 320 psychology students was experimentally
verified. The results of the conducted analysis indicate no significant differences between
persons who do not sign and sign honor codes in the declared frequency of committing
dishonest behavior. Regarding the expected differences in declared academic dishonesty
between students signing different types of honor codes, there was a significant difference
between groups that signed structured and unstructured codes, indicating a lower level of
declared dishonesty among students belonging to the first of the above groups.
Conclusions from the conducted research can be used while planning ways and
conditions for the verification of students' knowledge during the course of studies, during the
creation of programs aimed at counteracting academic dishonesty at universities and colleges,
as well as during the intervention after detecting unfair behavior of students. |