An examination of student cheating in the two-year college.

This study statistically analyzes the experiences of two-year college students with cheating, the predominant unethical student behavior in the college environment. Males in this survey are more likely than are females to admit to collegiate cheating, and males and dorm residents report a greater willingness to assist others in cheating. Although most respondents believe cheating is ethically wrong, nearly half say it is socially acceptable. Males find cheating more socially acceptable than do females, sophomores more so than do freshmen, and dorm residents more so than do off campus students. Also, academic major and cheating are not independent variables.

Introduction

The marketplace model that is the foundation of modern economics is inherently dependent upon the presumption that a standard of professional ethics exists that allows all participants in the free enterprise system to have confidence in that system. During 2001 and 2002, however, the public has been exposed by the media to a steady stream of reports that there are significant problems in the business practices of a number of major U.S. corporations. Most notably, the debacle at Enron cost many of its stockholders their investments, caused the values of many of its employees' retirement funds to disappear, and decisively contributed to the demise of Arthur Andersen, one of the five largest accounting firms in the world.

The widely publicized problems at Enron and other corporations such as WorldCom and Global Crossing have all contributed to a climate in which many individuals now doubt the integrity of the corporate and financial environments in the United States. In the wake of these disclosures there have been calls for Congress to create legislation that would prohibit some of the more deceptive business practices, and there have been questions raised as to the appropriate role of regulatory agencies in this arena.

Perhaps one of the more disturbing observations about this series of corporate revelations is that so many individuals employed by these corporations and by their auditors must have made, independent of each other, decision after decision that allowed these questionable practices to continue unabated for such a relatively lengthy period of time. These decisions range from workers simply ignoring the situations in their own workplaces to employees assisting others in these practices and actively participating in unethical behavior, including the coverup and destruction of potentially incriminating evidence. Thus the issue is raised of whether there has been a significant deterioration of ethical standards in the workplace and whether the next generation of workers, regardless of acts of Congress or tougher regulations and enforcement, will be any more likely to exhibit basic ethical decision making. Since today's college students will be the educated workers of tomorrow, it is worthwhile to examine their current experiences with academic cheating, a predominant expression of unethical student behavior in the college environment.

Background

Cheating may be defined as fraudulent behavior involving some form of deception in which one's own efforts or the efforts of others are misrepresented (Prescot, 1989). Academic cheating may be as simple as using crib notes in class or plagiarizing others in written assignments, or it may be as extreme as utilizing unauthorized sources for take-home exams or even hiring professionals to write papers and prepare case reports. Certainly the continued growth of the Internet makes the more flagrant forms of cheating widely accessible to an increasing number of students.

Research on differences in students' backgrounds, which naturally create alternative perceptions and ethical judgments, is important to the understanding of how students behave in certain situations. Hunt and Vitell's (1993) proposed model of environmental factors that affect ethical perceptions and judgments listed cultural, professional, industrial, and organizational environments as the attributes that contribute to the recognition of ethical problems. And according to Harris and Sutton (1995), most researchers agree that environmental, experiential, and individual attributes have an impact on ethical judgments. While some research has found some differences in ethical perceptions across cultures (Roxas and Stoneback, 1997), research on individual characteristics and background differences has been quite varied. Gender and age differences are the most frequent individual attributes tested, according to Serwinek (1992).

Hunt and Vitell (1986) propose that ethical decision-making is influenced by how the ethical dilemma, alternative actions, and expected consequences are perceived. This attitude-behavior link is examined in some detail in the social psychology literature, especially in the work of Fishbein and Ajzen (1975). According to their research, the cultural environment is one of the primary factors that determine perceptions and therefore influence ethical judgments. They further hypothesize that an individual's behavioral intentions are related to what one perceives others' attitudes toward the expected actions to be (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1972). For our current research project, the college experience serves as the cultural environment, one in which a student's belief about how he or she is perceived by peers is an important factor affecting the decision to cheat.

Since the early 1990s, the results of research in the area of collegiate cheating have raised concern with both educators and business professionals. It is troubling that the level of cheating by college students in recent years has intensified (Davis, Grover, Becket, & McGregor, 1992) and that a significant percentage of students engage in some form of cheating (Diekhoff, LaBeff, Clark, Williams, Francis, and Haines, 1996; Grimes, 2002). Given the number of recent events making headlines from the corporate world, it is not necessarily surprising that research by Baird (1980) and McCabe and Trevino (1993) suggests that college students who are business majors cheat more often than students from other disciplines. These studies are reinforced by the findings of Crown and Spiller (1998) that business students are more tolerant of unethical behavior than are non-business students. In addition, Frank, Gilovich, and Regan (1993) report that students majoring in economics are less ethical in specific situations than are non-economics majors.

Research has also been conducted to examine collegiate cheating by demographic variables other than academic major. For example, it is reported that younger students cheat more frequently than their older peers (Diekhoff et al., 1996; Graham, Monday, O'Brien, and Steffen, 1994: Haines, Diekhoff, LaBeff, and Clark, 1986). Differences between gender are also a popular topic of research; however, the statistical results in this area are mixed. Brown and Spiller (1998) examined 16 prior studies on the potential relationship between gender and cheating and summarized the research results as follows: six studies found that males cheated the most, two studies found that females cheated the most, and ten studies found no significant difference between the genders.

Studies that focus on the presence of a relationship between cheating and the student's academic year in college also yield inconsistent results. One study reports that upperclassmen cheat less often than do lowerclassmen (Baird, 1980); another paper determines that sophomores cheat the most (Lipson and McGavern, 1993), and yet another study shows no significant difference in cheating behavior based on academic classes (Haines et al., 1986). Davis and Welton (1991) find that lower division students in business have lower ethical standards, including higher incidences of cheating, lower likelihood of whistleblowing, and inconsistent financial reporting standards, than do upper division students. However, their research did not reveal a significant difference between the ethical conduct of upper division and graduate students.

Regardless of the demographic breakdown, cheating is a form of unethical behavior, and there is a reasonable likelihood that students who cheat in college today will soon become working adults who continue with similar unethical behavior in the workplace (Smith, Davy, Rosenberg, and Haight, 2002). To examine the prevalence of unethical attitudes and behavior in the current college environment, this study examines the issue of cheating at a two-year public community college. This population of students is often overlooked in studies of student attitudes, and therefore it is unclear if the aforementioned research on cheating in four-year institutions can be extended to include the two-year community college student. However, since the most recently available statistics (American Association of Community Colleges, 2000) show that 44% of all undergraduates were enrolled at two-year colleges in 1999, the two-year college students' attitudes toward and experiences with cheating do warrant investigation, especially in light of the aforementioned 1993 Lipson and McGaven findings that sophomores cheat the most.

Data and Methodology

In April of 2002, 265 community college students attending Gordon College were surveyed regarding their attitudes toward and experiences with cheating. Gordon is a two-year community college in the University System of Georgia, and most of its graduates transfer their academic credits into four-year institutions. These students are primarily from suburban Atlanta, Macon, and the rural areas of middle Georgia. Roughly 84% of the student body is under the age of 25, and full-time students represent approximately 70% of the student body--a relatively high percentage in comparison to the national average of 37% full-time students in community colleges (AACC, 2000). It should be noted that the surveyed college is not solely a commuting school since it provides residential living for 557 students (approximately 20% of the entire student body).

In an effort to obtain a broad cross-section of students, surveys were given during classroom time in courses selected from each of the four divisions of the college. All respondents were provided assurances of confidentiality and anonymity, an especially important requirement in researching experiences with classroom cheating. Because of human subject requirements, each student was given the choice of not participating in the study and only two students so declined, resulting in 263 usable responses and a response rate of 99%.

Students answered written questions regarding various aspects of cheating. These included how often they have cheated in college, how often they have observed cheating and its detection, their willingness to participate in cheating, and their sense of ethics and acceptability of cheating. In addition, a number of demographic variables were collected for each respondent in order to assess how student attitudes regarding cheating may differ by demographic grouping.

A two-tailed independent t-test is used to test for equality of means for each of the cheating variables in order to search for any difference between the various demographic groups surveyed (e.g., male vs. female, freshman vs. sophomore, etc.). For each demographic variable, the equal variance assumption of the t-test is evaluated using Levene's F-test statistic. For those instances in which the equal variance assumption is rejected, the separate variance formulation (in which equal variances are not assumed) is used to calculate the t-statistic rather than utilizing the typical pooled variance calculation. In addition, a chi-square test is used to test for independence between the variable representing academic major and selected variables measuring student attitudes toward cheating.

Results

The results of the demographic survey for these students are presented in Table 1. Several items should be noted about the community college used for this study. It is somewhat atypical in that 30% of the respondents do not work while 20% work full-time. This is no doubt influenced by the fact that 25% of the survey respondents live on campus, which is similar to the proportion of the total student body that is residential. Also, 83% of the respondents are enrolled full-time, a very high percentage when compared to most community colleges in our geographic area.

The first set of questions about cheating relates to the respondents' cheating experiences, and the results are summarized in Table 2. When comparing their observations of cheating in college versus in high school, 61.4% of the respondents have noted less cheating in college, leaving 38.6% who have observed the same or more cheating in college--still a relatively high percentage given that these particular students are relatively young and generally have less than two years of exposure at the community college compared to spending four years in high school.

As to actually witnessing collegiate cheating, over 82% of the students have seen cheating, leaving roughly 18% who have never observed cheating. However, 43.2% of the respondents have never observed the detection of cheating in the college classroom environment. Although it is beyond the scope of this study to determine definitively why there is such a low detection rate on the part of professors and other classroom monitors, there are several possible explanations. Certainly some detection of cheating, particularly in the instance of questions of authorship of papers, may not be handled by the professor in a public enough manner to permit other students to know of the detection (indeed, many colleges demand total confidentiality in such matters). Perhaps the increasing need to have incontrovertible evidence before actually making an accusation of cheating (e.g., a professor taking physical possession of a cheat sheet from a student during an exam period, with witnesses present) may inhibit professors from publicly addressing cheating or, even worse, may cause the professor to ignore the cheating. Or perhaps the current generation of students has perfected the art of cheating to such an extent that its detection is becoming increasingly difficult for the faculty.

The next survey question assesses each respondent's behavior with respect to his or her own cheating. A little less than half (45.6%) report that they have cheated in college on at least one occasion--a value that is in line with a recent study (Grimes, 2002) in which 49.77% of undergraduates surveyed at a major state university in the South admit to cheating in college. Of course, in such self-incriminating reporting there is usually a downward bias to these estimates since some respondents are unwilling to report their own behavior in written form, regardless of the promise of anonymity. And it is noteworthy that even with such extensive cheating being both observed and acknowledged, almost 90% of the respondents fear punishment if caught (see Table 2).

This measurement of collegiate cheating is then examined for any differences in means related to demographic characteristics (see Table 3). The t-statistics show no statistically significant difference in the incidence of cheating (see 'Have Cheated' column of Table 3) between freshmen and sophomores, dorm residents and off campus students, and full-time and part-time students. Only gender shows a significant difference with males reporting a higher incidence than females. Although the respondents who admit to collegiate cheating also report engaging in such behavior on fewer than ten occasions while attending college, it must be noted that most of the students sampled in this study are only freshmen and sophomores and hence have done quite a bit of cheating in a relatively short period of time.

Two of the survey questions relate to cheating relationships with other students. Although 66% of the students report having been asked by another student to cheat, only 24% admit that they would assist other students in cheating (see Table 2). However, examination of the demographic variables provides additional insight into the responses to these two questions (see Table 3, columns 'Have Been Asked to Cheat' and 'Would Assist'). There is a statistically significant difference between the percentage of full-time students vs. part-time students who have been asked to cheat, with full-time students reporting a higher incidence of such a request. This is not unexpected since full-time students take more courses in a semester and thus have more opportunities to be asked by others for assistance in cheating. In addition, male students and dorm students report a higher and statistically significant willingness to assist another student in cheating and, as noted above, males in this study are more likely than are females to admit to cheating. It is somewhat surprising that students residing in dormitories are statistically more willing to assist others in cheating than are off campus students. This could be due to the fact that dormitory residents tend to interact more with each other than do off campus students who may spend less time on campus.

The last survey questions on cheating attitudes relate to the acceptability of cheating. While nearly all respondents believe that cheating is ethically wrong (92%), a surprising 45% find cheating to be socially acceptable (see Table 2). Again, the demographic differences are of note. Although 95% of students living off campus assess cheating as unethical, only 85% of dormitory residents do so, a statistically significant difference (see Table 3). Similarly, off campus students believe cheating to be less socially acceptable (41%) than do dormitory residents (55%). In addition, there is a statistically significant difference for classes and for genders. Fifty-one percent of sophomores find cheating to be socially acceptable with only 39% of freshmen in agreement, and 55% of males believe that cheating is socially acceptable versus only 39% of female respondents.

In evaluating the relationship between the incidence of cheating and other actions and personal perceptions, cross-tab analysis provides additional insights. Table 4 provides a summary of the data, in percentage form, when the respondents' cheating categorization is compared to their responses of selected actions and perceptions. In analyzing the students who have admitted to cheating, 96% of them report to having seen cheating, 63% report to having seen cheating detected, 90% of them fear punishment if caught, 88% think it is ethically wrong, and 58% think it is socially acceptable.

The second column of Table 4 provides results similar for respondents who report that they have not cheated in college. Of the students who report having not cheated, only 70% report having observed cheating. It is also surprising that cheaters observe more classroom detection of cheating (63% vs. 51%), yet still they commit such acts. It is possible that those students who cheat are either more likely to look for similar, reinforcing behavior from their peers or are simply interested in the art of cheating and thus are on the lookout for new and innovative techniques. However, it is important to note that both groups fear punishment the same (90% vs. 89%), suggesting that the need to cheat overrides both the fear factor and the lessons to be learned from observing others being caught in the act.

As might be expected, substantially more cheaters (58% vs. 34%) assess cheating to be socially acceptable. Similarly, fewer of the cheaters believe cheating is ethically wrong (88% vs. 96%), suggesting that the link between internal values and specific actions is very weak and that value-action conflicts are present.

Additional insights of this exploratory study may be gathered from Table 5, where fear of punishment and observation of detection are compared in cross-tab analysis. Apparently, observing others being caught cheating has little influence on the fear of being punished, although the respondents indicate a slightly higher fear if they have witnessed detection. Ninety-three percent (136/146) of those who have witnessed detection express fear of punishment while 85 percent (94/111) of those who have not witnessed detection fear punishment.

As an additional investigation, the relationship between choice of academic major and student attitudes toward collegiate cheating is examined. Chi-square tests are used to test for independence between academic major and the variables measuring student attitudes using the following hypotheses:

[H.sub.0]: Academic major and cheating variable (e.g., student has cheated in college) are independent.

vs. [H.sub.1]: The two variables under investigation are not independent.

For the purposes of this study, the respondents' academic majors are grouped into the following seven categories that encompass the major courses of study found at a community college: business; education; nursing; fine arts and humanities; math, science and computer science; health science professions; and social sciences. In addition, an eighth category is created for those students who have not yet declared a major.

The often-used guideline in chi-square tests regarding expected count frequencies in contingency tables is likewise utilized here, so that for each usable test pairing, no cell has an expected value less than 1, and no more than 20% of the cells have expected values lower than 5. The variable representing academic major is tested for independence with each of the following student variables: has the respondent cheated in college, has the respondent been asked to cheat, is the student willing to assist others with cheating, and does the respondent believe cheating to be socially acceptable. The results of the chi-square tests are presented in Table 6. For the pairing of academic major with respondent admission of cheating, the calculated chi-square statistic has a statistically significant value of 12.519 and a p-value of .085. Thus the null hypothesis is rejected, and academic major and the self-reported incidence of collegiate cheating are determined not to be independent variables. However, the chi-square test statistics are not statistically significant for the relationships between academic major and willingness to assist others in cheating, between major and the respondent's past experiences with being asked to cheat, and between major and social acceptability. Therefore, the null hypotheses of independence for these three pairings cannot be rejected.

Summary and Implications

This study provides insight into the attitude toward cheating and the degree of cheating present in today's community college environment. Almost 74% of the respondents have observed collegiate cheating, 43% have witnessed the detection of cheating, and 45.6% have confessed to cheating at least once. As to who cheats, the study finds that males report a significantly higher incidence of cheating than do females, although there are no differences between freshmen and sophomores, dorm residents and off campus students, and full-time and part-time students. Both male students and dorm students report a higher and statistically significant willingness to assist another student in cheating.

Although a substantially high percentage of all respondents agree that cheating is ethically wrong, it is disappointing that nearly half of the respondents find cheating to be socially acceptable. The average of the male responses regarding the acceptability of cheating is significantly higher than is the female response average. Similarly, the proportion of sophomores that consider cheating to be socially acceptable is significantly larger than the proportion of freshmen who voice this opinion. Also, dormitory students perceive cheating to be more socially acceptable than do off campus students. These results raise the disturbing possibility that increased exposure to the college environment (sophomore vs. freshman and dormitory vs. off campus) results in a higher tolerance of cheating.

When analyzing the results by academic major, the chi-square test statistics show significance for only one pairing: the relationship between academic major and respondent admission of cheating. Thus the null hypothesis of independence is rejected, and academic major and the self-reported incidence of collegiate cheating are determined not to be independent. Analyzing these relationships was beyond the scope of this research study and is a topic tot further investigation in future research.

This study shows that the cheating experiences of students at community colleges are in agreement with much of the research conducted at four-year colleges--specifically that business students cheat more than other majors and that between 40% and 50% of all categories of students have cheated. Of course, it is a significant limitation to extrapolate generalities about all two-year college students from the findings at one college. Therefore, the results may not be representative of student populations at other two-year institutions. However, with no recently published research regarding cheating at the community college level, and with two-year college enrollments totaling 44% of undergraduate enrollments nationwide, this study provides the groundwork for future comparisons with the research efforts of those interested in the community college student environment.

Table 1
Demographics of Survey Respondents
                                            Number    Percent

Class:       Freshman                          112      42.6%
             Sophomore                         143      54.4%
             No Response                         8       3.0%
             Total                             263     100.0%

Employment:  Part-time                         121      46.0%
             Full-time                          53      20.2%
             None                               80      30.4%
             No Response                         9       3.4%
             Total                             263     100.0%

Major:       Business                           71      26.9%
             Education                          52      20.0%
             Fine Arts & Humanities              7       2.7%
             Health Professions/PE              17       6.5%
             Math Science/Computer Science      33      12.5%
             Nursing                            11       4.2%
             Social Science                     39      14.7%
             Undeclared                         29      11.0%
             No response                         4       1.5%
             Total                             263     100.0%

Domicile:    Dormitory                          66      25.1%
             Off campus                        191      72.6%
             No response                         6       2.3%
             Total                             263     100.0%

Gender:      Female                            149      56.7%
             Male                              101      38.4%
             No Response                        13       4.9%
             Total                             263     100.0%

Enrollment:  Full-time                         219      83.3%
             Part-time                          31      11.8%
             No response                        13       4.9%
             Total                             263     100.0%

Table 2
Experiencing with cheating

Observations of cheating in college versus           More   10.8%
high school:                                         Less   61.4%
                                            About the same  27.8%

                                                      Yes     No

Have you observed cheating in college?               82.3%  17.7%

Have you observed detection of cheating in           56.8%  43.2%
college?

Have you cheated in college?                         45.6%  54.4%

Have you ever been asked to cheat in                 66.4%  33.6%
college?

Would you assist someone in cheating                 23.6%  76.4%
in college?

Do you fear punishment if caught cheating            89.5%  10.5%
in college?

Is cheating ethically wrong?                         92.2%   7.8%

Is cheating socially acceptable?                     44.7%  55.3%

Table 3
t-Test Results by Demographic Characteristics

                         Have Cheated        Have Been
Classification                             Asked to Cheat

                         %       t/(p)       %       t/(p)

Class:     Freshman     0.43   -0.941      0.66    -0.462
           Sophomore    0.49   (0.348)     0.68    (0.670)
Gender:    Male         0.52    1.664      0.62    -1.137
           Female       0.41   (0.098) *   0.69    (0.257)
Domicile:  Dorm         0.52   -0.975      0.67    -0.078
           Off campus   0.44   (0.331) *   0.66    (0.938)
Status:    Full time    0.47   -0.851      0.69    -1.766
           Part time    0.39   (0.396)     0.52    (0.086) *

                         Would Assist           Fear
Classification                               Punishment

                         %       t/(p)       %       t/(p)

Class:     Freshman     0.25    0.538      0.88    -1.026
           Sophomore    0.23   (0.591)     0.92    (0.306)
Gender:    Male         0.29    1.777      0.88    -0.76
           Female       0.19   (0.077) *   0.91    (0.448)
Domicile:  Dorm         0.32   -1.705      0.91    -0.355
           Off campus   0.21   (0.091) *   0.89    (0.723)
Status:    Full time    0.24   -0.126      0.89    -2.036
           Part time    0.23   (0.900)     0.97    (0.046) *

                          Ethically           Socially
Classification              Wrong            Acceptable

                         %       t/(p)       %       t/(p)

Class:     Freshman     0.92   -0.115      0.39    -1.924
           Sophomore    0.92   (0.909)     0.51    (0.056) *
Gender:    Male         0.91   -0.611      0.55     2.372
           Female       0.93   (0.542)     0.39    (0.019) *
Domicile:  Dorm         0.85    2.052      0.55    -2.048
           Off campus   0.95   (0.043) *   0.41    (0.042) *
Status:    Full time    0.92    1.323      0.47    -0.689
           Part time    0.97   (0.192)     0.40    (0.495)

t = t statistic

p = p value (2-tailed)

* = statistically different at the 0.10 level

Table 4
Relationships of Cheating and Respondents' Actions and Perceptions

Relationship           Of those who have  Of those who have not
                       cheated, percent     cheated, percent
                           who also             who also

Have observed
cheating                      96%                  70%

Have observed
defection of cheating         63%                  51%

Fear punishment
if caught                     90%                  89%

Feel cheating, is
ethically wrong               88%                  96%

Feel cheating is
socially acceptable           58%                  34%

Table 5
Influence of Observing Being Caught on Fear of Punishment

                                           Fear of Punishment

                                         Yes     No     Totals

Have observed others being caught        136     10      146
Have not observed others being caught    94      17      111
Totals                                   230     27      257

Table 6
Means and Chi-Square Test Results by Major *

                               Have Been
                      Have       Asked     Would     Socially
Major                Cheated   To Cheat    Assist   Acceptable

Business              0.60       0.60       0.22       0.54
Education             0.46       0.81       0.19       0.49
Health Professions    0.41       0.65       0.29       0.29
Math/Science          0.42       0.64       0.15       0.41
Social Science        0.38       0.62       0.26       0.41
Undeclared            0.39       0.75       0.46       0.39
Mean                  0.46       0.67       0.24       0.44
[chi square]         12.519      8.380     10.927      6.325
p value              -0.085     -0.300     -0.142     -0.502

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Lynnette S. Smyth is an Assistant Professor of Economics in the Division of Business and Social Science at Gordon College. [e-mail]

James R. Davis is a Professor of Accounting in the Division of Business and Social Science at Gordon College. [e-mail]