This paper presents the findings of two investigations into the prevalence and profile of academic dishonesty amongst students in New Zealand's tertiary institutions and compares this with findings from other studies. Staff and students report on their personal experiences of academic dishonesty and these are compared with official information…

In the UK, there is great concern about the perceived increase in plagiarized work being submitted by students in higher educations. Although there is much debate, the reasons for the perceived change are not completely clear. Here we present the results of a 2-year trial of the JISC Plagiarism Detection Service (PDS) involving hundreds of…

More and more families are willing to go to any lengths to get their children into the right schools, even if it means crossing the line between right and wrong. Boundary hopping--falsifying residency status to attend a particular school--has been around for years. In a handful of states, it has been alleviated by open enrollment, choice programs,…

Middle- and upper-middle-class students continue to outpace those from less privileged backgrounds. Most attempts to redress this inequality focus on the issue of access to financial resources, but as "Producing Success" makes clear, the problem goes beyond mere economics. In this eye-opening study, Peter Demerath examines a typical suburban…

Using self-reported academic cheating from the classes of 1959 through 2002 at the three major United States military service academies (Air Force, Army, and Navy), we measure how peer cheating influences individual cheating behavior. We find higher levels of peer cheating result in a substantially increased probability that an individual will…

An index is proposed to detect cheating on multiple-choice examinations, and its use is evaluated through simulations. The proposed index is based on the compound binomial distribution. In total, 360 simulated data sets reflecting 12 different cheating (copying) situations were obtained and used for the study of the sensitivity of the index in…

Perspectives on plagiarism are offered by a university writing teacher, who also gives examples from students' papers. A number of plagiarists genuinely do not understand that they are plagiarizing; they do not understand the basics of footnoting or when it is required. While identifying a piece of writing as plagiarism may be easy, finding the…

Research on crime and delinquents is generally studying norm-violating behavior outside of its social context. Building on Hartshorne and May's use of situational tests, the authors sought to study the major contributing variables to norm-violating behavior in a laboratory setting. Two groups of subjects were used: (1) 116 male college students;…

Two achievement-related motives are considered: (1) the motive to achieve so as to obtain a sense of accomplishment; and (2) the motive to avoid failure in order to avoid the negative feelings that accompany failure. It is hypothesized that a student with high achievement motivation should seek the satisfaction of earning a good grade and should…

Undergraduates could earn a $10 bonus by performing above average on a free-recall task. Following a pretest, success messages were manipulated. During a subsequent test, subjects could cheat. Cheating was related to anticipated success in a curvilinear fashion with medium success yielding the most cheating. Cheating and expectations are…

Marketing students and faculty members completed a survey on their attitudes toward cheating behaviors. Forty-nine percent of the students stated that they had cheated at school. Results show an inverse relationship between the frequency of the occurrence of cheating and the person's judgment of the severity of the cheating behavior. (CH)

Enumerates 14 forms of academic dishonesty in higher education. Sees lack of confidence and parental/peer pressure as possible causes. Suggests preventive measures for faculty. Urges administrators to create an environment conducive to learning and excellence and protect against unfair competition for grades. (DMM)

Two experiments with college psychology classes examined answer copying during multiple-choice examinations under conditions of free and assigned seating. More answer copying occurred in the free seating situation, not accountable for in terms of the idea that answer copiers prefer to sit in the rear of the room. (Author/LMO)

Discusses a study to determine students' perceptions of their own and their peers' attitudes and behavior. Specifically gathered empirical data that will shed light on the manifestation of unethical behavior--cheating. (JOW)