College Students and Cheating

Cheating is a significant problem among college students, and prior studies have shown that a majority of students either cheat or implicitly condone cheating. In order to study this issue in a particular campus setting, self-accounting surveys were performed on 161 students inquiring their opinions and experience regarding cheating, and the likelihood that they would report a cheater. This study concluded that while a majority of students believe that cheating is never justified, that same majority has participated in cheating either actively or passively, and would not be very likely to report cheating. This shows that cheating is not a problem with confused or "alternative" morality, but demonstrates a "hypocrisy gap" between student morality and student behavior.

Introduction

Cheating is a significant issue in schools today. According to a study performed by California State University, "Most students (78%) reported cheating of at least one type." (Butler et al.) Past studies have apparently been somewhat conflicted regarding the causes and incident of cheating. Missouri Western State College student Andrea Rittman found that only 16.7% of students reported cheating in college, though far more reported cheating in high school. However, her study was skewed because she only included cheating on tests, while prior studies had included other tasks such as paper-writing and projects. Considering the ease of ordering custom papers online at any number of web sites, one would be surprised if cheating on tests were the primary form of cheating in an academic setting. The California State University results included "Thirteen cheating behaviors" (Butler et al.) which no doubt accounts for its higher positive results.

Past studies on this issue have apparently shown that intelligence is negatively correlated with cheating behaviors, which has oddly been consistently identified as resulting from "a relationship between intelligence and moral development. Individuals with a higher level of moral development are less likely to cheat because that sort of behavior is morally wrong." (Rittman) However, Rittman's actual results seem to indicate that it more intelligent students have less need to cheat in order to succeed, and may be less inclined to cheat regardless of morality. Her results show that honor students cheat slightly less than non-achievers, but that students who are qualified to be honor-level but choose to take regular classes instead are drastically less likely to cheat. This seems to indicate a reasonable connection between the relative difficulty of work, rather than concrete intelligence quotients, to cheating frequency. Rittman also lists fear of failure as a significant motivator for cheating.

The objective of this study is to determine what relationship, if any, exists between moral perception of cheating and tendency to cheat or fail to report cheating in others. Gender will also be considered as a possible correlative. It is hypothesized that there will not be a strong positive relationship between moral beliefs regarding cheating and the likelihood of cheating.

Method

All subjects were located on campus. Interviewers approached students randomly at various locations around campus, such as the gyms or cafeterias, and asked if they were willing to take a short, informal and confidential survey.

Students were asked four basic questions. The first asked them the degree (from "agree strongly" to "disagree strongly") to which students agreed with the statement "Cheating is sometimes okay if necessary to pass or do well in a class.' The second inquired as to whether or not they had cheated or observed cheating in class. The third asked "How likely would you be to report someone that you saw cheating in one of your classes?" This last question may have been slightly skewed, because it only had three possible responses "Very likely," "Somewhat likely," and "Not likely." The first and second responses may both be seen as implying that one would in fact report cheating, while only the third implies that one would not, which may weight responses toward reporting. The final question regards gender. (See attached questionnaire sheet)

Results were tabulated for each interviewer, and then combined to create final tabulations. While interviewers had slightly different percentages for the various questions asked, no interviewer had particularly significant differences in over-all trends. For the first question, 10 students (6.2%) reported strongly agreeing that cheating was okay, while 26 (16.1%) reported agreeing. Meanwhile 63 and 62 students (39.1% and 38.5%) respectively disagreed or strongly disagreed. For the second question, 104 of the students (64.6%) said that they had indeed either cheated or observed cheating. Only 58 students (36%) said that they had not been involved in cheating as either a spectator or an active participant. One student, it will be noted, circled both yes and no for this question, perhaps indicating that they had cheated without viewing others cheating, or vice versa. Regarding the reporting of cheating, 28 students (17.4%) said they were very likely to report cheating -- which is a significantly lower number than those who strongly felt that cheating is morally wrong. 62 of the students (38.5%) claimed that they were "somewhat likely" to reporting cheating, while the largest group of 71 students (44.1%) said that they were not likely to report cheating. It should be kept in mind that this number may additionally be somewhat decreased by the formatting of the questions.