INTEGRITY AT A DISTANCE: A STUDY OF ACADEMIC MISCONDUCT AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS ON AND OFF CAMPUS
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Integrity at a Distance: A Study of Academic Misconduct among
University Students on and off Campus
Linda A. Kidwell a; Jenny Kent b
University of Wyoming, USA b Charles Sturt University, Australia
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To cite this Article Kidwell, Linda A. and Kent, Jenny(2008) 'Integrity at a Distance: A Study of Academic Misconduct
among University Students on and off Campus', Accounting Education, 17: 1, S3 — S16
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Accounting Education: an international journal
Vol. 17, Supplement, S3 – S16, September 2008
Integrity at a Distance: A Study of
Academic Misconduct among University
Students on and off Campus
LINDA A. KIDWELL and JENNY KENT
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University of Wyoming, USA,
Charles Sturt University, Australia
Received: July 2006
Revised: February 2007; October 2007; February 2008
Accepted: February 2008
ABSTRACT Academic integrity and misconduct have been the subject of increased interest in
universities and for the public at large. Many studies have examined cheating behaviours to
determine which forms of misconduct are most prevalent, which students perceive to be most
serious, which academic disciplines have higher cheating rates, and what factors influence a
student’s propensity to cheat. Such research has taken place in traditional colleges and
universities where students study on campus and have regular contact with other students and
educators. However, the increasing popularity of distance education has raised new concerns
over academic integrity among students not on campus. This paper reports on a study that
explored academic misconduct amongst the student cohort at an Australian university with an
extensive distance education program. Using a survey instrument previously developed in the
USA, students were asked about a number of types of academic misconduct, their prevalence, and
their seriousness. The study found that distance students are far less likely to engage in academic
misconduct. Reasons for this finding are explored within the paper.
KEY WORDS : Distance education, academic integrity, cheating, Australian education
Introduction
Plagiarist student set to sue University: Mr Gunn, 21 claims that he was unaware that his
activity—cutting and pasting material from the Internet without attribution—constituted plagiarism and argues that the university failed to give proper guidance on acceptable research
techniques. He says the University should have spotted the problem earlier through more
careful marking and tuition and nipped it in the bud before it became too late to save his
degree. (The Times Higher Education Supplement, 27 May 2004.)
Academic integrity can be broadly defined as conducting academic work with integrity,
whether it be taking an examination without unauthorized assistance, giving credit to
Correspondence Address: Linda A. Kidwell, Accounting Department, University of Wyoming, 1000
E. University Avenue, Department 3275, Laramie, WY 82071, USA. Email: lkidwell@uwyo.edu
0963-9284 Print/1468-4489 Online/08/S10003–14 # 2008 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/09639280802044568
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S4 L. A. Kidwell and J. Kent
sources, or not taking credit for co-authorship without making meaningful contributions. The list of potential misconduct seems to grow longer over time, and technology has changed the methods used in misconduct. The problem of academic
misconduct has received increasing attention from academic researchers in the USA
over the last 20 years, and the issue is a growing concern in Europe, Australia and
elsewhere. Accounting educators should be particularly concerned about academic misconduct in this era of increased attention to accounting ethics, in that prior research
has found that the lack of academic integrity in the university years is associated
with failures of professional integrity in the workplace (e.g. McCabe et al., 1996;
Sims, 1993).
Individuals have different perceptions of what is acceptable and what is dishonest. As
students prepare for future employment, what they learn as acceptable behaviour during
their course of study may well inform their expectations of acceptable behaviour in
their professional lives. James et al. (2002) pose four strategies (underpinned by ensuring
fairness) for minimizing plagiarism: policies, procedures and staff practices; student education; assessment design; and highly visible procedures for monitoring and detection.
The extensive work of Donald McCabe has focused instead on student ownership of academic integrity on campus using honour code systems and other student-run judicial
practices.
Prior research on academic misconduct has been carried out in the context of traditional campus-centred colleges and universities. However, with the explosion of distance education, the time has come for the investigation of cheating in such programs.
By 2004, over 20% of students enrolled in Australian universities took some or all of
their classes through distance means (Commonwealth Department of Education,
Science, and Training, 2005). According to the US Department of Education, by the
year 2000, the last year for which official comprehensive data are available, 56% of all
American colleges1 and universities offered distance education courses, and 90 per
cent of public universities offered distance courses (Tabs, 2003). Further, while there
were approximately 15.3 million students in American colleges, there were 3 million
class enrolments in distance classes (Tabs, 2003). By 1999, over 40,000 were enrolled
in radio and television universities in China (China National Tourism Administration,
2002). In addition, a recent study by Hezel Associates predicts fast growth for American
universities in the distance education markets in South Korea, Japan, Germany, the UK,
China, and Taiwan (Carnevale, 2005). Of particular interest to accounting educators, a
2004 survey found that online education is more pervasive in business disciplines,
especially at the baccalaureate and master’s levels, than in any other disciplines (Allen
and Seaman, 2005).
When colleges enter the distance market, one of the first barriers to overcome is
the apprehension of faculty about the potential for cheating among distance students
(Carnevale, 1999). Popular opinion on the ease of online and other distance cheating is
mixed. Rowe (2004) claims that cheating is easier for distance students, because the
student cannot be seen, increasing the temptation to cheat. Rowe also believes that distance students have less commitment to the integrity of the learning process, because
the traditions of campuses are lacking and the students are more likely to have job and
family pressures. Others have disputed this notion. Carnevale (1999) believes that the
potential for cheating is equivalent in distance and traditional classes, and Roach (2001)
expects cheating to be far more rampant in the traditional classroom. Roach notes that
online education has evolved in such a way as to minimize cheating, though his reasoning
is supported by the debatable contention that online classes are much smaller, thus,
instructors get to know the styles of their individual students better.
Integrity at a Distance S5
This paper seeks to shed light on the relative attitudes among distance and internal
students toward cheating. A study using McCabe and Trevin˜o’s (1993) method of students’ self-reports was conducted at an Australian university with an extensive distance
program so that data, rather than conjecture, could address this important emerging
issue. The next section of this paper will review prior research in the area of academic
integrity. The study itself will be described, and finally the results and their implications
will be discussed.
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Prior Research in Academic Integrity
Academic integrity has been explored in a number of ways, but perhaps the most cited literature in this area stems from the collaboration of Donald McCabe, founder of the Center
for Academic Integrity, and Linda Trevin˜o and Kenneth Butterfield. In their first study,
McCabe and Trevin˜o (1993) provided a list of potential cheating behaviours to students
at 31 universities in a mailed questionnaire. Students were asked whether they considered
the behaviours to be cheating and how often they had engaged in the behaviours.2 Items in
the survey included cheating in tests by copying from other students, allowing others to
copy, getting information from students who had taken the examination earlier, and
using test notes. Various forms of plagiarism were also included, as were other behaviours,
such as collaboration without permission and falsifying bibliographies or lab reports. So
how serious a problem was student cheating? Approximately 72% of students in the
survey admitted to cheating in one or more of the ways listed at least once. Cheating
reported in other national and single institution surveys in the USA over the past 15
years have ranged from 57% to 78% (e.g. McCabe and Trevin˜o, 1995; Diekhoff et al.,
1996; Kidwell et al., 2003).
Both individual and contextual factors have been found to have a bearing on student
cheating. McCabe and Trevin˜o (1993) found that perceptions of peer behaviour were a
very significant factor in cheating. Students at colleges with low rates of cheating generally believed that peers would be very disapproving of cheating, whereas students at
schools with higher rates generally had an ‘us versus them’ mentality. In another study,
McCabe and Trevin˜o (1997) found that the contextual factors influencing misconduct
were cheating among peers, peer disapproval of cheating, fraternity/sorority membership,
and the perceived penalties for cheating. They also found that individual factors (including
age, gender, and grade point average) were related to cheating.
Diekhoff et al. (1996) found that lack of maturity was the most important factor in
cheating. Those who were more mature (i.e. older, married, and financially independent
of their parents) were less likely to cheat. Similarly, Antion and Michael (1983) found
that age was negatively correlated with cheating, whereas individual personality traits
did not appear to influence cheating.
Most of the studies of academic integrity have been conducted in the USA, but increasing
numbers of studies have taken place elsewhere. Cheating is a common international
phenomenon, although cultural norms and students’ attitudes may be quite different.
Perhaps this is illustrated most vividly by the fact that, in 2005, a museum at Cherepovets
State University in Russia held an exhibit of cheating artefacts, including such items as
women’s underwear with logarithms and mathematical formulae penned upside down
for the wearer to read, jeans with numbered pockets containing answers to examination
questions received in advance, and a display wall covered with cheat sheets (MacWilliams,
2005).
Brimble and Stevenson-Clarke (2005b) investigated cheating in Australian universities.
Their research was in keeping with that of McCabe and Trevin˜o (1993), investigating
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S6 L. A. Kidwell and J. Kent
similar questions such as the types of cheating which students considered to be serious,
types they committed most, and how faculty’s perceptions differed from those of students.
They found that 72% of students admitted to cheating and 95% had never reported another
student for cheating. Similar to the results of Diekhoff et al. (1996), Brimble and StevensonClarke (2005a) found the most common student rationalizations for cheating blamed the
faculty, such as the assessment being too difficult or time-consuming, as well as being
unlikely to get caught.
McCabe and Trevin˜o (1995) found that business students were more likely to cheat than
students from other disciplines were, but few studies have compared accounting students
directly with others. Accounting students alone were the focus of a study by Ameen et al.
(1996). Surprisingly, a majority of the accounting students surveyed did not believe that
paying someone else to write a paper, writing papers for others, or falsifying bibliographies constituted serious cheating. In bad news for academics requiring increasing
group work, over two thirds of students did not believe free riding on group members
was cheating. In a related study, Salter et al. (2001) compared students in the UK to
those from the USA in the original Ameen et al. (1996) study. Salter et al. (2001)
found that, although accounting students in the UK were more tolerant of cheating and
more cynical, they tended to cheat less. They also found gender to be a significant
factor, with men cheating more than women do.
Nowell and Laufer (1997) compared cheating behaviour among students majoring in
accounting, business administration, computer information systems, and economics.
They found that courses taught by adjunct faculty had more prevalent cheating than
those taught by core faculty, and computer information systems students were more likely
to cheat than the others were. Accountants, however, did not differ significantly from any
of the other groups. In a scenario-based study of cheating, Brimble and Stevenson-Clarke
(2005c) compared accounting students to others at four Australian universities. Accounting
students did not differ from others in general, but in five of the 25 scenarios, significant
differences were found. Accountants were significantly more likely to blame their cheating
on perceived pressure to get good grades, whereas non-accounting students were more likely
either to blame the assignment for being too time-consuming or to claim they did not know
what they did was wrong.
As noted in the Introduction, there are mixed opinions about the susceptibility of distance education to academic misconduct, but there have been very few published
papers that go beyond opinion and speculation. A case study of distance learners in a
high school foreign language lab involved regular observations of students in a remote
classroom connected by television (Fyock and Sitphin, 1995). The authors found that
the students believed that distance gave them more responsibility, thus they took more
ownership of their studies, leading to higher standards of academic integrity. However,
these students knew they were being observed, and they were not asked directly about
cheating, therefore this case study cannot be considered strong evidence of improved
integrity in distance education.
The only other study of distance learning and cheating that could be identified in an
extensive search was one by Kennedy et al. (2000), which studied perceptions, rather
than self-reports, of cheating. The majority of participants in the study, both students
and faculty, believed cheating would be easier in a distance education class. However,
among those students who had actually taken a distance course, opinion was evenly
split as to whether distance or traditional classes made it easier to cheat. Likewise, once
faculty had experience teaching by distance, their fears of the prevalence of cheating
declined. Experience with online education alters other opinions as well. A small majority
(54%) of American university leaders without online experience expect online study to
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Integrity at a Distance S7
require more self-discipline, but the proportion rises to 70% among those having actual
experience of online education (Allen and Seaman, 2005).
As the literature above illustrates, cheating in college is rampant, and many explanations have been offered as to why this is so. Individual and environmental factors
have demonstrated explanatory value in understanding both faculty’s perceptions and students’ behaviour. Although the background literature provides mixed evidence of what we
should expect when comparing distance and traditional students, a number of factors lead
us to expect less cheating amongst distance students. First, distance education is designed
for people who cannot attend a campus-based university because they are working, have
family responsibilities, or have other demands that make relocation difficult. Thus, they
are likely to be older, and older students have been found to cheat less (e.g. McCabe
and Trevin˜o, 1997; Antion and Michael, 1983). Rowe’s (2004) speculation about lack
of commitment notwithstanding, distance students may be more mature and financially
responsible for their higher educations, another indicator of reduced cheating (Diekhoff
et al., 1996). Finally, distance students do not have the same opportunities to join
campus-based groups, such as fraternities and clubs, where cheating norms may
develop (Eve and Bromley, 1981). Therefore, we propose the following four hypotheses:
H1:Distance students cheat less than traditional students do.
H2:Distance students engage in more serious cheating at a lower rate than traditional
students.
H3:Distance students perceive cheating to be more serious than do traditional students.
H4:Distance students and traditional students do not respond in the same way to the cheating which they observe.
Research Method
This study took place at a university in New South Wales, Australia, with three suburban
and rural campuses. The university has a long history of distance education programs, and
currently there are approximately twice as many distance students as internal students. The
study was conducted using self-report questionnaires modelled after those of McCabe and
Trevin˜o (1993). A total of 1500 surveys were sent to students in the mail, with approximately 1000 going to distance students and 500 to internal students, reflecting the relative
proportions of enrolment at the university. The list of students was randomly generated,
subject to the condition that each of the five faculties (schools) within the university
was represented roughly equally. Although there were distance-students enrolled in
countries around the world, including a large Indonesian contingent, only students with
Australian mailing addresses were solicited so that return postage could be provided
with the instrument. A second request was sent to non-respondents, resulting in an
overall response of 459 usable surveys, or a 32% response rate.3 There were 210 responses
from internal students and 248 from distance students.
The survey asked students whether they had committed any of 17 listed cheating behaviours listed in Table 1, as well as how serious they believed the behaviours were. In
reporting the frequency of their own cheating, students responded on a three-point scale
of ‘never,’ ‘once,’ or ‘more than once.’ They were also asked to rate the seriousness of
each on a three-point scale of ‘not cheating,’ ‘trivial cheating,’ and ‘serious cheating.’
In surveys of self-reported cheating, the possibility exists that students will be afraid to
answer honestly, although prior researchers (e.g. McCabe et al., 1996) have found little
difficulty in eliciting confessions from subjects. We attempted to mitigate their concerns
S8 L. A. Kidwell and J. Kent
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Table 1. Cheating behaviours
†
†
†
†
†
†
†
†
†
†
†
†
†
†
†
†
†
Copying from another student during a test (or examination) without his or her knowledge.
Copying from another student during a test or examination with his or her knowledge.
Using unpermitted notes during a test or examination.
Getting questions or answers from someone who has already taken a test or examination.
Helping someone else cheat in a test or examination.
Cheating in a test or examination in any other way.
Copying material, almost word for word, from any source and turning it in as your own work.
Fabricating or falsifying a bibliography.
Turning in work done by someone else.
Receiving substantial, unpermitted help on an assignment.
Working on an assignment with others when the lecturer asked for individual work.
Copying a few sentences of material without footnoting them in an assignment.
Writing or providing an assignment for another student.
Turning in an assignment purchased from an assignment ‘mill’ or website.
Plagiarizing an assignment in any way using the Internet as a source.
In a subject requiring computer work, copying another student’s program rather than doing your
own.
Falsifying lab. or research data.
by providing a covering letter explaining the protections to their identities as well as
contact information for the human subject ethics committee.
Students were also asked what they would do if they saw someone cheating, how they
felt about environmental factors that might lead to cheating, why they might consider
cheating, and what they thought the penalties would be. Students were also asked for
demographic information. Finally, there were some open-ended questions as well as questions about the potential development of an honour code.
Results
The most common types of cheating were collaborating on individual assignments,
copying a few sentences without footnoting, fabricating a bibliography, copying material
word for word and turning it in as one’s own work, and plagiarizing using the Internet. The
least frequent were using unpermitted test notes and purchasing term papers from a paper
mill site.4 Only nine students said they had used test notes, and of these, only two said they
had done so more than once. The grave concern faculty have about paper mills has led to
the development of Turnitin.com and other expensive plagiarism detection software, so it
is perhaps surprising that only two students admitted using them, though this is in keeping
with the findings of Kidwell et al. (2003).
To get a measure of the overall cheating rate, a dichotomous version of each of the
cheating frequency variables was created (i.e. 0 if they had never done it, 1 if they had
done it ‘once’ or ‘more than once.’) The 17 cheating frequency variables were summed
to create a continuous variable from 0 if they had never cheated to 17 if they had
cheated at least once in each of the ways listed in the survey. Of the internal students,
78% had non-zero scores, meaning they had cheated at least once. By contrast, only
35% of the distance students reported they had ever cheated. The mean for the internal
group was 2.86, meaning they had cheated in more than two different ways at least
once. The mean overall score for the distance students was significantly lower5 at 0.64,
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Integrity at a Distance S9
or between never cheating and cheating in only one way. Clearly, cheating was a much
bigger problem among internal students than among distance students, supporting
Hypothesis 1.
Cheating on individual behaviours was also compared between groups using Pearson’s
Chi-Square.6 Of the 17 behaviours listed, only two did not show differences between the
groups. These were the very infrequent behaviours noted above. The remaining 15 behaviours showed significant (P , 0.01) differences between groups, with chi-square tests of
group differences giving P-values of less than 0.001 for 14 of the 15 behaviours. More
internal than distance students admitted to each of the individual types of cheating
included in the survey.
As noted earlier in the paper, prior research has indicated that age (e.g. Diekhoff et al.,
1996) and gender (e.g. McCabe and Trevin˜o, 1997) are related to cheating rates, although
results on gender differences have been mixed. The demographics of the two study mode
groups were significantly different on both of these variables. The average age of distance
students was 35.8 years, whilst the average age of internal students was 22.4 years. In
addition, the percentage of distance students who were female was 78.2%, whereas the
percentage amongst internal students was 68.4%. Therefore, a hierarchical regression
model was run on the aggregated cheating measure, controlling for age and gender by
forcing them into the model first. Adding study mode to the regression model led to a significant improvement in R2 (F ¼ 31.700, P , 0.001). The regression model is presented in
Table 2. We conclude that study mode itself explains differential rates of cheating beyond
the influence of age or gender.
Of course, some of the behaviours with significant differences are just more difficult
for a distance student from a logistical standpoint. For example, collaboration is easy for
internal students, but for distance students who only know others in the class through
official class Internet discussion pages, collaborating on assignments requires contacting
a likely stranger and taking a risk of exposure. Even though students are unlikely to
report each other, the lack of personal relationships probably makes the perceived risk
higher. This would also be true for getting early information on an examination,
receiving substantial help on an assignment, or helping someone else cheat. However,
there are also significant differences between groups where the lack of personal
contact would not be a factor, including various degrees of plagiarism and data or
bibliography falsification.
Table 2. Results of regression model for all cheating behaviours
Variable
b
b
S.E.
a
20.264
0.092
20.058
0.468
3.993
0.012
0.209
0.297
20.308
20.690
0.123
Age
Genderb
Constanta
Step 1 D R2a
Study modea
Step 2 D R2a
Model Fa
Adjusted R2a
n
a
P , 0.001
b
P ¼ 0.026
0.237
0.052
58.848
0.284
437
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S10 L. A. Kidwell and J. Kent
In a further refinement of their analysis, McCabe et al. (2001) developed scales for
serious test cheating and serious cheating on written work. Serious test cheating comprised
copying other students in examinations, either with or without their knowledge, using test
notes, and helping someone else cheat in an examination. When considering only students
at non-honour code schools, they found 47% had engaged in serious test cheating. Using
this same definition, 20% of the internal students in this study were serious test cheaters,
whereas only 2% of distance students were, a significant difference.7 Both sets of students
in this study take examinations under closely invigilated circumstances, although the
lower numbers for distance students may reflect the fact that several of the distance
courses use only written assignments and no examinations. Therefore, the opportunities
to cheat in tests are reduced.
Serious cheating on written assignments was defined by McCabe et al. (2001) as substantial plagiarism, fabricating a bibliography, turning in work done by others, and
copying a few sentences without footnoting. Their study found that 58% of students at
non-honour code schools had committed serious cheating on written assignments. Far
more students in both categories of this study were serious cheaters on written assignments
than in examinations, though distance students cheated significantly less.8 Internal students cheated at a rate of 62%, and even distance students cheated at the rate of 25%.
This increase for distance students may reflect both the increased opportunity relative to
tests, as well as the perceived seriousness of the infractions (particularly copying a few
sentences, as will be discussed shortly). Since a higher proportion of internal students
than distance students engage in serious cheating, Hypothesis 2 is supported in both the
test and written assignment domains.9
Students were also asked how serious the 17 cheating behaviours were. One would hope
that the most serious forms were committed least frequently, and this was indeed the
general rule. For example, the three behaviours considered most serious by the students
were turning in a paper purchased from a paper mill, using unpermitted test notes, and
turning in work done by someone else. Very few internal and no distance students committed these offences. Alternatively, the behaviours considered least serious by both
groups were collaborating on work that was supposed to be done individually, copying
a few sentences without footnoting them, and fabricating a bibliography, and these
were more common, especially for internal students. Copying a few sentences without
footnoting is perhaps the least understood problem among students. Most faculties
would consider this plagiarism, but the majority of students consider this only trivial
cheating. Over half of the internal students reported cheating this way, and 20% of distance students did so as well.
Both groups’ views were more similar as to the seriousness of different forms of cheating. On balance, the distance students tended to view the potential cheating behaviours
more seriously, supporting Hypothesis 3, but results were mixed, with no differences
between them for seven of the 17 behaviours. None the less, there were some interesting
divergences. Although the majority of both groups considered collaboration on individual
work to be trivial cheating, 39% of distance students thought it was serious, whereas 27%
of internal students thought it was not cheating at all. When it came to plagiarism, 91% of
internal students thought buying a paper from a mill was serious cheating, yet when it
came to copying substantial material word for word and turning it as their own, only
66% thought it was serious (30% considered this only trivial cheating). By contrast, distance students were more consistent in their understanding of plagiarism, with 94% rating
using paper mills as serious versus 82% for substantial copying.
Despite general consensus on the major cheating behaviours, there were notable exceptions, including these comments from one student:
Integrity at a Distance S11
Writing an assignment for someone else is not cheating. The other guy is cheating!
Actually I’m not so sure about exams—they aren’t really a test of knowledge or ability to
learn, but ability to memorize.
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In fact, the ability to cheat effectively can be a good indicator of creative intelligence—a
somewhat desirable trait—but not a good indicator of honesty or “rule following.”10
In addition to specific behaviours in which they might have engaged, students were
asked what they would do if they saw someone cheating in an examination or were
aware of someone cheating on a major written assignment. They were also asked how
their responses would differ if the cheater were a close friend. These results are presented
in Tables 3 and 4.
As Table 3 demonstrates, a majority of students in each group would neither report
cheating nor ask the cheater to turn in himself or herself. However, few students would
ignore the incident altogether. Internal students are less likely to report cheating than distance students, which makes sense, given that internal students have a more lax attitude
toward cheating in general. Not surprisingly, both groups are significantly less likely to
turn in a friend than just another student. It is also interesting to note the power of
gossip: mentioning the incident to other students but not reporting it to anyone in authority
was the most common response by internal students in general, yet this was the secondleast frequent response if the cheater were a friend.
Responses to knowing that someone had cheated on a major written assignment were
also investigated. These results are in Table 4. It is clear that students have stronger negative reactions to test cheating than cheating on assignments. A much smaller percentage of
each group would report it to the lecturer. As in test cheating, distance students are actually
more likely to ask a friend than a stranger to turn in himself or herself. Students in both
groups are also more likely to ignore the incident than in the case of test cheating.
In both the test and written assignment cheating scenarios, there were significant differences between what distance and internal students thought they would do, seeming to
support Hypothesis 4. However, hypothetical responses (What would you do if . . .?)
must also be considered in the light of actual experience.
Students were asked if they had ever witnessed cheating in tests, examinations or
assignments. Of the responses received, 11.4% reported having witnessed cheating behaviours but only 0.6% of respondents had ever reported another student for cheating in a test
or examination. This means that, of those who had witnessed cheating, only 5% had
reported it. A higher proportion of students (30%) were aware of a student cheating in
Table 3. Student responses to observed cheating in examinations
Report to the lecturer
Ask student to self-report
Express disapproval but not report
Mention to other students
Ignore the incident
Other
a
Internala
(n ¼ 210)
Distance
(n ¼ 248)
Internal:
A friendb
Distance:
A friend
21.4%
16.7%
20.0%
28.6%
11.0%
2.4%
35.2%
11.8%
18.6%
14.6%
12.6%
1.6%
4.9%
23.8%
51.0%
6.8%
11.7%
1.9%
8.7%
28.2%
50.2%
1.7%
9.5%
1.7%
Internal and distance are significantly different (x2 ¼ 18.790, P ¼ 0.002).
Internal and distance marginally different (x2 ¼ 11.025, P ¼ 0.051).
b
S12 L. A. Kidwell and J. Kent
Table 4. Student responses to cheating in written assignments
Report to the lecturer
Ask student to self-report
Express disapproval but not report
Mention to other students
Ignore the incident
Other
Internala
(n ¼ 210)
Distance
(n ¼ 248)
Internal:
A friendb
Distance:
A friend
11.1%
13.9%
30.3%
26.9%
15.9%
1.9%
16.7%
16.3%
37.0%
11.0%
15.9%
3.3%
2.9%
11.2%
54.6%
9.8%
20.5%
1.0%
6.7%
19.6%
55.0%
2.5%
14.2%
2.1%
a
Internal and distance are significantly different (x2 ¼ 20.838, P ¼ 0.001).
Internal and distance are significantly different (x2 ¼ 21.460, P ¼ 0.001).
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b
an assignment, and of those, 6% had reported it. These reporting rates are noticeably lower
than Tables 3 and 4 suggest. Furthermore, there was no significant difference between
study mode groups when it came to actual reporting experience. The contradiction
between ‘What would you do?’ and actual behaviour makes it impossible to conclude
that Hypothesis 4 is supported.
For both cheating response questions, many students wrote additional comments in the
margins, especially those who would not report the cheater. These comments included,
‘wait for them to be caught by authorities,’ ‘depends on reasons for cheating too.
Maybe student deserved a pass but he got a rough deal from lecturer,’ and, ‘one little question—not interested. Constant cheating—I would report him/her to the lecturer or appropriate authority.’ Several noted that real friends would not put them in the position of
knowing about their cheating. In a separate question, students identified the primary
reasons why they might have difficulty in reporting an incident of cheating they had
observed. A number of students felt the behaviour of others was none of their business:
I have no desire to cause problems for others—as much as I would resent someone getting
unfair grades, I always tell my children you can’t always worry about what others do/
don’t do, worry about your own behaviour.
I don’t believe it is my business to do so. Exam supervisors and lecturers should check this.
Among the concerns expressed was a fear of being wrong and losing friends, not
wanting to jump to conclusions, and the possible negative consequences of peers
finding out you had ‘dobbed’:
I can’t tolerate cheating, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable “dobbing”
on another student. They would have to carry the guilt of their cheating which could be a punishment in itself.
It runs against much in Australian (Anglo) culture. “Don’t dob in a mate”.
Others were reticent to report because of the perceived indifference of academic staff:
Lecturer doesn’t really care (has happened before). Everybody else ignoring the incident,
accepting it and not reporting.
The fact that so many courses are fee-driven means that lecturers are reticent to fail anyone.
Rather a mockery don’t you think?
Finally, students could also rationalize cheating in some situations:
Integrity at a Distance S13
Repercussions—harsh uni solutions may not take into account full life situations, learning by
experience and second chance for student. Some of them are just stupid and scared, others are
not.
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The person may have valid reasons behind the incident, e.g., family issues. They have not felt
comfortable talking to . . . staff for consideration.
Students were asked what factors might influence their decisions whether or not to do
honest academic work. Both groups had similar rankings among the factors given. The
three most important factors were penalties for cheating, the chance of getting caught,
and faculty policies on academic integrity. The moderately important factors were the
pressure to get good grades, getting behind in their work, and the university workload.
Of least importance were family pressures and the fact that ‘others do it.’ It is interesting
that 73% said it was not important if others cheated, which contradicts the common notion
that students cheat because others do, thus they have to cheat to keep up. It is also inconsistent with McCabe and Trevin˜o’s (1993) finding that students at honour code schools
cheat less, in part because the culture at those schools does not support it. The truth
may be that students do not perceive peer pressures as influencing their own decisions
whether or not to cheat, when in fact they do.
Finally, students were asked about the potential of an honour code. McCabe and
Trevin˜o (1993) have found convincing evidence that the presence of an honour code
has a significant impact in reducing cheating at American universities and, as a result,
there has been an increase in the number of schools with such a code. There are currently
approximately 270 American universities with codes (Dodd, 2007), and over 390 are
members of the Center for Academic Integrity, an organization that has a heavy focus
on helping others develop honour codes and other mechanisms to deal with cheating
(Center for Academic Integrity, 2006).
Since honour codes are not common in Australia, the survey provided a brief description
of honour codes.11 Over 74% of the students, participating in the study reported they had
not heard of honour codes before. Given the description, students were asked how important potential outcomes of an honour code would be. The most important outcome was
honest behaviour, followed by mutual trust between lecturers and students. Less important
were the prospect of uninvigilated examinations or a student-run judicial board. Internal
and distance students had similar responses to honour codes with the exception that
increased personal responsibility was more important to distance students. There were
no significant differences between groups as to the drawbacks of honour codes, such as
the responsibility to turn others in.
Conclusions
Culturally, the USA and Australia are very similar (Hofstede, 2006), thus one could expect
academic misconduct patterns to be quite similar between countries. This was indeed the
case, as the percentage of students cheating in this study was within the range of results of
American studies. As in prior research, more students admitted to engaging in behaviours
they considered less serious, unpermitted collaboration was one of the most frequent types
of cheating, and very few students said they had used online term paper mills.
What makes this paper unique in its contribution to the literature is the study of distance
students. Writers have offered conjecture as to the cheating proclivities of distance students, and educators have expressed concern over academic misconduct when students
are not seen face to face, but this is the first study we know of that actually uses wellestablished research techniques to address this issue.
Downloaded By: [Monash University] At: 01:36 14 December 2009
S14 L. A. Kidwell and J. Kent
The distance students reported considerably less cheating than did traditional students in
every behaviour category. They also had harsher views of various cheating behaviours and
were more likely to claim they would turn in known offenders. These findings have many
potential explanations. First, prior research (e.g. Diekhoff et al., 1996) has shown that
more mature students (older, paying their own way, married, etc.) cheat less. Although
the internal students placed more importance on workload and family pressures as
excuses for cheating than did distance students, it is likely that distance students face
more of these pressures in actuality. Therefore, it may be true that distance students,
because they are older and more mature, are swayed less by external factors than by
their own moral codes.
Internal students are also more susceptible to the temporary social groups of universities, where culture control may result in students’ rejection of general society’s norms
in favour of the norms of subcultures, such as student organizations and sports clubs
(Eve and Bromley, 1981). Since distance students have very little, if any, interaction
with other students, longer-term general socialisation may prevail, leading to lower cheating rates.
Whatever the root causes of the differences between internal and distance students, be
they maturity, lack of campus socialisation, or lack of opportunity, the distance students in
this survey were far less engaged in academic dishonesty. This finding should put educators at ease as they contemplate moving into distance education delivery. Of course this
research only surveyed students at one university in Australia, thus it may not be generalisable to a broader set of universities. However, the similarity between the results for
internal students and the findings of past research, as well as the cultural similarities
between Australia and the USA, lead us to believe these results can guide academics in
both countries. It is less clear whether these findings can be generalised to countries
that are less similar culturally, as cheating norms in countries including Croatia, Russia,
Israel, Turkey, and the Netherlands have demonstrated different attitudes toward cheating
(e.g. Hrabek et al., 2004; Magnus et al., 2002; Arzova and Kidwell, 2004). Therefore,
instructors in Australia or the USA involved in distance education should inform themselves as to cultural norms elsewhere, so that adequate safeguards can be utilised.
Of course the possibility of dishonest self-reports of cheating must be considered. It is
possible that the distance students, because they were less likely to have developed personal relationships with their university instructors, were less trusting of the survey
process and thus afraid to answer honestly. However, even the internal students were
very unlikely to have had any contact with the researchers. Both were on the staff in
the business faculty at one of the three campuses, thus the maximum number of the
1500 survey recipients that would have had any familiarity with the researchers would
have been 100 if every internal business student randomly selected was located at that
campus and enrolled in the same course of study. All subjects received the survey in
the mail with the covering letter, thus, there was no difference in either the instrument
received or the way in which it was administered between groups.
Another potential limitation of this study is the possibility of non-response bias. This
bias would normally be tested by comparing those who responded to the first request to
those who responded to the second request. The comparison was not possible in this
study, because the university’s human subjects committee required a change in the handling of returned surveys mid-stream, making it impossible for the researchers to determine
which surveys should be classified as first or second requests. Since the results of this study
were similar to those in the USA in other measures, and those studies reported no nonresponse bias (e.g. McCabe and Trevin˜o, 1997), we do not expect a test for bias would
cast doubt on our findings.
Integrity at a Distance S15
Acknowledgements
This research project was funded by a grant from the Scholarship in Teaching Fund of
Charles Sturt University, Australia, and presented at the 10th IAAER World Congress
of Accounting Educators, Istanbul, Turkey in November 2006.
Notes
A copy of the instrument used in the study on which this paper reports can be obtained on
request from the corresponding author.
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1
In Australia, colleges are private schools at the primary or secondary level. In the USA, colleges, like
universities, are 2- or 4-year post-secondary institutions. The American usage is employed in this paper.
2
In early versions of the questionnaire, social desirability bias was tested, but results indicated that under
conditions of anonymity, students were not reluctant to answer truthfully about their behaviour
(McCabe, personal communication with first author, September 1999).
3
Our best approximation of the response rates are 25% for distance students and 41% for internal students.
However, this is based on how the students categorized themselves, which does not correspond exactly with
how the university categorized them. More precise response rates are not known due to a change from confidentiality to anonymity procedures demanded by the human subject ethics committee mid-stream.
4
Paper mills are web sites where students can purchase term papers on a wide variety of topics. Virtually any
topic is available through one or another of these sites.
5
Levene’s test for equality of variances showed unequal variances. The t statistic for independent samples
with unequal variances was 11.4000, with a P-value ,0.0001.
6
Initial tests were performed using the three ordinal responses. In cases where cell frequencies were low
enough to violate chi-square data requirements, the variables were converted to dichotomous variables
(never cheated or cheated at least once).
7
Pearson’s x2 ¼ 37.331, P , 0.0001.
8
Pearson’s x2 ¼ 62.923, P , 0.0001.
9
These findings were also verified through regression analysis controlling for age and gender.
10
Incidentally, this same student did not think honour codes were necessary because, ‘I don’t need an honour
code personally. I have my own set of checks and balances.’
11
The description was as follows: ‘Briefly, an honour code is student-driven code of ethics for students, in
which they agree not to cheat or commit other acts of academic misconduct. Honour codes usually
involve a student-run judiciary for violations. Rather than lecturers handling individual cases alone, all
cases are turned over to the student honour board for investigation and, if appropriate, penalties. Such
cases are always handled with confidentiality. An honour code may require all students to sign a pledge
to be honest, and it may or may not require students to report cases of academic misconduct they have
observed. Examinations may or may not be invigilated [proctored].’
References
Allen, I. E. and Seaman, J. (2005) Growing by Degrees: Online Education in the United States, 2005 (Needham,
MA: Sloan Consortium). Available at http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/survey/pdf/growing_by_de
grees.pdf (accessed 17 July 2006).
Ameen, E. C. et al. (1996) Accounting students’ perceptions of questionable academic practices and factors
affecting their propensity to cheat, Accounting Education: an international journal, 5(3), pp. 191 –205.
Antion, D. L. and Michael, W. B. (1983) Short term predictive validity of demographic, affective, personal, and
cognitive variables in relation to two criterion measures of cheating behaviours, Educational and Psychological Measurement, 43(2), pp. 467–482.
Arzova, S. B. and Kidwell, L. A. (2004) The ethical behaviours of final year Turkish accountancy students compared with their Australian and Irish counte
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Integrity at a Distance: A Study of Academic Misconduct among
University Students on and off Campus
Linda A. Kidwell a; Jenny Kent b
University of Wyoming, USA b Charles Sturt University, Australia
a
To cite this Article Kidwell, Linda A. and Kent, Jenny(2008) 'Integrity at a Distance: A Study of Academic Misconduct
among University Students on and off Campus', Accounting Education, 17: 1, S3 — S16
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Accounting Education: an international journal
Vol. 17, Supplement, S3 – S16, September 2008
Integrity at a Distance: A Study of
Academic Misconduct among University
Students on and off Campus
LINDA A. KIDWELL and JENNY KENT
Downloaded By: [Monash University] At: 01:36 14 December 2009
University of Wyoming, USA,
Charles Sturt University, Australia
Received: July 2006
Revised: February 2007; October 2007; February 2008
Accepted: February 2008
ABSTRACT Academic integrity and misconduct have been the subject of increased interest in
universities and for the public at large. Many studies have examined cheating behaviours to
determine which forms of misconduct are most prevalent, which students perceive to be most
serious, which academic disciplines have higher cheating rates, and what factors influence a
student’s propensity to cheat. Such research has taken place in traditional colleges and
universities where students study on campus and have regular contact with other students and
educators. However, the increasing popularity of distance education has raised new concerns
over academic integrity among students not on campus. This paper reports on a study that
explored academic misconduct amongst the student cohort at an Australian university with an
extensive distance education program. Using a survey instrument previously developed in the
USA, students were asked about a number of types of academic misconduct, their prevalence, and
their seriousness. The study found that distance students are far less likely to engage in academic
misconduct. Reasons for this finding are explored within the paper.
KEY WORDS : Distance education, academic integrity, cheating, Australian education
Introduction
Plagiarist student set to sue University: Mr Gunn, 21 claims that he was unaware that his
activity—cutting and pasting material from the Internet without attribution—constituted plagiarism and argues that the university failed to give proper guidance on acceptable research
techniques. He says the University should have spotted the problem earlier through more
careful marking and tuition and nipped it in the bud before it became too late to save his
degree. (The Times Higher Education Supplement, 27 May 2004.)
Academic integrity can be broadly defined as conducting academic work with integrity,
whether it be taking an examination without unauthorized assistance, giving credit to
Correspondence Address: Linda A. Kidwell, Accounting Department, University of Wyoming, 1000
E. University Avenue, Department 3275, Laramie, WY 82071, USA. Email: lkidwell@uwyo.edu
0963-9284 Print/1468-4489 Online/08/S10003–14 # 2008 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/09639280802044568
Downloaded By: [Monash University] At: 01:36 14 December 2009
S4 L. A. Kidwell and J. Kent
sources, or not taking credit for co-authorship without making meaningful contributions. The list of potential misconduct seems to grow longer over time, and technology has changed the methods used in misconduct. The problem of academic
misconduct has received increasing attention from academic researchers in the USA
over the last 20 years, and the issue is a growing concern in Europe, Australia and
elsewhere. Accounting educators should be particularly concerned about academic misconduct in this era of increased attention to accounting ethics, in that prior research
has found that the lack of academic integrity in the university years is associated
with failures of professional integrity in the workplace (e.g. McCabe et al., 1996;
Sims, 1993).
Individuals have different perceptions of what is acceptable and what is dishonest. As
students prepare for future employment, what they learn as acceptable behaviour during
their course of study may well inform their expectations of acceptable behaviour in
their professional lives. James et al. (2002) pose four strategies (underpinned by ensuring
fairness) for minimizing plagiarism: policies, procedures and staff practices; student education; assessment design; and highly visible procedures for monitoring and detection.
The extensive work of Donald McCabe has focused instead on student ownership of academic integrity on campus using honour code systems and other student-run judicial
practices.
Prior research on academic misconduct has been carried out in the context of traditional campus-centred colleges and universities. However, with the explosion of distance education, the time has come for the investigation of cheating in such programs.
By 2004, over 20% of students enrolled in Australian universities took some or all of
their classes through distance means (Commonwealth Department of Education,
Science, and Training, 2005). According to the US Department of Education, by the
year 2000, the last year for which official comprehensive data are available, 56% of all
American colleges1 and universities offered distance education courses, and 90 per
cent of public universities offered distance courses (Tabs, 2003). Further, while there
were approximately 15.3 million students in American colleges, there were 3 million
class enrolments in distance classes (Tabs, 2003). By 1999, over 40,000 were enrolled
in radio and television universities in China (China National Tourism Administration,
2002). In addition, a recent study by Hezel Associates predicts fast growth for American
universities in the distance education markets in South Korea, Japan, Germany, the UK,
China, and Taiwan (Carnevale, 2005). Of particular interest to accounting educators, a
2004 survey found that online education is more pervasive in business disciplines,
especially at the baccalaureate and master’s levels, than in any other disciplines (Allen
and Seaman, 2005).
When colleges enter the distance market, one of the first barriers to overcome is
the apprehension of faculty about the potential for cheating among distance students
(Carnevale, 1999). Popular opinion on the ease of online and other distance cheating is
mixed. Rowe (2004) claims that cheating is easier for distance students, because the
student cannot be seen, increasing the temptation to cheat. Rowe also believes that distance students have less commitment to the integrity of the learning process, because
the traditions of campuses are lacking and the students are more likely to have job and
family pressures. Others have disputed this notion. Carnevale (1999) believes that the
potential for cheating is equivalent in distance and traditional classes, and Roach (2001)
expects cheating to be far more rampant in the traditional classroom. Roach notes that
online education has evolved in such a way as to minimize cheating, though his reasoning
is supported by the debatable contention that online classes are much smaller, thus,
instructors get to know the styles of their individual students better.
Integrity at a Distance S5
This paper seeks to shed light on the relative attitudes among distance and internal
students toward cheating. A study using McCabe and Trevin˜o’s (1993) method of students’ self-reports was conducted at an Australian university with an extensive distance
program so that data, rather than conjecture, could address this important emerging
issue. The next section of this paper will review prior research in the area of academic
integrity. The study itself will be described, and finally the results and their implications
will be discussed.
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Prior Research in Academic Integrity
Academic integrity has been explored in a number of ways, but perhaps the most cited literature in this area stems from the collaboration of Donald McCabe, founder of the Center
for Academic Integrity, and Linda Trevin˜o and Kenneth Butterfield. In their first study,
McCabe and Trevin˜o (1993) provided a list of potential cheating behaviours to students
at 31 universities in a mailed questionnaire. Students were asked whether they considered
the behaviours to be cheating and how often they had engaged in the behaviours.2 Items in
the survey included cheating in tests by copying from other students, allowing others to
copy, getting information from students who had taken the examination earlier, and
using test notes. Various forms of plagiarism were also included, as were other behaviours,
such as collaboration without permission and falsifying bibliographies or lab reports. So
how serious a problem was student cheating? Approximately 72% of students in the
survey admitted to cheating in one or more of the ways listed at least once. Cheating
reported in other national and single institution surveys in the USA over the past 15
years have ranged from 57% to 78% (e.g. McCabe and Trevin˜o, 1995; Diekhoff et al.,
1996; Kidwell et al., 2003).
Both individual and contextual factors have been found to have a bearing on student
cheating. McCabe and Trevin˜o (1993) found that perceptions of peer behaviour were a
very significant factor in cheating. Students at colleges with low rates of cheating generally believed that peers would be very disapproving of cheating, whereas students at
schools with higher rates generally had an ‘us versus them’ mentality. In another study,
McCabe and Trevin˜o (1997) found that the contextual factors influencing misconduct
were cheating among peers, peer disapproval of cheating, fraternity/sorority membership,
and the perceived penalties for cheating. They also found that individual factors (including
age, gender, and grade point average) were related to cheating.
Diekhoff et al. (1996) found that lack of maturity was the most important factor in
cheating. Those who were more mature (i.e. older, married, and financially independent
of their parents) were less likely to cheat. Similarly, Antion and Michael (1983) found
that age was negatively correlated with cheating, whereas individual personality traits
did not appear to influence cheating.
Most of the studies of academic integrity have been conducted in the USA, but increasing
numbers of studies have taken place elsewhere. Cheating is a common international
phenomenon, although cultural norms and students’ attitudes may be quite different.
Perhaps this is illustrated most vividly by the fact that, in 2005, a museum at Cherepovets
State University in Russia held an exhibit of cheating artefacts, including such items as
women’s underwear with logarithms and mathematical formulae penned upside down
for the wearer to read, jeans with numbered pockets containing answers to examination
questions received in advance, and a display wall covered with cheat sheets (MacWilliams,
2005).
Brimble and Stevenson-Clarke (2005b) investigated cheating in Australian universities.
Their research was in keeping with that of McCabe and Trevin˜o (1993), investigating
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S6 L. A. Kidwell and J. Kent
similar questions such as the types of cheating which students considered to be serious,
types they committed most, and how faculty’s perceptions differed from those of students.
They found that 72% of students admitted to cheating and 95% had never reported another
student for cheating. Similar to the results of Diekhoff et al. (1996), Brimble and StevensonClarke (2005a) found the most common student rationalizations for cheating blamed the
faculty, such as the assessment being too difficult or time-consuming, as well as being
unlikely to get caught.
McCabe and Trevin˜o (1995) found that business students were more likely to cheat than
students from other disciplines were, but few studies have compared accounting students
directly with others. Accounting students alone were the focus of a study by Ameen et al.
(1996). Surprisingly, a majority of the accounting students surveyed did not believe that
paying someone else to write a paper, writing papers for others, or falsifying bibliographies constituted serious cheating. In bad news for academics requiring increasing
group work, over two thirds of students did not believe free riding on group members
was cheating. In a related study, Salter et al. (2001) compared students in the UK to
those from the USA in the original Ameen et al. (1996) study. Salter et al. (2001)
found that, although accounting students in the UK were more tolerant of cheating and
more cynical, they tended to cheat less. They also found gender to be a significant
factor, with men cheating more than women do.
Nowell and Laufer (1997) compared cheating behaviour among students majoring in
accounting, business administration, computer information systems, and economics.
They found that courses taught by adjunct faculty had more prevalent cheating than
those taught by core faculty, and computer information systems students were more likely
to cheat than the others were. Accountants, however, did not differ significantly from any
of the other groups. In a scenario-based study of cheating, Brimble and Stevenson-Clarke
(2005c) compared accounting students to others at four Australian universities. Accounting
students did not differ from others in general, but in five of the 25 scenarios, significant
differences were found. Accountants were significantly more likely to blame their cheating
on perceived pressure to get good grades, whereas non-accounting students were more likely
either to blame the assignment for being too time-consuming or to claim they did not know
what they did was wrong.
As noted in the Introduction, there are mixed opinions about the susceptibility of distance education to academic misconduct, but there have been very few published
papers that go beyond opinion and speculation. A case study of distance learners in a
high school foreign language lab involved regular observations of students in a remote
classroom connected by television (Fyock and Sitphin, 1995). The authors found that
the students believed that distance gave them more responsibility, thus they took more
ownership of their studies, leading to higher standards of academic integrity. However,
these students knew they were being observed, and they were not asked directly about
cheating, therefore this case study cannot be considered strong evidence of improved
integrity in distance education.
The only other study of distance learning and cheating that could be identified in an
extensive search was one by Kennedy et al. (2000), which studied perceptions, rather
than self-reports, of cheating. The majority of participants in the study, both students
and faculty, believed cheating would be easier in a distance education class. However,
among those students who had actually taken a distance course, opinion was evenly
split as to whether distance or traditional classes made it easier to cheat. Likewise, once
faculty had experience teaching by distance, their fears of the prevalence of cheating
declined. Experience with online education alters other opinions as well. A small majority
(54%) of American university leaders without online experience expect online study to
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Integrity at a Distance S7
require more self-discipline, but the proportion rises to 70% among those having actual
experience of online education (Allen and Seaman, 2005).
As the literature above illustrates, cheating in college is rampant, and many explanations have been offered as to why this is so. Individual and environmental factors
have demonstrated explanatory value in understanding both faculty’s perceptions and students’ behaviour. Although the background literature provides mixed evidence of what we
should expect when comparing distance and traditional students, a number of factors lead
us to expect less cheating amongst distance students. First, distance education is designed
for people who cannot attend a campus-based university because they are working, have
family responsibilities, or have other demands that make relocation difficult. Thus, they
are likely to be older, and older students have been found to cheat less (e.g. McCabe
and Trevin˜o, 1997; Antion and Michael, 1983). Rowe’s (2004) speculation about lack
of commitment notwithstanding, distance students may be more mature and financially
responsible for their higher educations, another indicator of reduced cheating (Diekhoff
et al., 1996). Finally, distance students do not have the same opportunities to join
campus-based groups, such as fraternities and clubs, where cheating norms may
develop (Eve and Bromley, 1981). Therefore, we propose the following four hypotheses:
H1:Distance students cheat less than traditional students do.
H2:Distance students engage in more serious cheating at a lower rate than traditional
students.
H3:Distance students perceive cheating to be more serious than do traditional students.
H4:Distance students and traditional students do not respond in the same way to the cheating which they observe.
Research Method
This study took place at a university in New South Wales, Australia, with three suburban
and rural campuses. The university has a long history of distance education programs, and
currently there are approximately twice as many distance students as internal students. The
study was conducted using self-report questionnaires modelled after those of McCabe and
Trevin˜o (1993). A total of 1500 surveys were sent to students in the mail, with approximately 1000 going to distance students and 500 to internal students, reflecting the relative
proportions of enrolment at the university. The list of students was randomly generated,
subject to the condition that each of the five faculties (schools) within the university
was represented roughly equally. Although there were distance-students enrolled in
countries around the world, including a large Indonesian contingent, only students with
Australian mailing addresses were solicited so that return postage could be provided
with the instrument. A second request was sent to non-respondents, resulting in an
overall response of 459 usable surveys, or a 32% response rate.3 There were 210 responses
from internal students and 248 from distance students.
The survey asked students whether they had committed any of 17 listed cheating behaviours listed in Table 1, as well as how serious they believed the behaviours were. In
reporting the frequency of their own cheating, students responded on a three-point scale
of ‘never,’ ‘once,’ or ‘more than once.’ They were also asked to rate the seriousness of
each on a three-point scale of ‘not cheating,’ ‘trivial cheating,’ and ‘serious cheating.’
In surveys of self-reported cheating, the possibility exists that students will be afraid to
answer honestly, although prior researchers (e.g. McCabe et al., 1996) have found little
difficulty in eliciting confessions from subjects. We attempted to mitigate their concerns
S8 L. A. Kidwell and J. Kent
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Table 1. Cheating behaviours
†
†
†
†
†
†
†
†
†
†
†
†
†
†
†
†
†
Copying from another student during a test (or examination) without his or her knowledge.
Copying from another student during a test or examination with his or her knowledge.
Using unpermitted notes during a test or examination.
Getting questions or answers from someone who has already taken a test or examination.
Helping someone else cheat in a test or examination.
Cheating in a test or examination in any other way.
Copying material, almost word for word, from any source and turning it in as your own work.
Fabricating or falsifying a bibliography.
Turning in work done by someone else.
Receiving substantial, unpermitted help on an assignment.
Working on an assignment with others when the lecturer asked for individual work.
Copying a few sentences of material without footnoting them in an assignment.
Writing or providing an assignment for another student.
Turning in an assignment purchased from an assignment ‘mill’ or website.
Plagiarizing an assignment in any way using the Internet as a source.
In a subject requiring computer work, copying another student’s program rather than doing your
own.
Falsifying lab. or research data.
by providing a covering letter explaining the protections to their identities as well as
contact information for the human subject ethics committee.
Students were also asked what they would do if they saw someone cheating, how they
felt about environmental factors that might lead to cheating, why they might consider
cheating, and what they thought the penalties would be. Students were also asked for
demographic information. Finally, there were some open-ended questions as well as questions about the potential development of an honour code.
Results
The most common types of cheating were collaborating on individual assignments,
copying a few sentences without footnoting, fabricating a bibliography, copying material
word for word and turning it in as one’s own work, and plagiarizing using the Internet. The
least frequent were using unpermitted test notes and purchasing term papers from a paper
mill site.4 Only nine students said they had used test notes, and of these, only two said they
had done so more than once. The grave concern faculty have about paper mills has led to
the development of Turnitin.com and other expensive plagiarism detection software, so it
is perhaps surprising that only two students admitted using them, though this is in keeping
with the findings of Kidwell et al. (2003).
To get a measure of the overall cheating rate, a dichotomous version of each of the
cheating frequency variables was created (i.e. 0 if they had never done it, 1 if they had
done it ‘once’ or ‘more than once.’) The 17 cheating frequency variables were summed
to create a continuous variable from 0 if they had never cheated to 17 if they had
cheated at least once in each of the ways listed in the survey. Of the internal students,
78% had non-zero scores, meaning they had cheated at least once. By contrast, only
35% of the distance students reported they had ever cheated. The mean for the internal
group was 2.86, meaning they had cheated in more than two different ways at least
once. The mean overall score for the distance students was significantly lower5 at 0.64,
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Integrity at a Distance S9
or between never cheating and cheating in only one way. Clearly, cheating was a much
bigger problem among internal students than among distance students, supporting
Hypothesis 1.
Cheating on individual behaviours was also compared between groups using Pearson’s
Chi-Square.6 Of the 17 behaviours listed, only two did not show differences between the
groups. These were the very infrequent behaviours noted above. The remaining 15 behaviours showed significant (P , 0.01) differences between groups, with chi-square tests of
group differences giving P-values of less than 0.001 for 14 of the 15 behaviours. More
internal than distance students admitted to each of the individual types of cheating
included in the survey.
As noted earlier in the paper, prior research has indicated that age (e.g. Diekhoff et al.,
1996) and gender (e.g. McCabe and Trevin˜o, 1997) are related to cheating rates, although
results on gender differences have been mixed. The demographics of the two study mode
groups were significantly different on both of these variables. The average age of distance
students was 35.8 years, whilst the average age of internal students was 22.4 years. In
addition, the percentage of distance students who were female was 78.2%, whereas the
percentage amongst internal students was 68.4%. Therefore, a hierarchical regression
model was run on the aggregated cheating measure, controlling for age and gender by
forcing them into the model first. Adding study mode to the regression model led to a significant improvement in R2 (F ¼ 31.700, P , 0.001). The regression model is presented in
Table 2. We conclude that study mode itself explains differential rates of cheating beyond
the influence of age or gender.
Of course, some of the behaviours with significant differences are just more difficult
for a distance student from a logistical standpoint. For example, collaboration is easy for
internal students, but for distance students who only know others in the class through
official class Internet discussion pages, collaborating on assignments requires contacting
a likely stranger and taking a risk of exposure. Even though students are unlikely to
report each other, the lack of personal relationships probably makes the perceived risk
higher. This would also be true for getting early information on an examination,
receiving substantial help on an assignment, or helping someone else cheat. However,
there are also significant differences between groups where the lack of personal
contact would not be a factor, including various degrees of plagiarism and data or
bibliography falsification.
Table 2. Results of regression model for all cheating behaviours
Variable
b
b
S.E.
a
20.264
0.092
20.058
0.468
3.993
0.012
0.209
0.297
20.308
20.690
0.123
Age
Genderb
Constanta
Step 1 D R2a
Study modea
Step 2 D R2a
Model Fa
Adjusted R2a
n
a
P , 0.001
b
P ¼ 0.026
0.237
0.052
58.848
0.284
437
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S10 L. A. Kidwell and J. Kent
In a further refinement of their analysis, McCabe et al. (2001) developed scales for
serious test cheating and serious cheating on written work. Serious test cheating comprised
copying other students in examinations, either with or without their knowledge, using test
notes, and helping someone else cheat in an examination. When considering only students
at non-honour code schools, they found 47% had engaged in serious test cheating. Using
this same definition, 20% of the internal students in this study were serious test cheaters,
whereas only 2% of distance students were, a significant difference.7 Both sets of students
in this study take examinations under closely invigilated circumstances, although the
lower numbers for distance students may reflect the fact that several of the distance
courses use only written assignments and no examinations. Therefore, the opportunities
to cheat in tests are reduced.
Serious cheating on written assignments was defined by McCabe et al. (2001) as substantial plagiarism, fabricating a bibliography, turning in work done by others, and
copying a few sentences without footnoting. Their study found that 58% of students at
non-honour code schools had committed serious cheating on written assignments. Far
more students in both categories of this study were serious cheaters on written assignments
than in examinations, though distance students cheated significantly less.8 Internal students cheated at a rate of 62%, and even distance students cheated at the rate of 25%.
This increase for distance students may reflect both the increased opportunity relative to
tests, as well as the perceived seriousness of the infractions (particularly copying a few
sentences, as will be discussed shortly). Since a higher proportion of internal students
than distance students engage in serious cheating, Hypothesis 2 is supported in both the
test and written assignment domains.9
Students were also asked how serious the 17 cheating behaviours were. One would hope
that the most serious forms were committed least frequently, and this was indeed the
general rule. For example, the three behaviours considered most serious by the students
were turning in a paper purchased from a paper mill, using unpermitted test notes, and
turning in work done by someone else. Very few internal and no distance students committed these offences. Alternatively, the behaviours considered least serious by both
groups were collaborating on work that was supposed to be done individually, copying
a few sentences without footnoting them, and fabricating a bibliography, and these
were more common, especially for internal students. Copying a few sentences without
footnoting is perhaps the least understood problem among students. Most faculties
would consider this plagiarism, but the majority of students consider this only trivial
cheating. Over half of the internal students reported cheating this way, and 20% of distance students did so as well.
Both groups’ views were more similar as to the seriousness of different forms of cheating. On balance, the distance students tended to view the potential cheating behaviours
more seriously, supporting Hypothesis 3, but results were mixed, with no differences
between them for seven of the 17 behaviours. None the less, there were some interesting
divergences. Although the majority of both groups considered collaboration on individual
work to be trivial cheating, 39% of distance students thought it was serious, whereas 27%
of internal students thought it was not cheating at all. When it came to plagiarism, 91% of
internal students thought buying a paper from a mill was serious cheating, yet when it
came to copying substantial material word for word and turning it as their own, only
66% thought it was serious (30% considered this only trivial cheating). By contrast, distance students were more consistent in their understanding of plagiarism, with 94% rating
using paper mills as serious versus 82% for substantial copying.
Despite general consensus on the major cheating behaviours, there were notable exceptions, including these comments from one student:
Integrity at a Distance S11
Writing an assignment for someone else is not cheating. The other guy is cheating!
Actually I’m not so sure about exams—they aren’t really a test of knowledge or ability to
learn, but ability to memorize.
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In fact, the ability to cheat effectively can be a good indicator of creative intelligence—a
somewhat desirable trait—but not a good indicator of honesty or “rule following.”10
In addition to specific behaviours in which they might have engaged, students were
asked what they would do if they saw someone cheating in an examination or were
aware of someone cheating on a major written assignment. They were also asked how
their responses would differ if the cheater were a close friend. These results are presented
in Tables 3 and 4.
As Table 3 demonstrates, a majority of students in each group would neither report
cheating nor ask the cheater to turn in himself or herself. However, few students would
ignore the incident altogether. Internal students are less likely to report cheating than distance students, which makes sense, given that internal students have a more lax attitude
toward cheating in general. Not surprisingly, both groups are significantly less likely to
turn in a friend than just another student. It is also interesting to note the power of
gossip: mentioning the incident to other students but not reporting it to anyone in authority
was the most common response by internal students in general, yet this was the secondleast frequent response if the cheater were a friend.
Responses to knowing that someone had cheated on a major written assignment were
also investigated. These results are in Table 4. It is clear that students have stronger negative reactions to test cheating than cheating on assignments. A much smaller percentage of
each group would report it to the lecturer. As in test cheating, distance students are actually
more likely to ask a friend than a stranger to turn in himself or herself. Students in both
groups are also more likely to ignore the incident than in the case of test cheating.
In both the test and written assignment cheating scenarios, there were significant differences between what distance and internal students thought they would do, seeming to
support Hypothesis 4. However, hypothetical responses (What would you do if . . .?)
must also be considered in the light of actual experience.
Students were asked if they had ever witnessed cheating in tests, examinations or
assignments. Of the responses received, 11.4% reported having witnessed cheating behaviours but only 0.6% of respondents had ever reported another student for cheating in a test
or examination. This means that, of those who had witnessed cheating, only 5% had
reported it. A higher proportion of students (30%) were aware of a student cheating in
Table 3. Student responses to observed cheating in examinations
Report to the lecturer
Ask student to self-report
Express disapproval but not report
Mention to other students
Ignore the incident
Other
a
Internala
(n ¼ 210)
Distance
(n ¼ 248)
Internal:
A friendb
Distance:
A friend
21.4%
16.7%
20.0%
28.6%
11.0%
2.4%
35.2%
11.8%
18.6%
14.6%
12.6%
1.6%
4.9%
23.8%
51.0%
6.8%
11.7%
1.9%
8.7%
28.2%
50.2%
1.7%
9.5%
1.7%
Internal and distance are significantly different (x2 ¼ 18.790, P ¼ 0.002).
Internal and distance marginally different (x2 ¼ 11.025, P ¼ 0.051).
b
S12 L. A. Kidwell and J. Kent
Table 4. Student responses to cheating in written assignments
Report to the lecturer
Ask student to self-report
Express disapproval but not report
Mention to other students
Ignore the incident
Other
Internala
(n ¼ 210)
Distance
(n ¼ 248)
Internal:
A friendb
Distance:
A friend
11.1%
13.9%
30.3%
26.9%
15.9%
1.9%
16.7%
16.3%
37.0%
11.0%
15.9%
3.3%
2.9%
11.2%
54.6%
9.8%
20.5%
1.0%
6.7%
19.6%
55.0%
2.5%
14.2%
2.1%
a
Internal and distance are significantly different (x2 ¼ 20.838, P ¼ 0.001).
Internal and distance are significantly different (x2 ¼ 21.460, P ¼ 0.001).
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b
an assignment, and of those, 6% had reported it. These reporting rates are noticeably lower
than Tables 3 and 4 suggest. Furthermore, there was no significant difference between
study mode groups when it came to actual reporting experience. The contradiction
between ‘What would you do?’ and actual behaviour makes it impossible to conclude
that Hypothesis 4 is supported.
For both cheating response questions, many students wrote additional comments in the
margins, especially those who would not report the cheater. These comments included,
‘wait for them to be caught by authorities,’ ‘depends on reasons for cheating too.
Maybe student deserved a pass but he got a rough deal from lecturer,’ and, ‘one little question—not interested. Constant cheating—I would report him/her to the lecturer or appropriate authority.’ Several noted that real friends would not put them in the position of
knowing about their cheating. In a separate question, students identified the primary
reasons why they might have difficulty in reporting an incident of cheating they had
observed. A number of students felt the behaviour of others was none of their business:
I have no desire to cause problems for others—as much as I would resent someone getting
unfair grades, I always tell my children you can’t always worry about what others do/
don’t do, worry about your own behaviour.
I don’t believe it is my business to do so. Exam supervisors and lecturers should check this.
Among the concerns expressed was a fear of being wrong and losing friends, not
wanting to jump to conclusions, and the possible negative consequences of peers
finding out you had ‘dobbed’:
I can’t tolerate cheating, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable “dobbing”
on another student. They would have to carry the guilt of their cheating which could be a punishment in itself.
It runs against much in Australian (Anglo) culture. “Don’t dob in a mate”.
Others were reticent to report because of the perceived indifference of academic staff:
Lecturer doesn’t really care (has happened before). Everybody else ignoring the incident,
accepting it and not reporting.
The fact that so many courses are fee-driven means that lecturers are reticent to fail anyone.
Rather a mockery don’t you think?
Finally, students could also rationalize cheating in some situations:
Integrity at a Distance S13
Repercussions—harsh uni solutions may not take into account full life situations, learning by
experience and second chance for student. Some of them are just stupid and scared, others are
not.
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The person may have valid reasons behind the incident, e.g., family issues. They have not felt
comfortable talking to . . . staff for consideration.
Students were asked what factors might influence their decisions whether or not to do
honest academic work. Both groups had similar rankings among the factors given. The
three most important factors were penalties for cheating, the chance of getting caught,
and faculty policies on academic integrity. The moderately important factors were the
pressure to get good grades, getting behind in their work, and the university workload.
Of least importance were family pressures and the fact that ‘others do it.’ It is interesting
that 73% said it was not important if others cheated, which contradicts the common notion
that students cheat because others do, thus they have to cheat to keep up. It is also inconsistent with McCabe and Trevin˜o’s (1993) finding that students at honour code schools
cheat less, in part because the culture at those schools does not support it. The truth
may be that students do not perceive peer pressures as influencing their own decisions
whether or not to cheat, when in fact they do.
Finally, students were asked about the potential of an honour code. McCabe and
Trevin˜o (1993) have found convincing evidence that the presence of an honour code
has a significant impact in reducing cheating at American universities and, as a result,
there has been an increase in the number of schools with such a code. There are currently
approximately 270 American universities with codes (Dodd, 2007), and over 390 are
members of the Center for Academic Integrity, an organization that has a heavy focus
on helping others develop honour codes and other mechanisms to deal with cheating
(Center for Academic Integrity, 2006).
Since honour codes are not common in Australia, the survey provided a brief description
of honour codes.11 Over 74% of the students, participating in the study reported they had
not heard of honour codes before. Given the description, students were asked how important potential outcomes of an honour code would be. The most important outcome was
honest behaviour, followed by mutual trust between lecturers and students. Less important
were the prospect of uninvigilated examinations or a student-run judicial board. Internal
and distance students had similar responses to honour codes with the exception that
increased personal responsibility was more important to distance students. There were
no significant differences between groups as to the drawbacks of honour codes, such as
the responsibility to turn others in.
Conclusions
Culturally, the USA and Australia are very similar (Hofstede, 2006), thus one could expect
academic misconduct patterns to be quite similar between countries. This was indeed the
case, as the percentage of students cheating in this study was within the range of results of
American studies. As in prior research, more students admitted to engaging in behaviours
they considered less serious, unpermitted collaboration was one of the most frequent types
of cheating, and very few students said they had used online term paper mills.
What makes this paper unique in its contribution to the literature is the study of distance
students. Writers have offered conjecture as to the cheating proclivities of distance students, and educators have expressed concern over academic misconduct when students
are not seen face to face, but this is the first study we know of that actually uses wellestablished research techniques to address this issue.
Downloaded By: [Monash University] At: 01:36 14 December 2009
S14 L. A. Kidwell and J. Kent
The distance students reported considerably less cheating than did traditional students in
every behaviour category. They also had harsher views of various cheating behaviours and
were more likely to claim they would turn in known offenders. These findings have many
potential explanations. First, prior research (e.g. Diekhoff et al., 1996) has shown that
more mature students (older, paying their own way, married, etc.) cheat less. Although
the internal students placed more importance on workload and family pressures as
excuses for cheating than did distance students, it is likely that distance students face
more of these pressures in actuality. Therefore, it may be true that distance students,
because they are older and more mature, are swayed less by external factors than by
their own moral codes.
Internal students are also more susceptible to the temporary social groups of universities, where culture control may result in students’ rejection of general society’s norms
in favour of the norms of subcultures, such as student organizations and sports clubs
(Eve and Bromley, 1981). Since distance students have very little, if any, interaction
with other students, longer-term general socialisation may prevail, leading to lower cheating rates.
Whatever the root causes of the differences between internal and distance students, be
they maturity, lack of campus socialisation, or lack of opportunity, the distance students in
this survey were far less engaged in academic dishonesty. This finding should put educators at ease as they contemplate moving into distance education delivery. Of course this
research only surveyed students at one university in Australia, thus it may not be generalisable to a broader set of universities. However, the similarity between the results for
internal students and the findings of past research, as well as the cultural similarities
between Australia and the USA, lead us to believe these results can guide academics in
both countries. It is less clear whether these findings can be generalised to countries
that are less similar culturally, as cheating norms in countries including Croatia, Russia,
Israel, Turkey, and the Netherlands have demonstrated different attitudes toward cheating
(e.g. Hrabek et al., 2004; Magnus et al., 2002; Arzova and Kidwell, 2004). Therefore,
instructors in Australia or the USA involved in distance education should inform themselves as to cultural norms elsewhere, so that adequate safeguards can be utilised.
Of course the possibility of dishonest self-reports of cheating must be considered. It is
possible that the distance students, because they were less likely to have developed personal relationships with their university instructors, were less trusting of the survey
process and thus afraid to answer honestly. However, even the internal students were
very unlikely to have had any contact with the researchers. Both were on the staff in
the business faculty at one of the three campuses, thus the maximum number of the
1500 survey recipients that would have had any familiarity with the researchers would
have been 100 if every internal business student randomly selected was located at that
campus and enrolled in the same course of study. All subjects received the survey in
the mail with the covering letter, thus, there was no difference in either the instrument
received or the way in which it was administered between groups.
Another potential limitation of this study is the possibility of non-response bias. This
bias would normally be tested by comparing those who responded to the first request to
those who responded to the second request. The comparison was not possible in this
study, because the university’s human subjects committee required a change in the handling of returned surveys mid-stream, making it impossible for the researchers to determine
which surveys should be classified as first or second requests. Since the results of this study
were similar to those in the USA in other measures, and those studies reported no nonresponse bias (e.g. McCabe and Trevin˜o, 1997), we do not expect a test for bias would
cast doubt on our findings.
Integrity at a Distance S15
Acknowledgements
This research project was funded by a grant from the Scholarship in Teaching Fund of
Charles Sturt University, Australia, and presented at the 10th IAAER World Congress
of Accounting Educators, Istanbul, Turkey in November 2006.
Notes
A copy of the instrument used in the study on which this paper reports can be obtained on
request from the corresponding author.
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1
In Australia, colleges are private schools at the primary or secondary level. In the USA, colleges, like
universities, are 2- or 4-year post-secondary institutions. The American usage is employed in this paper.
2
In early versions of the questionnaire, social desirability bias was tested, but results indicated that under
conditions of anonymity, students were not reluctant to answer truthfully about their behaviour
(McCabe, personal communication with first author, September 1999).
3
Our best approximation of the response rates are 25% for distance students and 41% for internal students.
However, this is based on how the students categorized themselves, which does not correspond exactly with
how the university categorized them. More precise response rates are not known due to a change from confidentiality to anonymity procedures demanded by the human subject ethics committee mid-stream.
4
Paper mills are web sites where students can purchase term papers on a wide variety of topics. Virtually any
topic is available through one or another of these sites.
5
Levene’s test for equality of variances showed unequal variances. The t statistic for independent samples
with unequal variances was 11.4000, with a P-value ,0.0001.
6
Initial tests were performed using the three ordinal responses. In cases where cell frequencies were low
enough to violate chi-square data requirements, the variables were converted to dichotomous variables
(never cheated or cheated at least once).
7
Pearson’s x2 ¼ 37.331, P , 0.0001.
8
Pearson’s x2 ¼ 62.923, P , 0.0001.
9
These findings were also verified through regression analysis controlling for age and gender.
10
Incidentally, this same student did not think honour codes were necessary because, ‘I don’t need an honour
code personally. I have my own set of checks and balances.’
11
The description was as follows: ‘Briefly, an honour code is student-driven code of ethics for students, in
which they agree not to cheat or commit other acts of academic misconduct. Honour codes usually
involve a student-run judiciary for violations. Rather than lecturers handling individual cases alone, all
cases are turned over to the student honour board for investigation and, if appropriate, penalties. Such
cases are always handled with confidentiality. An honour code may require all students to sign a pledge
to be honest, and it may or may not require students to report cases of academic misconduct they have
observed. Examinations may or may not be invigilated [proctored].’
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