(809)UNDERSTANDING MISCONDUCT. A QUANTITATIVE INQUIRY INTO ACADEMIC DISHONESTY, PEER PRESSURE AND PERCEIVED SELF-EFFICACY

摘要

Debates on cheating and other forms of academic dishonesty have gained momentum worldwide, withInternet and other open sources putting additional pressures on an already messy academic conduct.For example, in a study done by the Gallup Organization (October 6-9, 2000), the top two problemsfacing the United States are: 1)Education, and 2)Decline in Ethics (both were ranked over crime,poverty, drugs, taxes, guns, environment, and racism, to name just a few). Surprisingly, the rate ofstudents who admit to cheating at least once in their college careers has been rather constant -around 75%, with very small variations - since the first major survey on cheating in higher education in1963 [1]. This means that the envisaged solutions to tackle this issue have been rather ineffective orsimply inappropriate.The paper seeks to investigate the complex relationship between academic dishonesty (i.e.fraudulence, plagiarism, falsification, delinquency, unauthorized help), peer pressure, and perceivedself-efficacy. We claim that academic dishonesty is positively correlated to peer pressure andnegatively correlated to perceived self-efficacy. We support our claim through a quantitative researchimplemented in a publicly-funded Romanian university by means of three questionnaire types - thePerceived Self-Efficacy subscale from the Student Approaches to Learning [2];;the Peer PressureQuestionnaire Adapted from National Institute of Ghild Help and Human Develipment (NICHD)Studyof Early Child Care and Youth Development;;and the Academic Dishonesty Questionnaire consisted of39 items adapted from Pavela [3], and Cizek [4] descriptors. Our findings are based on the answersprovided by 153 undergraduate and postgraduate students.We also aimed at presenting the prevalence of the phenomena, the associated motivations and therole of contextual factors such as peer pressure.This research provides some valuable insights on how educational institutions and other relevantstakeholders might develop or adjust relevant policies, so that the roots and not only the effects ofacademic dishonesty are properly approached.