Literature Review #4

College Cheating: Immaturity, Lack of Commitment, and the Neutralizing Attitude

MLA Citation:

Haines, Valerie J, George M Diekhoff, Emily E LaBeff, and Robert E Clark. "College cheating: Immaturity, lack of commitment, and the neutralizing attitude." Research in Higher Education25.4 (1986): n. pag. SpringerLink. Web. 26 Oct. 2013.

Summary:

This article breaks down cheating into many the many different forms and shows how and why it happens. One of the stand out points of this article is the fact that it talks about a 'Neutralizing attitude'. The neutralizing attitude is basically just the rationalization that a student uses to feel better about cheating. The types of neutralization that are talked about are the denial of responsibility, denial of a victim, denial of an injury, condemnation of the condemner, and appeal to higher loyalties. The article also discusses the types of people who cheat and the reasons as to why they cheat.

Authors:

Valerie J. Haines, George M. Diekhoff, Emily E. LaBeff, and Robert E. Clark

Key Terms:

Neutralizing Attitude: The way that students rationalize their decision to cheat so that they can live with a clear conscience

Fundamental Factors: Some of the most important factors that determine why a student would cheat and the demographic that they fit in.

Quotes:

"In each case, the individual professes to support a particular societal norm or law but also recognizes the special circumstances which allow or even require the individual to violate the norm or law. This neutralization process is presumed to free the individual to deviate without considering himself or herself a deviant, thus eliminating or reducing the sense of guilt or wrongdoing" pg 346

"The use of such techniques conveys the message that students recognize and accept cheating as an undesirable behavior; however, its occurence can be excused in certain instances" pg 353

"A second factor related to cheating is the cheater's lack of investment in his or her education. The students in this study who admitted cheating were less likely to have paid for their own tuition and books than were non cheaters" pg 352

Value:

This article has a good amount of value for my paper especially since it talks about the idea of neutralization which has yet to have been discussed in my other articles. It also approaches the demographic side, causes of cheating, and how to prevent it in a different way from my other articles. It tries to make a link between the neutralizing effects and the cheating deterrents. I plan on using this article in my paper to particularly discuss the neutralizing effect.

Literature Review #3

Academic Dishonesty in the Canadian Classroom: Behaviours of a Sample of University Students

MLA Citation:

Jurdi, Rozzet, Sam Hage, and P.H. Chow. "Academic Dishonesty in the Canadian Classroom: Behaviours of a Sample of University Students." Canadian Journal of Higher Education 41 (2011): 1-35. Print.

Summary:

The journal begins with the analysis of many other people's works. They delve into how individual factors such as sex, age, and greek life could affect their decision to participate in academic dishonesty. Another topic that they touch are factors in situations that affect students such as peers views towards cheating. After they analyze everyone else's work, they break down their own study of 320 students in a Canadian University. They make sure that each student stays confidential so that they answer these questions truthfully. The authors also made sure to find out all about the students they were getting for their responses to see if their were correlations between things such as Academic studies, Religious feelings, self efficacy, their motives, and other components.

Authors:

Rozzet Jurdi, Sam Hage, and P.H. Chow all are professors at the University of Regina. Rozzet Jurdi has a list of published works nationally and internationally. P.H. Chow has done a lot of work with students in college and how they view things around them. He is also published on many works and is no stranger to research.

Key Terms:

Self Efficacy- refers to the level of control people feel they have over their capacity to successfully achieve their objectives.

Motives- refers to the variables that affected a students decision to cheat. They include a heavy workload, maintaining a scholarship, outside social pressure, other students are cheating, and there is a minimal chance of being caught.

Quotes:

"Peer related factors were the most influential predictors of students' self-reported academic dishonesty, lending further support for the influence of situational factors in predicting academic dishonesty" page 23

"Another significant finding of this study is that students' engagement in dishonest academic behaviours was influence by their attitudes toward academic dishonesty" 23

"That is, students with a high score in the instrumental motives to study subscale were less likely to behave dishonestly when they had a high score in the self efficacy scale, suggesting perhaps that they had greater confidence in their capabilities to achieve their academic goals without resorting to academic dishonesty." 24

Value:

This journal and study all together seems like it will be very valuable. Their are a lot of raw data tables that show the correlations between situational, individual, and outside variables and cheating. This journal also combines the data of many other studies done which is also helpful. Lastly, it is interesting to see the data from a Canadian University and how that may differ in their findings. While most of the findings they had were similar to America Studies, it is still an interesting viewpoint to see if academic dishonesty is viewed differently between American and Canadians students. I will definitely be using this journal as one of my main sources of information for my paper.

Literature Review #2

MLA Citation: 

Josien, Laurent, and Britton Broderick. "Cheating In Higher Education: The Case of Multi-Method Cheaters." Academy of Educational Leadership Journal;2013 17.3 (2013): 93. Ebsco host. Web. 15 Oct. 2013.

Summary: 

This Journal offers many raw numbers on the amount of people cheating and the demographics of those people. It also goes on to analyze the individual characteristics behind the people who cheat, and the motivations and reasons for why they lead a path of academic dishonesty. After all of the analysis of the raw numbers, Laurent and Broderick go on to show the findings of their own study that they pursued. They describe how they went about administering the study and what the limitations of the results were. 

Authors:

Laurent Josien and Broderick Britton of Utah Valley University. Both of these professors teach business and have a good background of credentials. 

Key Terms:

Ethical Conduct: The manner by which a student and or professor is expected to uphold in the face of academic dishonesty

Peer Related Contextual Factors: Factors that hold the strongest weight in deterring a student from cheating. Social pressure that shows a distaste for cheating is the best way to stop a student from cheating.

Quotes:

"They also ventured that there is a difference in the threat to the academic community from students cheating once compared to students cheating multiple times. Following that line of thought, we advance that not only students who cheat multiple times are a threat to academia but those who cheat multiple times with different methods are even more of a threat as it indicates a clear, conscious, active decision to engage in academic dishonesty. We formulate that these multi-methods cheaters are individuals that considers cheating as an acceptable mean to achieve their end, and that they adapt their method to the opportunity available to them at the time. This attitude should put these students in a different group altogether, as they are different than students who cheated only once." 

"More specifically, McCabe and Trevino (1997) found that cheating was influenced by age, gender, grade point average, peers, and Greek membership."

"Also, there is a developing body of evidence that academic dishonesty is increasing; with the increase in tuition, the advance in technology, and the increase in online class offerings, new ways to engage in academic dishonesty are available for potential cheaters"

Value:

This journal should hold up as a valuable source for my paper. It contains a lot of key statistics regarding demographics and raw material. It also breaks down the motivations behind cheating and how individual characteristics affect a students decision on whether or not they should cheat. I expect to be looking at this in the future. 

Research Blog #5

Working Bibliography:


Josien, Laurent, and Britton Broderick. "Cheating In Higher Education: The Case of Multi-Method Cheaters." Academy of Educational Leadership Journal;2013 17.3 (2013): 93. Ebsco host. Web. 15 Oct. 2013.

Jurdi, Rozzet, Sam Hage, and P.H. Chow. "Academic Dishonesty in the Canadian Classroom: Behaviours of a Sample of University Students." Canadian Journal of Higher Education 41 (2011): 1-35. Print.

Lang, James M.. Cheating lessons: learning from academic dishonesty. Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 2013. Print.

McCabe, Donald , Linda Trevino, and Kenneth Butterfield. "Cheating in Academic Institutions: A Decade of Research." Ethics and Behavior 3 (2001): 219-232. Ebsco Host. Web. 15 Oct. 2013.

McCabe, Donald L., and Kenneth D. Butterfield. Cheating in college: why students do it and what educators can do about it. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. Print.

Research Blog #4 Proposal

Paul Cote

Professor Goeller

Research In Disciplines: College 201

10/8/13

Research Proposal

Topic/Overview:       

The topic I am choosing for my paper is academic dishonesty in universities. I want to investigate the motivations behind student’s behavior and how prevalent cheating is in college’s today compared to that of the past. I would also like to look at how social and economic pressures affect student’s decisions in college specifically towards cheating. The cheating culture in college seems so extensive today and I would like to see how it is viewed by professors and students as well as the general public. The debate that seems to be looming over this topic is the morality in question and if each student really is to blame for cheating. How far could we have pushed them to make this decision, or is it solely on their own shoulders.

Research Question:

In what ways are students motivated to cheat and how prevalent is it within universities? Also, how are people affected by outside factors?

Theoretical Frame:

My theories that I have are that academic dishonesty is more prevalent today than it was 30 years ago. I also think that socio-economic positions as well as other individual effects have an impact on why and how often students would participate in academic dishonesty. These theories are applicable towards my study.

Research Plan:

Some additional questions that suggest themselves are how often to do students cheat? How do they cheat? Do they just cheat in lower level courses? How old are they? What are the university punishments for cheating? Is cheating more prevalent in online courses? I am definitely going to look at the work of Donald Mccabe from Rutgers and some other online sources. The case study that I would be looking for is one that found out why students cheated when they did, and what background did they come from. 

Research Blog #3

Students cheat in college due to social pressures and economic pressures. Privatization of colleges has forced up the tuition rates which has made students take out larger loans to pay for it. This economic burden pressures students into making decisions they would not make otherwise. Students feel the pressures around them to do good in school so that they can get a good job after school. In the article "Higher Education and Privatization" they say that "We are relocating public funding for higher education away from support to institutions and toward individual student aid"(page 3). This just confirms that students are put under more economic pressure which in turn, makes them worry about getting good grades to get a good job. Some classes are often set on a curve. Since this curve only allows a certain amount of A's, when a student sees another student cheating, they often feel the need to also cheat so that they can even the playing field.

Literature Review #1

Cheating in Academic Institutions: A Decade of Research

Donald Mccabe

MLA Citation: 

McCabe, D. L., Trevino, L., & Butterfield, K. D. (2001). Cheating in Academic Institutions: A Decade of Research. Ethics & Behavior, 11(3), 219-232.

Summary:

The Article presents a decade's worth of information on Academic cheating in Universities. It suggests that cheating is become more prevalent in today's culture. With this suggestion, it offers an explanation up to be because colleges are becoming increasingly competitive and the peer outlook is very laissez-faire towards cheating. Students who see other cheat don't really mind, and if they do, they see it as a competitive edge which gives them a reason to cheat themselves to level the playing field. The research in the article also shows how Honor codes at colleges affect a student's decision to cheat or not. What they found in their research is that it isn't necessarily the honor code itself, but more or less the general outlook towards cheating on campus and how the professors make sure to remind the students of integrity and consequences for cheating. The article then goes on to analyze the individual characteristics on cheating and how they affect each student differently. Lastly, they go over the many different approaches as to how institutions can prevent this type of behavior from happening.

About the Author:

Donald Mccabe is from Rutgers University and has his Ph.D. He has published multiple books on academic integrity and the steps to take against it. His expertise is in Academic integrity, Honor Codes, and Student Moral Development.  He has lectured around the world on the topic of student integrity, in many cases acting as a consultant to schools who wish to change their existing policies.

Key Terms:

Academic Dishonesty: The act of collaborating, plagiarizing, stealing, copying, or using some one else's work to aid in the completion of your own.

Window Dressing: When a school uses an honor code but doesnt really implement the code or remind the students of the consequences of cheating.

Quotations:

"the strong influence of peers’ behavior may suggest that academic dishonesty not only is learned from observing the behavior of peers, but that peers’ behavior provides a kind of normative support for cheating. The fact that others are cheating may also suggest that, in such a climate, the non-cheater feels left at a disadvantage. Thus cheating may come to be viewed as an acceptable way of getting and staying ahead." (page 4)

"With increasing competition for the most desired positions in the job market and for the few coveted places available at the nation’s leading business, law, and medical schools, today’s undergraduates experience considerable pressure to do well. Research shows that all too often these pressures lead to decisions to engage in various forms of academic dishonesty" (Page 2)

"Students who might otherwise complete their work honestly observe this phenomenon and convince themselves they cannot afford to be disadvantaged by students who cheat and go unreported or unpunished. Although many find it distasteful, they too begin cheating to “level the playing field.” (Page 2)

Value:

This article has opened up my topic in an interesting way. It has shown my how much students cheat and their motivations to do so. It has also showed my the individual characteristics around the students and how universities are responding to the rising amount of students doing it. This article helps show how and why students cheat which is very helpful.

Cheating In College

Yes my topic has changed since last post. My first ideas were not really enough for a research question. My new topic is going to the about cheating in College. Why do students do it? How often do students cheat? Have they had a past of cheating.

Some of the links I found just from google:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2013/08/03/how-college-classes-encourage-cheating/3Q34x5ysYcplWNA3yO2eLK/story.html
"We welcome students to campus with required classes that nudge them toward academic dishonesty from the beginning."

This quote from the article really shows a side of cheating that I never really thought about and could be an important idea in my paper. 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128624207
This 30 minute talk of the nation clip from NPR seems like it will be a good resource for this project. They will answer the question why, if not only the surface.


This issues that are going to be important with this topic are really why students aim to cheat on things, and whether or not it is more rampant in college or early schooling.