Perceptions and Decisions about Cheating: A Cross-Institutional Comparison

Overview

Objectives/Goals The study investigates how high school students classify and evaluate personal cases of academic misconduct. The study also investigates how socioeconomic profile plays a role. Methods/Materials Participants were recruited from two high schools with distinct socioeconomic profiles, Mission San Jose High School (MSJ) and Watsonville High School (WAT). Participants were asked to (1) describe a past act of cheating or plagiarism, (2) explain their motivations for acting, and (3) evaluate the permissibility of their actions. Results Cheating and plagiarism were pervasive across both schools: 98% of participants self-reported an action that falls under our definition. 71% of MSJ participants evaluated their actions as not wrong, while 59% of WAT participants did so. Participants across both schools provided a wide variety of motivations and justifications for their actions and evaluations. Conclusions/Discussion Cheating is a common occurrence in high schools. MSJ participants commonly referenced the pervasiveness of cheating in school, suggesting a prevalent cheating culture. Students balance competing considerations in their evaluations, suggesting that their perspective on cheating is complicated. Teaching practices can incorporate these insights to reduce rates of cheating.

Competition history

• CSEF 2018 Behavioral & Social Sciences · Entry S0406

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Behavioural and Social Sciences projects
• CSEF Behavioural and Social Sciences projects
• Every CSEF 2018 project