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Academic cheating is a problem more commonly manifested among children and adolescents than one might expect. Researchers estimate that approximately 75% of high school students cheat at some point during their course of academic study (e.g., McCabe, Trevino, & Butterfield, 2001; Whitley, 1998). While cheating appears to be widespread, it has been under-emphasized in the empirical literature and poorly understood as a behavioral phenomenon despite its association with a range of youth risk factors (including low self-esteem and poor academic performance) and its capacity to predict more severe problems in later adolescence and young adulthood. This review attempted to organize the current research findings on academic cheating into a comprehensive causal pathway model. Empirical findings were categorized into (1) individual, (2) contextual and (3) moderating factors that interact to increase the likelihood of the onset and maintenance of cheating behavior. Our review indicated that cheating appears to be a phenomenon not simply motivated by the desire to achieve and/or to compensate for learning difficulties or a low degree of effort, as is commonly believed. Instead, cheating appears to arise from a complex interplay of individual, contextual, and moderating factors. For some youths, cheating is motivated not by an exaggerated need to achieve and/or to conceal deficient academic skill or knowledge, but by a failure to reject influences outside of the self. Undetected cheating likely exacerbates the fundamental nature of the problem: the desire for external validation progressively degrading internal processes of self-mastery and individuation.
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Academic Cheating Among Youths: A Causal Pathway Model
Academic cheating is a problem more commonly manifested among children and adolescents than one might expect. Researchers estimate that approximately 75% of high school students cheat at some point during their course of academic study (e.g., McCabe, Trevino, & Butterfield, 2001; Whitley, 1998). While cheating appears to be widespread, it has been under-emphasized in the empirical literature and poorly understood as a behavioral phenomenon despite its association with a range of youth risk factors (including low self-esteem and poor academic performance) and its capacity to predict more severe problems in later adolescence and young adulthood.
Introduction
Nicolette de Sumrak, M.A., and James Tobin, Ph.DAmerican School of Professional Psychology at Argosy University, Orange County – Doctor of Psychology in
Clinical Psychology Program
Purpose of Review
To construct a comprehensive causal pathway model, a literature review was conducted. The search engines used were PsycINFO and ProQuest Central for English. Published articles containing the terms “academic dishonesty” and/or “academic cheating” yielded the initial set of publications. Adding the search terms “high school academic cheating,” “predictors of academic dishonesty,” and “correlates of academic dishonesty” progressively reduced the count of publications to approximately 450 articles. This group was further narrowed by eliminating studies that did not address the focal concerns of the current review, i.e., gender and age differences vis-à-vis academic dishonesty, concurrent correlates of cheating, and factors that cheating predicts. A final group of 26 studies was retained for the purposes of assessing individual, contextual, and moderating factors associated with cheating.
Method
Our literature review revealed the following trends:
Individual Factors: Male students who have experienced a lower degree of academic success, demonstrate atypical narcissistic issues, are externally motivated (i.e., are more concerned with grades than an internal sense of mastery), and hold a less self-punitive approach toward cheating were individual factors associated with cheating.
Contextual Factors: Contextual factors most highly associated with cheating included the occurrence of peer cheating, the pressure of parents to obtain good grades, enrollment in classroom environments characterized by a performance (i.e., emphasizing competition, grades, class rank) vs. mastery (i.e., emphasizing learning for individually-based self-improvement) culture, and engagement with teachers who were not subject-matter experts and who lacked a strong interpersonal investment in their students.
Moderating Factors: Gender (male > female), age (younger > older), ratings of self-efficacy (lower > higher), personality factors (e.g., narcissism; features of psychopathy) and teacher competence (lower > higher) appeared to moderate the relationship between academic performance and cheating. Additionally, male students were more likely to have a positive attitude toward cheating than female students, and female students were more likely to perceive the classroom culture as mastery-oriented than male students.
Results
Discussion
Cheating appears to be a phenomenon not simply motivated by the desire to achieve and/or to compensate for learning difficulties or a low degree of effort, as is commonly believed. Instead, our review of the literature indicated a complex interplay of individual, contextual, and moderating factors that contribute to the occurrence of cheating. Gender, level of self-efficacy, personality factors, the culture of the classroom, teacher competence and interpersonal investment in students, and degree of parental pressure to obtain good grades were some of the major factors that interlinked to predispose high-school students to cheat.
More specifically, our review suggested that bidirectional influences may exist in which certain individual (e.g., externally- vs. internally-motivated) factors may increase some youths’ susceptibility to various contextual (e.g., peer cheating; grade pressure from parents) factors which, in turn, further intensify the individual factors. Perhaps relevant across a range of specific risk factor pairings, these loops of bidirectional influence may not only increase the likelihood of cheating, but may also negatively impact one’s fundamental view of self. It is thus suggested that cheating during adolescence may have more to do with deficits in self-agency and autonomy than with lapses of judgment or aberrant moral/ethical decision-making tendencies. Our view is that, for some youths, cheating is conceptualized as motivated not by an exaggerated need to achieve and/or to conceal deficient academic skill or knowledge, but by a failure to reject influences outside of the self. Undetected cheating likely exacerbates the fundamental nature of the problem: the desire for external validation progressively degrading internal processes of self-mastery and individuation.
Implications of this review include the need to sensitize teachers and school administrators to the potentially significant concurrent and imminent problems associated with cheating and other forms of academic dishonesty. The utility of the early detection and treatment of cheating in the domain of prevention cannot be made more strongly. Finally, future research is necessary to arrive at a profile of qualities and circumstances that differentiate those youths who cheat non-problematically vs. those who cheat chronically and insidiously. It is this latter group for which academic cheating is likely a “gateway” to more significant affective, behavioral, personality, and social distress.
References
Contact Information
Nicolette de Sumrak, M.A James Tobin, Ph.D.Graduate Student ProfessorArgosy University, Argosy University, Orange County Orange CountyEmail: Email:[email protected] [email protected] 714-620-3700
This review attempted to organize the current research findings on academic cheating into a comprehensive causal pathway model. Empirical findings were categorized into (1) individual, (2) contextual and (3) moderating factors that interact to increase the likelihood of the onset and maintenance of cheating behavior.
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