Abstract

Academic dishonesty and how to address it are common concerns across higher education disciplines, but engineering students admit to higher rates of academic dishonesty than other students. However, first-year students may be particularly receptive to prevention efforts. Considering self-perception, social norming, and behavioral choice theories, we hypothesized that 1.) Students who perceived themself as ethical and more knowledgeable of the consequences for misconduct would be less likely to self-report cheating and 2.) Students who perceived cheating and plagiarism to be common would be more likely to self-report cheating. For this study, freshmen engineering students (N=703) reported their self-perception, perception of cheating and plagiarism among peers, their knowledge of the consequences for cheating, and if they had cheated. A backward elimination logistic regression model determined significant predictors of having cheated. Participants were more likely to report their cheating when they perceived cheating as common. There were significant interactions between self-ethics and perceived plagiarism, and between knowledge of consequences and perceived plagiarism interactions. Results are discussed within the context of social norming and future efforts to reduce misconduct.

Department(s)

Psychological Science

Second Department

Mathematics and Statistics

Keywords and Phrases

academic dishonesty; consequences; ethics; perceptions; predictors

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

2167-4787

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2025 International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL), All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Jan 2025

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