Student academic misconduct such as plagiarism, fraud or contract cheating is a global issue. Depending on a number of factors, studies report variable incidence rates that reach as low as 2% and as high as 95% (e.g. Abdulghani et al., 2018; Ampuni et al., 2020; Hendy et al., 2021; Janke et al., 2021; Karlins et al., 1988; Okoroafor et al., 2016; Park, 2003; ICAI, 2020). Due to the negative societal and individual consequences, such as eroded trust in the education system (Eaton & Christensen Hughes, 2022), lower work preparedness, or higher likelihood to engage in misconduct at the workplace (Birks et al., 2018; Guerrero-Dib et al., 2020; Nonis & Swift, 2001; Sims, 1993), it is important to examine ways in which academic misconduct could be reduced. In this research, we focus on communication about academic integrity as an avenue.

Academic misconduct has been the focus of intense research interest since the 1960s (Hetherington & Feldman, 1964). As a result, important insights have been gained about factors associated with it. One relatively robust and strong predictor is positive attitudes towards academic misconduct (Alleyne & Phillips, 2011; Hendy & Montargot, 2019; Peled et al., 2019). For example, students who agreed with statements such as “Students should go ahead and cheat if they know they can get away with it” reported higher frequency of engaging in academically dishonest behaviour (Bolin, 2004).

A prominent approach examining the relationship between positive attitudes towards academic misconduct and actual academic misconduct is through the lens of the theory of planned behaviour (Dipaulo, 2022; Ives et al., 2017), which assumes that behaviour is preceded by intention to engage in it (which is determined by positive attitudes towards the behaviour), perceiving that the behaviour is the ‘norm’ and that one is capable of engaging in the behaviour successfully (Ajzen, 1991). This approach implies that students engage in academic misconduct intentionally, and studies support this view to some extent (Moss et al., 2018; Stone et al., 2009). However, students also engage in academic misconduct unintentionally (Zhang et al., 2018), for example if they lack a proper understanding of what academic misconduct entails (Ashworth et al., 1997; Devlin & Gray, 2007; Gullifer & Tyson, 2010). Indeed, some studies suggest that having read the student code of conduct is associated with less misconduct (Henning et al., 2015; Jordan, 2001), which may indicate that some academic misconduct is unintentional and eliminated once students understand what is expected of them. Similarly, Brimble (2015) argues that cheating may be motivated by a lack of communication about policy.

Thus, it is unsurprising that in aiming to educate students about academic integrity, many universities have developed academic integrity policies, guides for students on academic integrity, honour codes, or comparable documents as a way to convey the principles for desirable behaviour (Adam et al., 2017). Similarly, university staff are increasingly encouraged to talk with students about academic integrity, and universities implement a variety of programs aimed at encouraging academically honest practices (Cronan et al., 2017).

However, while the existence of an honour code is related to decreased cheating (McCabe & Trevino, 1996), the availability of such documents is not a guarantee that students are aware of them or that they will understand them as intended. For example, only half of students reported having read the policy on plagiarism at a university in Australia (Gullifer & Tyson, 2014). Even more concerning, 43% of the sample in a study conducted at a Latvian university had not even heard of the concept of academic integrity (Anohina-Naumeca et al., 2020). Similarly, communication aimed at increasing academic integrity may not be successful if it leaves students confused, uncertain or with limited understanding of what academic integrity is and how to uphold it (Perry, 2010). Thus, it is not enough to develop documents pertaining to academic integrity and present students with information about academic integrity. Rather, the communication needs to be effective. For instance, communicating clearly about definitions and providing specific examples may be an effective way to combat academic misconduct (Boehm et al., 2009). While clarity is necessary, however, it by itself may not be sufficient for ensuring successful communication.

One framework for successful communication is the SACCIA model (Hannawa, 2018). Originally developed and implemented in the context of health care (Johnson et al., 2020; Pek et al., 2019), the model was later extended to other settings such as government and news media communication during COVID-19 (Hannawa & Stojanov, 2022), and it is also applicable to the context of higher education. In this context, the model describes an interpersonal communication that is ‘safe’, as it activates the communicative competencies required for a successful understanding and thereby reduces the likelihood of academic misconduct.

The SACCIA framework assumes that all communication is underpinned by an interpersonal sense-making process in which the interlocutors pay attention to both verbal and nonverbal behaviour. It postulates that both quantity (sufficiency) and quality (accuracy, clarity, contextualisation and interpersonal adaptation) of communication are needed if such sense-making process is to take place successfully. Sufficiency refers to the extent to which education participants exchange a sufficient amount of information to reach a shared understanding, for example by providing all necessary information. Accuracy refers to the correctness of information and its interpretation, for example when lecturers ensure that students understand the expectations regarding academic integrity correctly. Clarity is the extent to which messages are expressed and interpreted unambiguously and communication is used to reduce uncertainty. For example, leaving no student questions unanswered or removing the possibility to twist the interpretation of the information. Contextualisation relates to the extent to which interaction is framed within the local interactional situation, such as hierarchies, time pressure or divergent goals which may either hinder or facilitate a shared understanding. For example, communication about academic integrity might best serve its purpose as a preventive measure at the beginning of the semester and again prior to exam season. Finally, interpersonal adaptation refers to maximizing shared understanding by responding to verbally and non-verbally expressed needs and expectations. For example, adapting the language of the communication so that students can understand it properly. These components – sufficiency, accuracy, clarity, contextualisation and interpersonal adaptation are summarized under the acronym SACCIA. In other words, we refer to SACCIA communication as communication that utilizes these five competencies to maximize the likelihood of a successful understanding.

If students receive sufficient, accurate and clear information about academic integrity, and if this information is contextualised and adapted to their needs (SACCIA communication), theoretically this should not only improve their understanding of what constitutes a breach of academic integrity, but also reduce instances of misconduct caused by a lack of understanding, resulting in lower academic misconduct overall. In other words, SACCIA communication should increase students’ understanding of what constitutes academic misconduct, and this increased understanding, in turn, should lead to lower engagement in misconduct.

Some preliminary support for this hypothesis can be found in the existing literature. For example, there are indications that those who understand their institutional honour code are less likely to cheat (Jordan, 2001), presumably because they have an improved understanding of the subject. The broader literature also supports the notion that effective communication may lead to increased understanding, which in turn may affect behaviour. For example, effective pro-environmental campaigns increased understanding of the importance of recycling, leading to increased recycling (Chase et al., 2009). Similarly, financial literacy, which entails understanding that enables one to make sound financial decisions, arguably arrived at via communication on the subject matter, was found to be a positive predictor of saving (Baidoo et al., 2018; Grohmann et al., 2018; Mohanta & Dash, 2022). Thus, there is strong support for the idea that SACCIA communication could lead to less academic misconduct, and that this effect could be mediated by knowledge of what ‘counts’ as an instance of academic misconduct.

The theory of planned behaviour (Ajzen, 1985) postulates that individuals form their attitudes towards a behaviour by considering the positive and negative aspects of a behaviour. Consistent with this postulation, in addition to ensuring a successful understanding of academic misconduct, SACCIA communication could also influence students’ attitudes towards academic misconduct. For example, SACCIA communication might convey the negative consequences of engaging in misconduct, and this cognition may lead to negative attitudes towards cheating if the costs of cheating outweigh the opportunities (Amigud & Lancaster, 2019). Similarly, SACCIA communication may shape attitudes towards academic misconduct by conveying the importance that is placed on academic honesty and creating a culture of integrity (McCabe & Trevino, 1997). SACCIA communication may help create social norms and make it salient for students that the institution values academic integrity, thus inducing them to act with integrity more often (Hutton, 2006; McCabe et al., 2001; Tatum, 2022; Whitley & Keith-Spiegel, 2001). It would seem then that in addition to lowering instances of unintentional plagiarism via knowledge, SACCIA communication should reduce instances of intentional misconduct by the means of changing the attitudes towards misconduct.

Thus, we hypothesize that SACCIA communication will predict lower academic misconduct through two parallel paths: (1) by increasing understanding of what constitutes academic misconduct (by the use of SACCIA competencies), and (2) by lowering positive attitudes towards cheating (consistent with the theory of planned behavior predictions).

Prior research has demonstrated that the Big 5 traits are related to academic misconduct (Giluk & Postlethwaite, 2015; Lee et al., 2020; Wang & Zhang, 2022). Therefore, while testing these hypotheses, we will statistically control for the Big-5 personality traits, widely recognized as core dimensions of personality comprising extraversion (sociability and energy levels), conscientiousness (organisation and dependability), agreeableness (compassion and cooperativeness), negative emotionality (emotional instability) and open-mindedness (creativity and openness to new ideas) (Komarraju et al., 2011). In addition, we will control for honesty-humility, an additional personality trait that is not assessed by the Big 5 model, as prior research has shown it to serve as a good proxy for measuring socially desirable responding.

Method

Participants and Procedure

Participants of this study were 319 crowdsourced US university students (48% males, 48.3% females, 3.4% non-binary, 0.3 preferred not to say) who had experienced a communication regarding academic integrity at least once in the previous two years. About an equal number were from large, i.e. more than 15,000 students (43.3%), and mid-sized, i.e. between 5000–15000 students (43.9%) institutions, and a smaller number (12.9%) from institutions with less than 5,000 students (https://www.collegedata.com/resources/the-facts-on-fit/college-size-small-medium-or-large). The majority of the sample comprised second-year (28.8%), third-year (22.9%) or fourth-year (28.5%) students, with the rest being comprised of first-year (4.7%), postgraduate (13.2%) students, or other (1.9%). Their average age was 25.75 years (range 18–59), with 26.7% ranging between 18–20 years, 55.7% between 21–30 years, 8.8% between 31–40 years, 6.9% between 41–50 years and 1.9% between 51–60 years of age. The study was advertised on CloudResearch and Prolific between October 2–13, 2023, and the Qualtrics survey was set so that participants could not take the same survey twice. Upon providing informed consent, participants progressed with taking the survey. The survey, part of a larger study, included more scales than the ones reported on here (the full survey is available at: https://osf.io/wfjr3/?view_only=251d83f708b54512bf59d5a4ac0f7347). The research was approved by the University of Otago Human Ethics Committee (approval No. 23/099).

Instruments

SACCIA Communication

Students were instructed to Please take a moment to think about all instances where official information about academic integrity was provided to you at your university, whether in a written (e.g., honour code, guidelines, emails) or spoken form (e.g., in class by a lecturer or tutor/demonstrator, one-to-one consultation with a lecturer/academic advisor, workshop or similar)'. Students were then directed to think about the one instance that was easiest for them to remember or, if multiple were easy to remember, the one that had the greatest impact on them, and rate the extent to which they agreed/disagreed with the presented statements on a 7-point scale anchored at 1 = strongly disagree and 7 = strongly agree. The statements reflected all five SACCIA components: sufficiency (three items, e.g. I had access to enough information to fully understand what the message source was trying to convey; Cronbach α = 0.85), accuracy (three items, e.g. It seemed to be important to the message source that I understand accurately what s/he was trying to convey; Cronbach α = 0.85), clarity (three items, e.g. The message source made sure that the communication didn’t leave me with any unanswered questions; Cronbach α = 0.61), contextualisation (five items, e.g. The message source’s communication was timed well (e.g., close to a time where academic misconduct might transpire, such as exam season; Cronbach α = 0.77)) and interpersonal adaptation (four items, e.g. The way the message source communicated about academic integrity spoke to my cognitive needs (e.g., not too complex for me to be able to follow along) α = 0.81). Cronbach α = 0.92 for the whole SACCIA scale.

Academic Misconduct

Academic misconduct was measured with the RAINZ-S scale (Stephens et al., 2024). The scale measures the frequency of engagement in four types of misconduct during the previous 12 months: collusion (eight items, e.g., Allowing another student to copy from you during a test or exam; Cronbach α = 0.90), misuse of resources (11 items, e.g., Submitting someone else’s academic work as your own without their knowledge; Cronbach α = 0.88), fraud (three items, e.g., Cheating in an internship, clinical setting, or other out of class academic experience; Cronbach α = 0.68) and contract cheating (five items, e.g., Getting or paying someone else to do your academic work (e.g. essay, exam, assignment) and submitting it as your own; Cronbach α = 0.75). The response scale ranged from 0 = never, 1 = once, 2 = 2–4 times, 3 = 5–10 times, and 4 = 11 or more times, with a “non-applicable to my program” options available as well. We also included an additional item “Copying and pasting text from ChatGPT into your written assignment.” Cronbach α = 0.94 for the whole scale.

Understanding What Constitutes Academic Misconduct

To measure understanding what constitutes academic misconduct, we used the same items that measured academic misconduct on the same four dimensions: understanding of what constitutes collusion, misuse of resources, fraud, and contract cheating. However, instead of asking participants how frequently they have engaged in each behaviour, we asked them to indicate if they thought each statement described an instance of academic misconduct. The rating scale was anchored at 1 = definitely not and 5 = definitely yes. Cronbach α = 0.98.

Positive Attitudes Towards Cheating

Positive attitudes towards cheating was measured by three statements (e.g. Cheating on an academic assignment is sometimes justified; Cronbach α = 0.91) adapted from Jordan (2001).

Big Five Personality

We also controlled for the Big five personality traits (Soto & John, 2017) as research shows these are related to academic misconduct (Giluk & Postlethwaite, 2015; Lee et al., 2020; Zhang et al., 2019).

Honesty-Humility

We controlled for Honesty-Humility (Ashton & Lee, 2009) as a proxy for the tendency to give socially desirable answers (Lanz et al., 2022).

Data Analysis

The data was analysed in SPSS (descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation analysis) and R (path analysis). Bootstrapping was used to assess the significance of indirect effects.

Results

Table 1 presents the frequencies of self-reported engagement in academic misconduct. The descriptive statistics and correlation coefficients are presented in Table 2. SACCIA communication was weakly negatively correlated with positive attitudes and academic misconduct, and weakly positively correlated with understanding what constitutes misconduct. Academic misconduct was unrelated to understanding what constitutes academic misconduct, but moderately positively related to positive attitudes, and weakly negatively related to agreeableness, contentiousness, open mindedness and honestly-humility.

Table 1 Frequencies of self-reported academic misconduct
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Table 2 Descriptive statistics and correlation matrix between the variables of interest
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To test the hypotheses, we used maximum likelihood estimator and the lavaan package (Rosseel, 2012) in R (R Core Team, 2021). The code along with the data can be found at: https://osf.io/wfjr3/?view_only=251d83f708b54512bf59d5a4ac0f7347. We modelled SACCIA communication as the independent variable, understanding what constitutes academic misconduct and positive attitudes as the mediator, and academic misconduct as the dependent variable. We also controlled for the effect of the Big 5 and honesty-humility on academic misconduct. The results are presented in Fig. 1 (the covariates are not depicted to avoid bulkiness) and Table 3.

Fig. 1
figure 1

The effect of SACCIA communication on academic misconduct via understanding and positive attitudes

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Table 3 The effect of SACCIA communication on academic misconduct via understanding and positive attitudes, controlling for the Big 5 and Honesty-Humility
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As seen in Fig. 1 and Table 3, SACCIA communication positively predicted understanding what constitutes academic misconduct, and negatively predicted positive attitudes towards academic misconduct. Understanding what constitutes misconduct did not predict academic misconduct, however less positive attitudes predicted lower academic misconduct. From the covariates (see Table 3), only open-mindedness and honesty-humility were significant negative predictors. Finally, there was an indirect effect of SACCIA communication via positive attitudes, 95% CI [-0.088; -0.017], but not via understanding, 95% CI [-0.015; 0.007].

To gain a more in-depth picture about the specific types of misconduct we measured in this study (i.e., collusion, misuse of resources, fraud, and contract cheating), we repeated our main analysis, but looked at ‘domain-specific’ relationships between understanding (e.g. what constitutes collusion, misuse of resources, fraud, contract cheating) and misconduct (i.e., how many times students have engaged in each of them). The results are presented in Table 4. As seen in the table, the pattern of results is consistent with the results presented in Table 3. Moreover, the 95% CI for the indirect effects via attitudes did not cross zero, indicating a significant mediation effect (see Table 5).

Table 4 The effects of SACCIA communication on fraud/cheating/misuse/collusion via understanding what fraud/contract cheating/misuse/collusion is and attitudes, controlling for the Big 5 and Honesty-Humility
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Table 5 The effect of SACCIA communication on different forms of misconduct via attitudes towards cheating
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Discussion

Academic misconduct continues to be a troublesome issue for universities and the wider society. In this study, we set out to examine if SACCIA communication reduces academic misconduct by increasing understanding of what constitutes misconduct and reducing positive attitudes towards academic cheating. The findings partially supported the hypotheses: SACCIA communication reduced academic misconduct by reducing positive attitudes towards cheating, however it did not exert an effect via increased understanding of what constitutes ‘misconduct’.

A possible explanation for this unexpected finding may be that the students had quite a good understanding of what constitutes academic misconduct already (mean score of 4.07 on a five-point scale with 5 as the theoretical maximum), indicating a ceiling effect. This implies that the majority of incidents in our study may have been instances of intentional rather than unintentional misconduct, given that the sample seemed to understand what ‘misconduct’ entails. The broader literature supports this supposition, showing that students engage in misconduct not only because of a lack of understanding, but because of factors such as time pressure, unrealistic demands, peer acceptance, lack of severe consequences, lack of self-discipline or perseverance (Amigud & Lancaster, 2019; Jenkins et al., 2022; Kiekkas et al., 2020; Mukasa et al., 2023; Salehi & Gholampour, 2021; Stephens et al., 2024; Tarigan et al., 2021). Research has also shown that academic misconduct is driven by personality traits such as the dark triad, which may be particularly true for more ‘malign’ and intentional forms of misconduct, such as fraud or contract cheating (Baran & Jonason, 2022; Srirejeki et al., 2023). Thus, even though SACCIA communication increased understanding in this study, having a good understanding was not related with academic misconduct most likely because academic misconduct is a complex behaviour driven by a combination of individual and situational factors, only one of which is communication.

SACCIA communication, however, did exert an influence on academic misconduct by reducing positive attitudes towards misconduct. Timely, clear, sufficient and personalised communication may involve more than verbal messages, such as the cultural importance a university places on academic integrity, which may lead to less positive attitudes towards cheating and an institutional ‘no-cheating’ culture.

The findings have implications for how universities could handle communication with students on the topic of academic integrity. If institutions develop policies, guidelines or honour codes without making a proactive effort to ensure students are provided with sufficient, clear, accurate, contextualised and interpersonally adaptive messages, the information may be lost in transition. For example, if an honour code or policy written in very generic terms is given to students as part of their welcome package to a university along with many other brochures, it will cognitively overload (Sweller, 2011) students and make them unlikely to remember the information if it is never brought up again. Similarly, corrective communication that is timed after a transgression may impact the transgressor, but is unlikely to benefit students at large. If, however, instructors refer to the policy at the beginning of the semester when clarifying the expectations for the course, provide examples, and remind students again nearer to a due date or exam time, there is a higher likelihood that students’ positive attitudes towards cheating may be influenced, which in turn would reduce the instances of academic misconduct. Such SACCIA-conforming communication may be superior to generic academic integrity education programs, which may not have high completion rates anyway (Sefcik et al., 2019). Thus, although innovations in mechanisms to detect academic cheaters, such as eye tracking technology (Thomas & Jeffers, 2020) may continue to be needed, a substantial effort should be directed towards adopting the five communicative competencies of the SACCIA framework.

As mentioned before, communication regarding academic misconduct is only one aspect of the larger issue, and we do not suggest it will eradicate all cases of academic misconduct. Personality factors (Lee et al., 2020) seem to be an important predictor as well, albeit there is some evidence that SACCIA communication can weaken the relationship between the dark triad and academic misconduct (the authors, under review). Moreover, it seems like there are cultural elements involved, such that students from different countries may be particularly at risk of engaging in such behaviour (Parnther, 2022). Students in different countries differ on self-reported rates of engagement in misconduct and in what behaviour is considered ‘misconduct’ (Lupton et al., 2000). Similarly, academic misconduct seems in part to be determined by perceived academic misconduct as the norm (Hrabak et al., 2004), and countries with higher corruption rates, which can be considered a form of cheating at a societal level, may have a higher frequency of particularly troublesome forms of academic misconduct. For example, in North Macedonia, which has amongst the highest corruption rates in Europe, four out of ten students reported paying for their grades (Kosturanova, 2015), and there are concerns that students can buy their degrees (Aпocтoлoв & Tpпкoвcки, 2020). Thus, detrimental societal norms may be reflected in detrimental academic practices, which are unlikely to be remedied by the means of SACCIA communication if the wider system remains unchanged.

Limitations of this study include that the very high knowledge scores of what constitutes misconduct may have prevented us from detecting an effect of understanding on actual misconduct. Further, we relied on crowdsourced and self-selected participants from the United States. Some students “returned” the survey (i.e., decided not to take the survey after reading the description) because, as they wrote in the return message, they were not comfortable discussing the topic, suggesting that participants who have engaged in misconduct may have opted not to take the survey. However, a detailed look at the answers revealed that around 80% of our participants had engaged in at least one form of misconduct, at least once, suggesting that the survey topic was ‘attractive’ to this group. It is still possible, however, that those who did take the survey may have underreported their academic misconduct. Further, the method relied on human recall, a popular method in social scientific studies, (Woolsey 1986), but this may have introduced biases such as inaccurate or idealised memories. On the positive side, using a crowdsourced sample allowed us to gain better insight compared to sampling one single institution, which may have had some idiosyncratic context that would be more difficult to generalize to other contexts. To ensure quality data, we relied on CloudResearch and Prolific, platforms that research recommends (Douglas et al., 2023), and as our experience with this and other studies confirms, they yield higher quality data compared to similar platforms.

Conclusion

Despite these limitations, this study evidences the importance of SACCIA communication in shaping students’ attitudes towards cheating and for ultimately reducing academic misconduct. The findings emphasize the importance of timely, clear and contextually framed communication about academic integrity. Therefore, we recommend universities to focus on establishing an academic integrity culture by the means of implementing SACCIA-conforming (i.e., continuous clear, timely, contextualised and personalised) communications about academic integrity, rather than merely relying on generic policies or post-transgression interventions.