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Impact of ethical and affective variables on cheating: comparison of undergraduate students with and without jobs

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Abstract

Academic cheating is a serious problem among higher education organizations around the world. While most studies on academic cheating have focused on high school or college students, few have examined and compared students with and without jobs. Therefore, this study has empirically assessed the critical cheating issues by comparing undergraduate students with and without jobs. In addition, this study proposes a research framework based on the extended theory of planned behavior by including ethical and affective variables from the dual-process theory, the social learning theory, the decision affect theory, and the prospect theory. The survey method with a two-stage analytical procedure was used to achieve the research purpose. As a result, a total of 525 student samples were collected for subsequent analysis. The results suggest that all antecedents significantly affected students’ cheating intention. Moreover, the hypothetical relationships were examined across three groups of students: no jobs, part-time jobs, and full-time jobs. The results showed that some major differences existed in the relationships between antecedents and cheating intention across the different student groups. While perceived behavioral control has the strongest effect on cheating intention among students with no jobs and with full-time jobs, unethical beliefs in the workplace have a significant effect on cheating for students with full-time jobs, but not for students with part-time jobs and with no jobs. Implications for practitioners and academic institutions are discussed.

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Notes

  1. Although novel technology has provided new opportunities for cheating, the present paper focuses on a very serious and common form of academic cheating, pencil and paper tests in the classroom (McCabe et al. 2002).

  2. This study assumes that the school life of students with and without jobs is different, as are the influential factors on their cheating; therefore, this study classified students into groups of those with and without jobs while investigating the ethical influence of the workplace on students’ ethical behavior at school.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marketing, Kainan University, No. 1 Kainan Road, Luzhu, Taoyuan County, 33857, Taiwan

    Chun-Hua Hsiao

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Correspondence to Chun-Hua Hsiao.

Appendix: Measures of constructs

Appendix: Measures of constructs

Construct

Source

Neutralizing attitude

 AT1. Participants believed that cheating in college is justified to pass a course

Jordan (2001)

 AT2. Participants believed that cheating in college is justified to stay in school or to graduate

 AT3. Participants believed that cheating in college is justified if a close friend asks for help

Subjective norm

 SN1. If I cheated on a test or exam, most of the people who are important to me would not approve

Beck and Ajzen (1991)

 SN2. The people in my life whose opinions I value (e.g., my family, friends, colleagues, teachers, etc.) would be willing to cheat on an in-class exam if they were in my situationa

 SN3. No one who is important to me thinks it is OK to cheat on a test or exam

 SN4. Most of the people who are important to me will look down on me if I cheat on a test or exam

 

Perceived behavior control

 PBC1. For me to cheat on a test or exam is easy

Beck and Ajzen (1991)

 PBC2. If I want to, I can cheat on a test or exam

 PBC3. I can imagine times when I might cheat on a test or exam even if I hadn’t planned to

 PBC4. Even if I had a good reason, I could not bring myself to cheat on a test or exama

Positive and negative affect

 If I succeed in achieving a satisfying score by cheating over the next few months, I will feel …

 

 PA1. Delighted

Perugini and Bagozzi (2001)

 PA2. Excited

 PA3. Glad

 NA1. Uncomfortable

Perugini and Bagozzi (2001); Whitley (2001)

 NA2. Ashamed

 NA3. Depressed

Unethical professional beliefs

 Do you agree with the following behaviors in the work place?

 UPB1. Improper use of company supplies

Harding et al. (2004)

 UPB2. Taking credit for other people’s work

 UPB3. Lying about work quality

 UPB4. Falsification of records

Behavioral intention

 BI1. If I had the opportunity, I would cheat on a test or exam

Beck and Ajzen (1991), Harding et al. (2007)

 BI2. I may cheat on a test or exam in the future

 BI3. I will try to cheat on an in-class test or exam during the current academic term

  1. All items employ a five-point Likert scale from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”
  2. aThese items were dropped due to low item-to-total correlation to better improve the model goodness-of-fit

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Hsiao, CH. Impact of ethical and affective variables on cheating: comparison of undergraduate students with and without jobs. High Educ 69, 55–77 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-014-9761-x

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