Elsevier

Nurse Education Today

Volume 61, February 2018, Pages 28-35
Nurse Education Today

The development and testing of the Nursing Student Perceptions of Dishonesty Scale

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2017.11.002Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Based on previous work, we developed the Nursing Student Perceptions of Dishonesty Scale.

  • Through factor analysis, 6 classroom and 3 clinical subscales were identified.

  • Analysis (N = 971) begins establishing validity and reliability.

  • For use by faculty/researchers to create interventions to reduce academically dishonest behaviors

Abstract

Background

Dishonesty in the classroom suggests dishonesty in practice. There is need to better understand nursing students' perceptions of dishonest behaviors in the classroom and clinical setting. There is currently no instrument to assess perceptions in the classroom and clinical setting.

Objective

The purpose of this study was to develop an instrument to assess nursing students' perceptions of academically dishonest behaviors in the classroom and clinical setting.

Design

Mixed Methods Instrument Development Study.

Participants

971 BSN students.

Method

Using the results from a content synthesis of the literature and a small qualitative study, we created the Nursing Student Perceptions of Dishonesty Scale (NSPDS) and examined its psychometric properties.

Results

Factor analysis suggests strong loading of subscales in both settings with two comparable categories allow for correlation of perceptions in the classroom and clinical settings. Cronbach's alpha values begin to establish reliability and PAF with Promax rotation and correlational analysis begin to establish validity.

Conclusion

This NSPDS can help researchers and educators understand more clearly nursing students' perceptions of dishonesty. This will allow for the creation of individualized, and therefore more effective, interventions to reduce dishonest behaviors of nursing students. Further work is needed to strengthen reliability and validity.

Section snippets

Background

Academic dishonesty, the intentional deception in relation to academic work of either one's self or of others (Gaberson, 1997), continues to concern faculty in higher education. In a survey of 50,000 undergraduates 70% of students reported engaging in some form of academic dishonesty while attending college (McCabe, 2005a). Specifically, one quarter report cheating on tests, and half report cheating on written assignments (McCabe, 2005a, McCabe, 2005b). Nursing students are no exception (Aaron

Methods

There have been several theories used to better understand academic dishonesty. After reviewing theories such as rational choice, individual net benefit maximization, and planned behavior, we believed that none of these theories applied well to both academic and clinical learning situations. Sykes and Matza (1957) describes five techniques used to rationalize behavior: denial of responsibility, denial of injury, denial of the victim, condemnation of the condemner, and appeal to higher

Results

We sent emails to the nursing deans and program directors of 702 AACN accredited traditional baccalaureate programs. Of the deans and directors who forwarded the email, 1542 students began taking the survey with 1358 students meeting inclusion criteria (enrolled in a clinical course). Of those, 973 students progressed to answering the survey questions therefore making them usable cases for analysis. Because of possible responder bias, two of the 973 cases identified strongly agree for all 90

Discussion

The strong factor loadings for both clinical and classroom factors suggest that there are distinct categories of different behaviors considered dishonest. The internal consistency of the factors (alphas) were mostly good or excellent, although test file (acceptable) and stealing (poor) are lower than desirable (Polit and Beck, 2012) partly because these factors contained only three items each. Work needs to be conducted to further develop these subscales. Equally, the high alpha values could be

Conclusion

We developed this instrument for faculty and researchers to learn what behaviors nursing students perceive as dishonest in both the classroom and clinical settings. This information can be used to develop more specific honor codes and policies as well as individualized interventions such as educational modules to reduce the amount of engagement in dishonest behaviors by nursing students.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a research grant from the Ohio Nurses Foundation and a Gerstacker-Gund Faculty Development grant from Hiram College.

References (43)

  • C. Balik et al.

    Attitudes towards academic cheating during nursing studies

    Med. Law

    (2010)
  • M.J. Bradshaw et al.

    Perspectives on academic dishonesty

    Nurse Educ.

    (1990)
  • C.F. Curasi

    The relative influences of neutralizing behavior and subcultural values on academic dishonesty

    J. Educ. Bus.

    (2013)
  • R.F. DeVellis

    Scale Development: Theory and Applications

    (2017)
  • G.M. Diekhoff

    College cheating: ten years later

    Res. High. Educ.

    (1996)
  • G.M. Diekhoff et al.

    College cheating in japan and the united states

    Res. High. Educ.

    (1999)
  • K.B. Gaberson

    Academic dishonesty among nursing students

    Nurs. Forum

    (1997)
  • V.J. Haines et al.

    College cheating: immaturity, lack of commitment, and the neutralizing attitude

    Res. High. Educ.

    (1986)
  • P.J. Hoyer et al.

    Clinical cheating and moral development

    Nurs. Outlook

    (1991)
  • H. Hsieh et al.

    Three approaches to qualitative content analysis

    Qual. Health Res.

    (2005)
  • P. Kennedy et al.

    Modeling academic dishonesty: the role of student perceptions and misconduct type

    J. Econ. Educ.

    (2008)
  • Cited by (7)

    • Psychometric evaluation and cross-cultural adaptation of the Croatian version of Nursing student perceptions of dishonesty scale

      2020, Journal of Professional Nursing
      Citation Excerpt :

      The questionnaire comprised of two sections: the first section included questions for collecting demographic and other general data (e.g. gender, age, year of the study, BSc/MSc study, full/part time study), while the second section comprised 67 NSPDS items, representing nine subscales (McClung & Schneider, 2018a). Moreover, six subscales (in total 40 items) represent the dishonest behaviors among students in the classroom: Cheating (13 items) - actions given or taken in an attempt to do well on the test or assignments without doing the actual work; Assistance (9 items) - to improve one's work with the help of others; Cutting corners (7 items) - actions taken to lessen the amount of work to be done; Not my problem (4 items) - being aware of the academic dishonesty of others but not reporting it; Sabotage (4 items) - negatively impacting another's work; Test file (3 items) - maintaining or using former tests or test question banks; and three subscales (in total 27 items) represent the dishonest behaviors of students in clinical settings: Non-Compliance (11 items) - failing to follow set guidelines, rules, or stated expectations; Perjury (13 items) - creating or providing false or inaccurate information, to make up or lie; Stealing (3 items) - to take without permission or right (McClung & Schneider, 2018a). In accordance with the McClung 2018 Background section, the items were evaluated by the participants on a four-point Likert scale (1 = not dishonest, 2 = trivially dishonest, 3 = dishonest, 4 = seriously dishonest) as people usually perceive the (dis)honesty of a certain behavior/action as an ordinal scale, representing various levels of dishonesty, rather than dichotomous (i.e. Honest/Dishonest) duality (Mazar, Amir, & Ariely, 2008).

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text