Elsevier

Nurse Education Today

Volume 86, March 2020, 104314
Nurse Education Today

Reasons for academic dishonesty during examinations among nursing students: Cross-sectional survey

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2019.104314Get rights and content

Abstract

Background

Understanding why nursing students engage in academic dishonesty is crucial, since cheating is becoming more common and can be followed by unethical professional practice.

Objectives

To develop and validate a questionnaire for investigating nursing students' perceptions about the reasons for academic dishonesty during examinations, along with identifying the most important of these reasons.

Design

Cross-sectional survey with the use of a convenience sample.

Participants and setting.

660 undergraduate students of a nursing department in Greece.

Methods

Questionnaire items were developed based on literature review and student interviews, evaluation of their content validity and intra-rater reliability. The participants completed the questionnaire electronically, which included items referring to behaviors of and reasons for academic dishonesty during examinations. Based on their responses, factor analysis was used to determine structural validity of the items that referred to the reasons for academic dishonesty.

Results

High prevalence of academic dishonesty behaviors during examinations was confirmed. Reasons for academic dishonesty were grouped into three factors, which included 17 items in total. Highly-rated items mainly referred to non-realistic demands of and unfair student treatment by academic personnel, absence of severe consequences for cheating, the way examinations are performed, and the importance of achieving high grades. Female, junior and high degree grade students had significantly higher percentages of highly-rated responses in some items.

Conclusions

These findings offered knowledge about the reasons that students perceive to mostly favor cheating, whose identification can guide preventive strategies.

Introduction

“Academic dishonesty”, along with “cheating” and “misconduct”, have been used for describing students' intentional participation in deceptive practices with regard to their academic activities (McCrink, 2010; Klocko, 2014). These practices can take place during laboratory or clinical training, assignment writing or course examinations (Arhin and Jones, 2009).

In Nursing, the significance of identifying and preventing academic dishonesty is twofold. First, ethical issues constitute an integral part of nursing education (McCrink, 2010) since nursing has been rated as the most honest profession (Saad, 2006). However, a continuous increase of cheating has been reported among nursing students (Balik et al., 2010; Macale et al., 2017), combined with a decrease in their perceived severity of dishonest behaviors (Farnese et al., 2011). As a result, high proportions of nursing students, similar or even higher to those of the general student population, have admitted that they or their peers engage in cheating (McCabe, 2009; Khalaila, 2015; Birks et al., 2018).

Second, academic dishonesty has been related with unethical professional practice, considering that cheating during studies is followed by manipulating clinical data in professional positions, such as recording patients' vital signs that were not taken or medicines that were never administered (LaDuke, 2013; Park et al., 2014; Macale et al., 2017). Moreover, students who cheat are expected to lack prerequisite knowledge and skills to practice with safety in clinical areas (Baxter and Boblin, 2007). Negative effects of academic dishonesty have also been speculated for students' relationships with their educators and peers, considering that mutual trust is impaired (Klocko, 2014).

Academic dishonesty is explained on the basis of moral development (Rest and Narvaez, 1994). To act morally, individuals consider possible implications of their actions for themselves and others. Then, they decide whether these actions are morally right and prioritize to act according to what is right rather than personally valuable. Finally, they act on the morally right plan of action. In this context, unethical behavior emerges when individuals are unable to challenge their own reasoning to develop morality.

Rationalization constitutes a key element for understanding how students incorporate academic dishonesty into their normal culture. During rationalization, unethical behavior is justified by constructing a seemingly rational reason to avoid the true one (Arvidson, 2004). This path from self-deception to justification and acceptability allows students to compromise their internal values while maintaining an outward image of integrity (Henning et al., 2014). Nursing students often rationalize cheating by perceiving it as commonplace, pleading time constraints, or shifting the blame to their educators (McCrink, 2010).

The way students perceive academic dishonesty may partly explain respective behaviors. Students may be confused about what constitutes cheating, since its various forms are often interpreted differently by educators and students (Macale et al., 2017; Smedley et al., 2015). Arhin and Jones (2009) reported that many students did not perceive accessing hidden notes during examinations as dishonest, but as “just using available resources”. Moreover, peers' behavior and societal values provide normative support for dishonest behaviors (Arhin and Jones, 2009; Farnese et al., 2011) and, since such behaviors become more common, students come to consider them as ethically acceptable (Macale et al., 2017). According to previous studies (Park et al., 2013; Krueger, 2014), perceived prevalence of cheating among peers significantly predicted students' cheating behavior. Alternatively, students may justify academic dishonesty by denying its negative effects on their educators, peers or patients (Baxter and Boblin, 2007; Henning et al., 2014).

The role of academic personnel is another determinant of students' dishonest behaviors. Faculty members are responsible for promoting students' moral development, maintaining high ethical standards, informing students about the consequences of being caught cheating, and minimizing opportunities for cheating, e.g. by ensuring sufficient number of proctors and using multiple test forms during examinations (Baxter and Boblin, 2007; Woith et al., 2012). In this context, academic personnel's disregard to promote integrity and take appropriate disciplinary actions for cheating are expected to favor dishonest behaviors, since students will not afford to be disadvantaged by those who cheat and remain unpunished (Woith et al., 2012).

Other reasons for academic dishonesty are related to students' perception of the examination process. Prevalence of cheating is positively associated with high demand disciplines, increased competition for high grades, and focus on perfection and success at any cost (Montuno et al., 2012; Woith et al., 2012). On the other hand, students less persistent in their tasks and those with low self-efficacy may decide to cheat due to fear of failure, especially in case this fear exceeds fear for disciplinary actions (Farnese et al., 2011; Henning et al., 2014). Possible additional reasons for cheating during examinations include students' excitement for violating rules, time constraints for studying and beliefs that what they learn is not professionally relevant, along with raters' non-realistic expectations and unfair evaluation methods (Arhin and Jones, 2009).

According to reports, male and junior students, as well as those with low grade point average exhibit deceitful behaviors more frequently than female (Kececi et al., 2011; Krueger, 2014) and senior ones (Bultas et al., 2017; Birks et al., 2018), and those with high grade point average (Abdulghani et al., 2018) respectively. These differences in the prevalence of academic dishonesty have been attributed to underlying factors, such as self-control and moral beliefs (Gibson et al., 2008), and possibly indicate that students with different characteristics may cheat for diverse reasons (Henning et al., 2014).

Determining appropriate strategies for preventing and substantially decreasing academic dishonesty behaviors renders necessary the understanding of why nursing students engage in such behaviors (Macale et al., 2017). Thus, the aims of this study were to (a) explore the prevalence of academic dishonesty behaviors during examinations by nursing students, (b) develop and validate a questionnaire for investigating nursing students' perceptions about the reasons they exhibit academic dishonesty during examinations, (c) identify the main perceived reasons for academic dishonesty during examinations, and (d) detect differences among these reasons according to students' gender, year of study and degree grade.

Section snippets

Design, Participants and Data Collection

This was a descriptive, cross-sectional survey conducted in the Nursing Department of the Western Greece University of Applied Sciences. Students from all four years of study were invited to participate, and a convenience sample was recruited. The investigators presented and explained study aims and methods to students. After study presentation, students willing to participate were gathered in a laboratory room (Laboratory of Pregraduate and Continuing Nursing Education) in groups and were

Data Extraction and Participants' Demographics

All registered students (1321 in total) were invited to participate; 660 questionnaires were completed and used for data analysis, corresponding to a response rate of 50.0%. In the second questionnaire section, unanswered items were rated as 3 (“unsure”). Most participants were female (566, 85.6%) and junior students (362, 54.8%), while their mean age was 21.8 ± 5.8 years. Participants' degree grades ranged between 6.56 and 9.05, and most of them had degree grade ≤ 7.4 (379, 57.4%).

Prevalence of Academic Dishonesty During Examinations

Discussion

This study was the first that investigated nursing students' perceptions about the reasons they exhibit academic dishonesty during examinations through the development of a structured questionnaire. Based on factor analysis, the questionnaire consisted of 17 items grouped into three factors. Moreover, this study confirmed previous reports (Khalaila, 2015; Birks et al., 2018) about the high prevalence of academic dishonesty among nursing students. Likewise, in agreement with previous findings (

Conclusions

The present study confirmed that the reasons for academic dishonesty during examinations, which is particularly common among nursing students, can be grouped into three factors. Study findings offered knowledge about which reasons are perceived by students to be the most important. These reasons were mainly grouped into the perception of academic personnel's role and the perception of the examination process, and their identification can guide preventive strategies. Differences among reasons

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

References (31)

  • H.M. Abdulghani et al.

    Self-reported cheating among medical students: an alarming finding in a cross-sectional study from Saudi Arabia

    PLoS One

    (2018)
  • C.J. Arvidson

    The Anatomy of Academic Dishonesty: Cognitive Development, Self-concept, Neutralization Techniques, and Attitudes Toward Cheating

  • C. Balik et al.

    Attitudes towards academic cheating during nursing studies

    Medicine and Law

    (2010)
  • P.E. Baxter et al.

    The moral development of baccalaureate nursing students: understanding unethical behavior in classroom and clinical settings

    Journal of Nursing Education

    (2007)
  • R.W. Brislin

    The wording and translation of research instrument

  • Cited by (24)

    • Research misconduct knowledge and associated factors among nurses in China: A national cross-sectional survey

      2023, Applied Nursing Research
      Citation Excerpt :

      The self-reported prevalence of research misconduct among Greek undergraduate nursing students was slightly lower than the former study, at approximately 30 %. However, participants reported that the prevalence of observed research misconduct in their fellows was as high as 70 % (Kiekkas et al., 2020). Although there has been sufficient knowledge about the prevalence of research misconduct among nursing students, we still know little about the research misconduct situation among nurses.

    • Innovative approach to testing to support student success

      2023, Teaching and Learning in Nursing
      Citation Excerpt :

      Academic dishonesty is high among nursing students. Consequences include lack of essential knowledge acquisition, transference of dishonesty to professional practice, and erosion of trust among peers, faculty, and the general public (Kiekkas et al., 2020). Kiekkas et al. (2020) found the top three reasons for cheating reported by nursing students were “non-realistic demands of academic personnel, unfair student treatment by academic personnel, and the absence of severe consequences in case of being caught cheating” (p. 4–5).

    • Dataset of research misconduct knowledge and associated factors among nurses in China: A national cross-sectional survey

      2022, Data in Brief
      Citation Excerpt :

      Many previous studies have reported the prevalence of research misconduct among nursing students [2–3].

    • Academic integrity in online examinations in a graduate nurse practitioner program: Student perceptions and lessons for nurse educators

      2021, Nurse Education Today
      Citation Excerpt :

      While there is a statement regarding academic integrity in the student handbook, this specific program found that many students did not read the handbook. After reviewing the literature and considering the survey results, the researchers reviewed and incorporated one new best practice from the literature (Kiekkas et al., 2020; Palmer et al., 2016; Krueger, 2014): a syllabus statement for online courses. One such statement was developed which states, it is expected that every student will adhere to the honor code and best practices for test integrity.

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text