Cheating and Honor: Lessons from a Long-Term Research Project

Abstract

This chapter reviews key findings from a research project into student academic dishonesty conducted over a period of approximately 15 years. The project replicated and extended a large-scale seminal study which was conducted across 99 US campuses in the 1960s Bowers (1964). Over the life of the project, thousands of students have provided self-report data about their own dishonest academic behaviors including those involving various forms of copying, cheating on tests and exams, and fabricating data. Twelve of the 28 behaviors measured in the project were replicated from the Bowers study, enabling comparison of results over approximately half a century. Interestingly, a consistent reduction in reported engagement in dishonest behaviors is seen over time in most of the domains measured. The chapter also provides an overview of the role that honor codes play in many of the participating institutions and the effects of these codes on cheating behavior, as witnessed over the lifetime of the project.