Undergraduate engineering student academic integrity: Comparison of international and domestic students

Abstract

A survey about academic integrity issues was administered to 473 undergraduate engineering students from 12 universities in the United States and 6 universities outside of the United States. The survey posed questions about students' opinion of what types of actions do or do not constitute cheating, about student motivations for cheating or not cheating, student perceptions of how frequently their peers engage in academically dishonest activities, perception of faculty efforts to inhibit and punish cheating, and the degree to which students themselves (or external forces) should be held responsible for academically dishonest behavior when it occurs. Comparisons of proportions were conducted to identify statistically significant (α = .05) differences in survey responses between domestic and international students. Significant differences between the two populations were observed relative to the number of students who admit to cheating, the frequency with which they engage in academically dishonest behavior, student motivations for cheating, and student impression of how much their peers cheat. © 2012 American Society for Engineering Education.