Unveiling a painpoint in a college classroom: College students' perceptions of academic dishonesty and some tests of correlations

Abstract

In educational institutions, a culture of academic honesty is valued. However, while there is much awareness about the consequences of academic dishonesty, this is regarded as an endless academic concern. A sequential-explanatory mixed methods study assessed and explored the perceptions of 121 college students of a private Philippine university about academic dishonesty. Initially, a researcher-constructed questionnaire was administered to measure the perceptions of the respondents about academic dishonesty and correlated to their age, gender and course. A focus group discussion from seven purposively sampled respondents was conducted to extract deeper meanings of the survey results. The quantitative results disclosed that the college students have high perceptions about academic dishonesty. Meanwhile, age and gender were directly linked to academic dishonesty whereas the course did not associate with the college students’ perceptions of academic dishonesty. Important information has been elicited and surfaced during the focus group discussions. This created complementarity of the quantitative and qualitative data and eventually resulted in a more profound, reflective analysis. School policy recommendations and interventions are suggested to enable the university to establish and sustain academic honesty as a culture within and among the members of the academic community especially its students, the end-receivers of good education.