Students’ Perceptions of Academic Dishonesty: A Nine-Year Study from 2005 to 2013

Abstract

Students from a small, private, religious college and a large, public university completed questionnaires asking their perceptions of academic dishonesty at their institution. The questionnaires used a 5-point Likert scale to determine whether the students felt it was acceptable to cheat for a specific reason such as plagiarizing or copying homework both using and not using technology. Between fall 2005 and fall 2013, 1792 usable questionnaires were collected using similar methodology, questionnaires and respondents to control for possible extraneous variables. An analysis of the data provides indications that student acceptance of many types of academic dishonesty has decreased over the past 9 years.