Goals, norms, attitudes, and self-efficacy as predictors of academic dishonesty: Two-wave prospective inquiries into additive and multiplicative effects

Abstract

Although students’ achievement goals have been linked to academic dishonesty, more research is needed to clarify mixed findings and identify contextual factors that may influence these linkages. Guided by Expectancy-Value-Cost Theory versus Theory of Planned Behavior predictions, we tested how achievement goals, academic and cheating self-efficacy, injunctive and descriptive norms, and justifying attitudes jointly predict academic dishonesty in a preregistered two-wave study of 856 German university students. Appearance-approach goals, descriptive norms, and justifying attitudes positively related to exam cheating and plagiarism, other associations appeared behavior-specific (work-avoidance related only to plagiarism, cheating self-efficacy related more strongly to exam cheating). No interactions with achievement goals were found, favoring an additive risk structure consistent with the Theory of Planned Behavior. Results point to measurement specificity of both predictor variables and behavior types as one source of mixed findings.