Cheating and Plagiarism: Perceptions and Practice of 1st
Year IT Students
Judy Sheard, Martin Dick
School of Computer Science and
Software Engineering
Monash University
Melbourne 3145, Australia
judy.sheard@csse.monash.edu.au
martin.dick@csse.monash.edu.au
selby.markham@csse.monash.edu.au
Abstract
A study of cheating and plagiarism using a unique,
scenario based format, has provided an insight into
attitudes towards questionable work practices of first
year information technology students’ within the
School of Computer Science and Software
Engineering (CSSE) of Monash University, and the
School of Information Technology (IT) of Swinburne
University. Students at both institutions showed
similar responses to a range of cheating behaviours, in
line with other literature. Plagiarism and cheating are
widely tolerated and commonly practised, at least on
the lower end of the spectrum of seriousness. However
there were some areas of significant difference
between the two student samples that warrant further
research to develop strategic approaches for limiting
cheating practices.
1
Introduction
There have been many reports, both informal and from
research studies, of the high incidence of cheating and
plagiarism among tertiary students. The general
perception is that this problem is endemic in
universities worldwide and some believe it is
increasing [12]. Anecdotal and reported evidence
indicate there are many ways which students cheat,
and the now widespread use of the Internet in
universities offers yet another resource for students
inclined to this type of behaviour [15].
Although there is no doubt that cheating and
plagiarism exist in Australian universities, the extent
Ian Macdonald, Meagan Walsh
School of Information Technology
Swinburne University
Melbourne 3122, Australia
imacdonald@swin.edu.au
mwalsh@swin.edu.au
of the problem is difficult to establish. Within the
School of Computer Science and Software
Engineering of Monash University and the School of
Information Technology of Swinburne University,
teaching staff have raised concerns about the incidence
of cheating and plagiarism amongst information
technology (IT) students. Both universities, in recent
years, have introduced measures to heighten student
awareness of the seriousness of cheating and
plagiarism, and inform students of the university
regulations on academic misconduct. However the
problems appear to continue. To determine the extent
of the problem and inform the development of
measures which may be taken to discourage the
practice of cheating and plagiarism, a combined study
of computing students at both institutions was
conducted. This has enabled a comparison of the two
student groups to help determine if questionable
practices were particular to their institution, or similar
to that experienced elsewhere.
The study was conducted using a survey of computing
students at both institutions. The survey aimed to
establish what practices computing students perceive
to be cheating, the extent of questionable behaviour,
and reasons that encourage or inhibit cheating. The
scenario based questionnaire used in the student is
unique against what has been found in the literature in
this area. This study is part of a wider project
investigating questionable practices. The longer term
aim of this project is to determine measures which may
be taken to discourage the practice of cheating and
plagiarism.
2
The Extent of the Problem
There is a wealth of literature on cheating and
plagiarism within tertiary institutions. Although most
of the research into these practices has been carried out
in the USA, there are many informal reports and
sufficient anecdotal evidence to suggest that this
problem is worldwide. A recent international study by
Olasehinde supports the view that this is a global
problem [11]. In Australia, recent press reports have
highlighted this issue as one of major concern within
tertiary institutions [8,11,15].
Many studies have investigated the extent of
undergraduate student cheating, and although the
results of these vary, the self-admission of cheating in
most cases is alarmingly high [4,14]. Significantly,
some of the highest levels of cheating have been found
in the most recent studies. In a survey of 500 college
students by Graham, Monday and O’Brien, 90%
admitted to cheating at least once [5]; a survey of 422
students by Roberts, Anderson and Yanish found that
91.7% of the students claimed to have engaged in at
least 1 of 27 items of academic misconduct [10]. In a
United Kingdom study of 943 students by Newstead,
Franklyn-Stokes and Armstead, 88% of students
admitted to engaging in at least one type of cheating
behaviour [9]. In each of these studies, many students
who admitted to cheating also claimed to have cheated
on more than one occasion.
When comparing studies of the extent of cheating
practices it is important to understand what students
consider constitutes cheating behaviour. Some studies
have done this by asking students to classify
behaviours as a dichotomous rating [1,14]. However,
the Newstead study allowed more discernment of the
degree acceptability of various practices by asking
students to rate on a six point scale the seriousness of
22 cheating behaviours [9].
As might be expected, research studies indicate that
the frequency of practice between particular cheating
behaviours varies greatly. Furthermore, a negative
relationship exists between cheating practices which
students claim occur frequently, and those practices
that a large percentage of students define as cheating
[1]. For example, a widely practised form of cheating
involves paraphrasing material from another source
without acknowledgement, and this was generally
rated as a mild form of cheating by students. Similarly
the most serious forms of cheating involved cheating
in examinations, and these were the least reported as
practised or perceived as happening by students [9].
Estimates of the actual extent of cheating in these
studies have relied mostly on the self-reporting of
students, however, there is some doubt as to the
reliability of these figures. Scheers and Dayton (cited
in Brown) estimated that between 39% and 83% of
respondents to self-admission surveys under-reported,
indicating that the actual extent of cheating is higher
than reported [2]. Exam cheating is reported by
students as one of the least occurring forms of cheating
however an experiment with 78 college students
exposed to opportunities to cheat found that 59%
cheated in at least one exam, and most cheated in more
than one exam [7].
Perhaps more indication of the prevalence of cheating
may be gained from students’ perceptions of cheating
practice among their friends and classmates. In
surveys, students generally indicate more awareness of
other’s cheating than admissions of personal practice
[9]. However, they also indicate a reluctance to report
on fellow students whom they observe cheating. A
study of 791 undergraduate student found that 90%
said they would not report a cheating incident [13]. A
more recent study found that 49% to 86% reported that
they would not be likely to report cheating of another
student [3]. Another worrying indication of the extent
of the problem was a study of 380 undergraduate
students which found that although 54.1% admitted to
cheating only 1.3% reported that they had ever been
caught cheating [6]
3
Research Method
3.1 Participants
Students from selected undergraduate subjects in the
first year of undergraduate IT courses at Monash and
Swinburne Universities were invited to participate in
the study. Monash and Swinburne are metropolitan
universities in a large Australian city. The courses
have similar entry standards and draw on a similar
student population.
3.2 Survey
To determine students’ views of what constitutes
cheating and plagiarism, and their own and other’s
inclination to cheating practices, a survey
questionnaire was developed by staff at Monash
University. The survey was trialed and approved by
the Monash and Swinburne Research Ethics
Committees. The questionnaire contained questions
to determine demographic information, students’
rating of the acceptability of various cheating practices
described in 18 different scenarios, students’ practice
and knowledge of others practising each cheating
practice, and reasons which could cause cheating or
could prevent cheating. The questionnaire was titled
“Questionable Work Practices” and can be found at:
http://cerg.csse.monash.edu.au/
3.3 Procedure
The students were surveyed near the end of second
semester 2000 at Monash University and towards the
end of first semester 2001 at Swinburne University. A
paper questionnaire was given to the students in their
tutorial classes. Most students returned a completed
questionnaire.
4
Survey Results and Discussion
4.1 Demographic Profile
A total of 287 valid questionnaires were returned from
full-time students (137 Monash and 150 Swinburne).
The demographic profile of the two groups was
similar. The Monash students were 67.2% male
compared with 78.0% of the Swinburne group. There
were 33.1% overseas students in the Monash group
compared with 28.7% in the Swinburne group.
However, Chi-square tests on cross tabulations of
these classifications produced no significant
differences.
4.2 Acceptability of cheating practices
The students were asked to rate the acceptability of
various questionable work practices described in 18
different scenarios. The scenarios are briefly described
in Table 1.
For each scenario respondents were asked to rate how
acceptable the practice was, using a 5-point Likert
scale, where 1 indicates acceptable and 5 indicates not
acceptable. Independent groups t-tests were used to
determine differences in the means obtained for the
students’ ratings of the acceptability of scenarios when
classified according to university. Tests were not
performed on scenarios where the distributions of
responses showed high skewness or kurtosis.
The acceptability ratings showed that both groups of
students found scenarios 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16,
17, and 18 unacceptable or highly unacceptable (M >
3.5). These were scenarios involving exam cheating,
theft, fraud and gross plagiarism.
The Monash students rated every cheating practice,
except one, as more acceptable however the
differences were only significant in three scenarios as
follows.
 Two students collaborating on an assignment
meant to be completed individually (t(280)= –2.15,
p<0.05).
 Posting to an Internet newsgroup for individually
(t(279)= –2.80, p<0.05).
(This scenario is not
considered to be a cheating practice by the authors)
 Submitting a friend’s assignment from a past
running of the subject individually (t(284)= –3.51,
p<0.05).
First year programming students at Monash and
Swinburne are encouraged to help each other with their
work, however at Monash students are assessed by
interview for their assignment work. A strong
emphasis is placed on their ability to explain their
work rather than acknowledging where it originated.
At Swinburne assignments are regularly submitted
electronically to a system that automatically checks for
plagiarism. Here the emphasis is on unique code,
rather than a personal defense of understanding. This
may have had an influence on their rating of scenarios
1 and 5. Factors affecting the decision making of
students are an area of further research.
4.3 Admissions of cheating and knowledge of
others’ cheating
For each of the 18 scenarios, the students were asked if
they had practised it personally or knew someone who
had practised it. Cross tabulations were performed to
determine differences between numbers of Monash
and Swinburne students admitting to practising each
scenario, or knowing someone personally who had
practised the scenario. The results are shown in Table
1. The non responses for these questions were never
greater than 3%.
The frequency of students’ cheating practice was
determined by totalling the number of scenarios
practised. Scenarios 2 and 3, which are not considered
cheating practices, were not included in these totals.
Significantly more Monash students (85.4%) admitted
to cheating than Swinburne students (69.3%). The
maximum number of scenarios practised by any
students was 15 and there were no students who
admitted to practising every scenario.
As might be expected from their higher level of
acceptance of cheating behaviours, Monash students
admitted to more cheating practices than the
Swinburne students. A factor in these discrepancies
may be that at the time of the survey Monash students
had been at university for an extra semester, and this
warrants further investigation. Monash students were
significantly more likely to engage in practices which
involved colluding with a friend or fellow student and
submitting work which was not their own. It is
interesting to note that these practices were rated as
unacceptable by both groups of students. The Monash
students also perceived the extent of cheating at their
university to be higher for every practice and
significantly higher for six practices. These all
involved cheating on assignment work or assessable
lab exercises.
4.4 Detection of cheating
Most students in both groups (76.9% Monash and
81.5% Swinburne) indicated that they would do
nothing if they observed a student cheating in an exam.
Similar percentages indicated that they would do
nothing if they observed someone cheating in an
assignment (77.4% Monash and 78.5% Swinburne).
Why this should be tolerated so broadly is another area
for future research. One hypothesis is that there are no
effective actions available to students who become
aware of cheating.
5
Student
perceptions
of
staff
University attitudes to cheating
and
There was agreement in the students’ perceptions of
how strongly lecturers and tutors felt about preventing
cheating in their subjects, with students at both
universities believing that their teachers felt strongly
about the problem.
Most students claimed they were aware of cheating
and plagiarism regulations at their university, however
the Swinburne students more strongly believed that
their university was committed to reducing cheating
than the Monash students (t (277)= -2.04, p<0.05).
This is probably a consequence of a recent crackdown
on plagiarism at Swinburne School of IT, which has
involved students receiving regular reminders of
policy and penalties in their lectures from senior staff.
At Monash the IT Faculty has developed a policy on
cheating and plagiarism which lecturers are
encouraged to publish on their subject websites.
Students are made aware of this in subject handbooks
and assignment specifications, but this may not have
the impact of the direct confrontation practised at
Swinburne.
[5]
Graham, A.M., Monday, J., O'Brien, K. and
Steffen, S., Cheating at small colleges: an
examination of student and faculty attitudes
and behaviours, Journal of College Student
Develpment, 35 (1994) 255-260.
The survey of first year undergraduate IT students
across two universities has provided an opportunity to
compare the students’ perceptions of cheating and
plagiarism and their perceptions of cheating behaviour.
Results were broadly in agreement with other studies,
suggesting that, at least on the lower end of the
seriousness spectrum, cheating practices are
commonplace and widely tolerated despite awareness
of university policy. Inappropriate styles of
collaboration such as swapping assignments with a
friend are particularly evident.
[6]
Haines, V.J., Diekhoff, G.M., LaBeff, E.E.
and Clark, R.E., College cheating:
Immaturity, lack of commitment, and the
neutralising attitude, Research in Higher
education, 25 (1986) 342-354.
[7]
Hetherington, E.M. and Feldman, S.E.,
College cheating as a function of subject and
situational variables, Journal of Educational
Psychology, 55 (1964) 212-218.
There was strong agreement among all students about
the unacceptability of the most serious forms of
cheating. Most students rated exam cheating, or
behaviours involving fraud or theft as not acceptable.
In line with findings from other studies, these
scenarios were also practised by the lowest numbers of
students at both universities.
[8]
Murphy, P., How the Internet is invading the
halls: Cheats.com., The Age, 2000.
[9]
Newstead, S.E., Franklyn-Stokes, A. and
Armstead, P., Individual differences in
student cheating, Journal of Educational
Psychology, 88 (1996) 229-241.
[10]
Roberts, P., Anderson, J. and Yanish, P.,
Academic misconduct: where do we start?,
Northern Rocky Research Association,
Jackson, Wyoming, 1997.
[11]
Saltau, C., Fear of failure drives student exam
cheats., The Age, Melbourne, 2000, pp. 8.
[12]
Schemo, D.J., Degree of dishonour., The Age,
melbourne, 2001, pp. 16.
6
Conclusion
There were also significant variations in cheating
practices between the universities. Follow up studies
will explore reasons for the variations, possibly
leading to the development of measures that can be
taken to address this problem.
7
[1]
References
Barnett, D.C. and Dalton, J.C., Why college
students cheat?, Journal of College Student
Personnel, 22 (1981) 545-551.
[2]
Brown, B., The academic ethics of graduate
business students: a survey, Journal of
education for Business, 70 (1995) 151-156.
[13]
[3]
Cole, S. and McCabe, D.L., Issues in
academic integrity., New Directions for
Student Services, Jossey-Bass Publishers,
1996, pp. 67-77.
Stafford, T.H., Jr, Academic dishonesty at
North Carolina State University: a studentfaculty response., North Carolina State
University, Raleigh, 1976, pp. 22 pages.
[14]
Davis, S.F. and Ludvigson, H.W., Faculty
Forum: Additional data on academic
dishonesty and a proposal for remediation,
Teaching of Psychology, 22 (1995) 119-121.
Stern, E.B. and Havlicek, L., Academic
misconduct:
results of
faculty and
undergraduate student surveys, Journal of
Allied Health, 5 (1986) 129-142.
[15]
Szego, J., Top mark: is it hard work or a dotcon?, The Age, Melbourne, 2000, pp. 15.
[4]
Table 1 Students’ admissions of cheating practice and perception of other students’ cheating practice
Practised personally
Scenario
Mon
%
Swin
%
1. Two students collaborating on an assignment
meant to be completed individually
51.5
42.4
2. Posting to an Internet newsgroup for assistance
20.9
10.2
3. Showing assignment work to a lecturer for
guidance
28.1
4. Resubmitting an assignment from a previous
subject in a new subject
Mon
%
Swin
%
74.6
63.2
44.0
15.0
25.2
41.2
37.7
42.1
45.9
40.7
32.9
5. Submitting a friend’s assignment from a past
running of the subject
21.3
17.4
36.0
24.8
6. Being given the answer to a tutorial exercise
worth 5% by a class mate if the computer you used
has problems
11.0
3.3
36.0
17.3
12.89(1)
*
7. Hiring a person to write your assignment for you
4.4
0.7
15.6
3.4
12.67(1)
*
8. Copying another student’s assignment from their
computer without their knowledge and submitting
it
10.4
5.4
28.1
13.3
9.62(1)*
9. Not informing the tutor that an assignment has
been given too high a mark
27.8
24.2
35.1
28.9
10. Taking a student’s assignment from a lecturer’s
pigeonhole and copying it
3.0
2.0
3.7
4.0
11. Copying material for an essay from the Internet
22.4
18.8
35.8
26.2
12. Copying the majority of an assignment from a
friend’s assignment, but doing a fair bit of work
yourself
33.6
28.2
53.0
37.6
6.77(1)*
13. Copying all of an assignment given to you by a
friend
10.4
2.7
32.8
18.1
8.13(1)*
14. Hiring someone to sit an exam for you
2.2
2.0
4.5
4.7
15. Using a hidden sheet of paper with important
facts during an exam
2.2
2.7
14.2
22.8
16. Obtaining a medical certificate from a doctor to
get an extension when you are not sick
11.9
6.7
33.3
32.9
17. Copying material for an essay from a text book
23.7
18.4
35.6
31.3
18. Swapping assignments with a friend, so that
each does one assignment, instead of doing both
8.1
9.5
20.7
19.0
* = p < 0.05
X
Know someone
personally
6.18(1)*
6.50(1)*
7.05(1)*
X
28.86(1)
*