MIAMI: development and validation of a revised measure of academic misconduct

Abstract

Academic misconduct remains a perennial concern in tertiary education around the globe. Research intended to explain this phenomenon has been conducted for almost 100 years. One of the most cited researchers is Donald McCabe, whose work was rooted in a survey instrument he developed in the late 1980s and distributed to 100,000 + students over the following two decades. Recognizing the need to continue to understand academic misconduct in the 21st century context, the present study updated and validated the original McCabe instrument as an inventory of academic misconduct behaviors, and derived psychometrically sound factors of the same to enable researchers to examine the predictors of these behaviors. Specifically, our updated instrument (named MIAMI: McCabe/ICAI Academic Misconduct Inventory) was shown to have construct validity through associations with the following predictors in a survey of tertiary students (n = 2329): academic integrity climate, peer norms, moral attitudes, and achievement goal structures. The updated survey will facilitate further research that will advance our understanding of academic misconduct and test the efficacy of interventions designed to promote academic integrity.