Abstract
The study was conducted to examine perceived seriousness of academic cheating behaviors among undergraduate students in an Ethiopian University. A total of 245 (146 males and 99 females) regular undergraduate students were randomly selected from three colleges: business and economics, natural and computational science, and social science found in a university. Data were collected using a survey. The results indicated that majority of the respondents rated most cheating behaviors as “serious” The study found that although students perceived the seriousness of most cheating behaviors, they continued to actively engage in cheating. Furthermore, significant differences were found in the perception of the seriousness of academic cheating behaviors amongst students according to field of study and gender. Therefore, as today’s undergraduate students are the employees of tomorrow and that the ethics they adopt and adhere to shape their behavior in the future, it is suggested that there is a need to make known to students the reality of academic integrity and to expose them to the consequences of violating students’ academic code of ethics.
Highlights
In many social and economic contexts individuals often face the choice to adopt different types of opportunistic or even illicit behavior to increase their welfare taking advantage of others for personal interests
A total of 245 (146 males and 99 females) senior undergraduate students were selected from three colleges (Social Science and Humanities, Business and Economics, and Natural and Computational Sciences) found within a University at Dire Dawa City, Ethiopia, using stratified and simple random sampling
To measure students’ perception about the seriousness of academic cheating behavior, the researcher adopted academic dishonesty questionnaire used by Oneill and Pfeiffer (2012) and Witherspoon et al (2012)
Summary
In many social and economic contexts individuals often face the choice to adopt different types of opportunistic or even illicit behavior to increase their welfare taking advantage of others for personal interests. Academic cheating as defined by Davis et al (2009) is deceiving or depriving by trickery, defrauding, misleading or fooling another. They further explained that academic cheating/academic misconduct refers to acts committed by students that. Rana and Ajmal (2013) defined it as “students attempt to present others’ academic work as their own.”. It includes many activities such as cheating (seeking help from peers) on examination, copying other student’s assignment, collaborating with others on individual assignments and using unauthorized material during examination. Cizek (2012) defined cheating as involving three domains: cheating by giving, taking, or receiving information from other during exam/test; cheating by using prohibited materials or information; and cheating to evade the assessment process
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