Promoting a Culture of Integrity: A Study of Faculty and Student Perceptions of Academic Dishonesty at a Large Public Midwestern University

Research reveals that reducing academic misconduct requires an understanding of factors that influence the two key stakeholders in the epidemic: students who engage in academically dishonest behaviors and faculty who are charged with the responsibility of reporting and deterring the behavior (e.g., Prenshaw, Straughan & Albers-Miller, 2000). In response, a body of research reveals that in order to alter the environment in which academic dishonesty occurs, an understanding of how individuals perceive dishonesty and its severity is of great importance (Roberts & Rabinowitz, 1992). Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to examine faculty perceptions and student perceptions of academic dishonesty. The study involved 561 undergraduate students and 112 faculty members who primarily teach undergraduate courses at a large public Midwestern institution during the Fall Semester 2011. Participants completed an anonymous, online questionnaire that was composed of three preexisting scales: the Attitudes toward Academic Dishonesty Scale (Davis et al., 1992; Bolin, 2004), the Academic Dishonesty Scale (McCabe & Trevino, 1997c) and the Academic Integrity Survey (McCabe, 2008d). Utilizing a series of frequency counts, mean scores and one-way ANOVAs, similarities and differences were found within faculty perceptions and student perceptions for the dependent variables under study. Results of the study revealed statistically significant differences within faculty responses to student engagement in behaviors identified as academically dishonest and within student responses and faculty responses to perceptions of institutional policies and procedures that address dishonesty. Further, the results of the study support research that reveals students may not perceive certain behaviors as constituting dishonesty (e.g., Brown, 2002; Carpenter, Harding & Finelli, 2006; Godfrey & Waugh, 1998; Rabi, Patton, Fjortoff & Zgarrick, 2005; Rakovsky & Levy, 2007) and that faculty perceptions of student engagement in specific behaviors identified as academically dishonest may be more negative than student self-reports of engagement (e.g., Nolan, Smith & Dai, 1998; Pe Symaco & Marcelo, 2002)