Project Title Predictors of Freshmen Engineering Students’ Report of Cheating

Unethical behavior among students is a concern within all academic disciplines, including the STEM fields. The literature describes demographic variables of students who exhibit academically dishonest behaviors but is limited by specific samples. We investigated the probability of freshmen engineering students’ report of cheating based upon individual predictor variables including perceptions, knowledge, and attitudes toward academic integrity. Participants rated themselves on five quantitative perception measures: self-perceived ethicalness (E), cheating prevalence (CP), plagiarism prevalence (PP), knowledge of consequences (KC), and how much they cared about academic integrity (C), as well as whether the participant had previous training or education about academic integrity (no training; NT). Eighty percent of participants reported that they had never cheated. Almost 93% had completed previous academic integrity training. Freshmen engineering students were more likely to report cheating with decreased self-perceived ethicalness and decreased perceived prevalence of plagiarism. These results could inform academic dishonesty prevention efforts aimed at challenging students’ perceptions and behaviors