Survey of the prevalence of, and attitudes towards, academic cheating Essay Example

disadvantages.

Quantitative Research and Qualitative Research

This research focal point is chiefly on quantitative information and no qualitative information is included at any point.The limitation of quantitative research is that quantitative does non assist “to understand significance, belief and experiences” ( Wisker,2014 ).

Survey Instrument

Questionnaire

“A written set of inquiries that are given to people in order to roll up facts and sentiments about something “Merriam-Webster. In the field of academic cheating, most researchers used self-reported questionnaires ( Nazir and Aslam,2010 ). In some instances, the questionnaire is besides complemented with the focal point group to roll up qualitative information (Lim and See, 2001). Other writers like Rehman and Waheed ( 2013 ) use personal interviews which were taken with images of respondents, they justify their usage of interview to obtain elaborate information.

A questionnaire is appropriate in this survey after judging the advantages and disadvantages below:

Advantages (Learning Technology Dissemination Initiative, 2000 and evaluated Toolkit,2006):

• A questionnaire encourages response to sensitive issues because it protects user`s individuality.
• It is a dependable method since the same inquiries are answered by different people.
• Planing and construing information is quicker.
• Many respondents can be reached.
• Questionnaires are cost effectual.
• It is a simple and speedy manner for respondents to reply inquiries.
• Simple to administer to respondents.

Disadvantages:

• Respondents may reply superficially.
• Students are afraid to supply their true sentiment, fearing being penalized.
• May confused respondents if the questionnaire is ill-designed and incorrect diction is used

The proper sequence is followed in this research this allows clearing misinterpretation of a single inquiry. Clear relation of one inquiry with another is put on an accent like how answering happen punishment is followed by the consciousness of punishment.

The easiest and general inquiries are put at the beginning like gender and the particular and inquiry that bear the features of setting strain on the memory of the respondent and inquiry of personal characters. The last subdivision trades with answering frequency in prosecuting dishonest behavior.

This questionnaire contains entirely closed-ended inquiries, the respondent has to take from a list of replies. Closed-ended is less clip devouring for respondents and it besides eliminates the hazards of irrelevant replies. We make usage of three signifiers of inquiry: dichotomous question, likert scale question, multiple-choice question.

Section 1

This peculiar subdivision collects information about the person.

Section 2

This subdivision is based on McCabe and Trevino, 1993. This subdivision concerns contextual factors such as equal behavior and coverage, punishments and institutional policies. The consciousness for punishments by the University of Mauritius consists of dichotomous inquiry which can be answered by “yes” or “No” . The list of punishments is obtained from chapter 5 & A; 8 and a papers available online named “introduction.”

Section 3

This subdivision tries to happen the perceptual experience of pupils. Questions 3.3 – frequence is a Likert graduated table of five point which gathers the information about the type of academic dishonest Acts of the Apostless and the figure of clip the pupils do acquire affect in these act. Question 3.2 ask the pupils about the Acts of the Apostless severity Question 3.1 asked the pupils about the appropriate punishments harmonizing to the pupils, they should give to each Acts of the Apostless. The dishonesty Acts of the Apostless are based on Lim and See (2001) , Ravoski and Levy (2006) and Belford and Geraghty (1999). The questionnaire is based

on Nazir and Aslam 2010.

Pilot Proving

In order for the questionnaire to be effectual and guarantee the proper quality of response. A pilot testing is advisable to happen any defects in the questionnaires which can be amended (Kothari, n.d ). Before administrating the questionnaire to the pupils, pilot testing is performed, taking to remotion of confounding diction. Through this exercise, the clip continuance for finishing the questionnaire is about 10 proceedings. A transcript of the study can be read in Appendix Section.

Description of Population and Sample

A sample is defined as a subset of population which is a entire group of people or entities from whom information is required (Wiid and Diggines). Sampling method consist of two classs trying methods chance and non-probability sampling.

The sample consists of Accounting Students at UOM that involves both portion clip and full clip. Base on premise, a full clip category has an norm of 40 pupils while portion clip category has an mean 20 pupils, with the exclusion of accounting flat 4 part-time which has 8 pupils. The entire population is about 428 pupils.

Sample size is calculated through an on-line reckoner with an false assurance interval of 5 % and a assurance degree of 95 % . This gives a sample of 200 pupils. The tabular array below show the figure of respondents targeted and the figure obtained. Harmonizing to Roscoe 1975, a sample should be between 30 and 500 (cited in Guidelines for Criterion-related Validation Studies,2010), taking this in consideration the sum of 167 pupils out of 200 satisfy Roscoe`s regulation.

Survey Administration

The questionnaires are distributed to the pupils present before the category start and no attempt has been made to reach absentees. I remain with the respondents to help them with any hard diction or confusion. The twelvemonth 3 and twelvemonth 1 batch shows unwillingness to finish questionnaires therefore response rate is 0 % . Year 2 portion clip category pupils did non organize portion of the respondent since I was unable to reach them. The aggregation for informations take one hebdomad, the above tabular array provides more item on the figure of questionnaires send to each degree and their response rate. The column questionnaires collected excludes questionnaires that were uncompleted and the refusal from the respondents.

Ethnical Consideration

Before administering the questionnaires, research moralss (Smith, 2003) are respected, such as allowing the respondents know they are non obliged to take part. The intent of the research is besides briefly explained.Although the screen missive states that confidentiality of information is maintained, pupils are reassured once more anterior finishing the study.

Hypothesis

“A hypothesis can be defined as a probationary account of the research job, a possible result of the research or an educated conjecture about the research outcome” Sarantakos, 1993 (cited Prasad and al, 2001)

Features of hypothesis (Kothari,2004):

• It should
  

be clear and precise.

Hypothesis:

• H1 - Academic dishonesty will be lower among female than male pupils.
• H2- Academic dishonesty will be lower among first twelvemonth
• H3- Academic cheating will be reciprocally related to peer behavior
• H4 – Academic cheating will be reciprocally related to peer coverage
• H5- Academic cheating will be reciprocally related to institutional policies
• H6- Academic cheating will be reciprocally related with punishments
• H7- pupils will prosecute in least serious act more often
• H8- Active Acts of the Apostless will be more serious than inactive Acts of the Apostless, tests based act will be more serious than active based Acts of the Apostless and in category will be more serious than active.
• H 9 – pupils will propose the lowest punishments for the least serious act
• H10-Low consciousness of punishments among pupils

Method for Informations Analysis

SPSS is package that transforms informations that user input into statistics that the users want (Social scientific discipline calculating co-ops, 2011). SPSS is the preferable analysis package compared to Excel.

Advantages of SPSS (Knotts and Steube,2010):

• SPSS is good explained and illustrated on diverse media
• Friendly graphical user interfaces which allow statistical modus operandis

Disadvantages:

• SPSS is really expensive

Restriction of Survey

The research is done merely on accounting pupils at the University, When a survey is done on one university, it prevent generalisation of consequence (Mustapha and Sing Saw,2012). Students in other third establishment in Mauritius could be considered.

holding merely accounting pupils as sample limit the utility of the research for university.

This research is besides done at one period of clip, Davis and Welton (1991) propose that a longitudinal survey should be done on pupils by buttocks a group of first twelvemonth pupils and so follows them throughout their survey. All these restriction arises because of costs incurred to roll up informations. Besides clip is a restraint as I am a full clip pupil.

Social Desirability might impact response of our questionnaires. We did non include a Social Desirability graduated table in this research ; this could take our informations non to reflect the true as the respondents might wish to demo a positive image.

Not much informations about cheating at third degree within the local context or any adulterous statistics at the University Itself/other establishment is available; statistics are merely about secondary pupils which are provided from the Mauritius Examination Syndicate. The lone information, we found was the university Policies and punishments and audit study from Tertiary Education Commission which appraise the system at the University.

The following chapter will take the informations collected to supply an in-depth analysis utilizing SPSS, that is informations will be represented visually through charts and Numberss along with reading.

Chapter 5 Analysis and determination

SPSS version 16 is used in this research to pull strings the information collected. SPSS offers besides many statistical maps and allows a It offers characteristics such as specifying variable, in this research the variable in the Likert is given a codification for illustration 5 to procedure. SPSS is besides better suited for treating big informations, compared to distribute sheet. The end product such as graph and

statistics are separated from the informations input (University of Illinois Library, 2012). This chapter shows how the informations are transformed into meaningful statistics along with their reading.

This pie chart shows the per centum of male and female respondents from the 167 questionnaires collected. The per centum of female is 55.5 % while male respondent in our sample is 55.5 %.

Most of the respondents come from 3rd twelvemonth (35.9 %) and first twelvemonth (32.3 %), this is due to high response rate.Second twelvemonth represent merely 27.5 due to low response rate. Year four has merely 7 respondents which shows 4.2 % on the saloon chart.

From the saloon chart, there are fewer respondents from Part clip pupils (4.2 %) compared to full clip (95.8 %) this is due to unwillingness from pupils of twelvemonth 3 and twelvemonth 1 portion clip pupils to finish the questionnaires. Second twelvemonth portion clip pupils were unable to be contacted due to the fact that their category agenda remained unknown.

Dependability for likert scale - to prove dependability for likert graduated table, I use the cronbach alpha.

Table 2 – Punishment

Table 3 – Severity of the Acts of the Apostless