Academic Dishonesty: Honor Codes and Other Contextual Influences

Research and media reports have established the continued pervasiveness of academic dishonesty among students on America's college campuses [12, 13, 22, 25, 26, 33, 46]. While some colleges have responded with academic integrity classes and increased efforts to convince reluctant faculty members to report student cheaters [13], there is a renewed interest in the concept of "community" as an effective foundation for campus governance. For example, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's special report, Campus Life: In Search of Community, concludes, "What is needed, we believe, is a larger, more integrative vision of community in higher education. a place where individuals accept their obligations to the group and where well-defined governance procedures guide behavior for the common good" [10, p. 7]. Derek Bok, in Universities and the Future of American, echoes this theme: [U]niversities need to consider the larger campus environment beyond the classroom. An obvious step in this direction is to have rules tha t prohibit lying, cheating, stealing, violent behavior, interference with free expression, or other acts that break fundamental norms. Such rules not only protect the rights of everyone in the community; they also signal the importance of basic moral obligations and strengthen habits of ethical behavior [5, pp. 84-85]. Bok offers the honor code as perhaps the most effective approach in matters of academic integrity, but acknowledges that, "the pervasive competition for grades; the size, diversity, and impersonal nature of many large universities; their lack of any honor code traditon; and the wide-spread distaste for accusing one's classmates" combine to work against such an approach [5, p. 87]. Although the honor code traditon dates back over a century, the viability of such codes on today's campuses is open to some question [12]. Small, relatively homogeneous campuses have generally given way to large, culturally diverse institutions which lack any apparent sense of community or common purpose among students other than getting a credential and a job. Despite the fundamental nature of this question, there is a surprising paucity of empirical research which addresses the effectiveness of honor codes. the study discussed here attempts to help fill this gap by comparing academic dishonesty in colleges that have honor codes and those that do not. The few studies that have addressed the effectiveness of honor codes [7, 9] have generally considered code effectiveness independent of context. We believe that it is important to acknowledge and understand the complexity of the social systems within which honor codes are embedded and the fact that other contextual factors may be as important or more important than the existence of an honor code by itself. Thus this study extends beyond previous work by studying the effectiveness of honor codes within a more complex social context. Honor Codes in Context Academic Dishonesty Depending on one's definition of academic dishonesty, the data collection methods employed, and other variables, prior studies report that anywhere from 13 to 95 percent of college students engage in some form of academic dishonesty [12, 17, 20, 21, 26, 30, 31, 42]. A major dichotomy that separates these prior studies is the level of analysis. One stream of research has focused on individual differences though to be predictive of cheating behavior, such as gender [45], grade point average [1, 22,], work ethic [15], Type A behavior, competitive achievement-striving [35], and self-esteem [44]. In contrast, other studies have concentrated on the institutional level of analysis and examined such contextual factors as honor codes [7, 8, 9], faculty responses to cheating [26], sanction threats [33, 42], and social learning [33]. Although the "individual differences" approach helps to understand individuals' predispositions to cheat, the findings are not particularly useful to the university administrator searching for effective institutional responses to issues of academic dishonesty. …