Historical trends in plagiarism are often estimated by comparing survey results from a diverse range of samples, institutions, and measures. However, in multi-institution multi-method comparisons ...changes over time are difficult to separate from differences in methods. We assessed self-reported engagement in, awareness of, and attitudes toward seven forms of plagiarism in surveys of four comparable groups of students at the same university on four occasions over 15 years, each separated by 5 years (2004, 2009, 2014, and 2019). The new 2019 sample was 1099 students. A downward trend in plagiarism from 2004 to 2014 was not continued in 2019, with similar rates of engagement in, awareness of, and attitudes toward the seven forms of plagiarism in 2019 as in 2014. These results emphasize the need to continue efforts to detect and prevent plagiarism, and to educate academics and students about academic integrity conventions.
Contract cheating refers to students paying a third party to complete university assessments for them. Although opportunities for commercial contract cheating are widely available in the form of ...essay mills, only about 3% of students engage in this behaviour. This study examined the reasons why most students do
not
engage in contract cheating. Students (
n
= 1204) completed a survey on why they do not engage in contract cheating as well as measures of several individual differences, including self-control, grit and the Dark Triad traits. Morality and motivation for learning received the greatest endorsement for why students do not engage in contract cheating. Controlling for gender, individual differences predicted students’ reasons for not contract cheating. This study supports the use of criminological theories relating to rational choice, self-control and opportunity to explain why students do not engage in contract cheating. Practically, this study may inform academic policies and assessment design that may reduce contract cheating.
Although individual and socio-demographic factors are known to affect student plagiarism there is little research conducted to show how the milieu of factors interact with each other to influence ...plagiarism behaviour. University students (N = 891) completed surveys on several possible predictors of plagiarism and plagiarism engagement. It was found that predictors of plagiarism accounted for 22.9% of variance in student's engagement in plagiarism behaviour. The following variables all predicted plagiarism engagement over and above students' understanding of plagiarism and perception of plagiarism as serious: self-control, pressure from self and others to achieve high grades, age, gender, culture and study major. These findings are important as they highlight the need for interventions that target student perceptions and personal factors such as self-control.
Moral and self-conscious emotions like guilt and shame can function as internal negative experiences that punish or deter bad behaviour. Individual differences exist in people’s tendency to ...experience guilt and shame. Being disposed to experience guilt and/or shame may predict students’ expectations of their emotional reactions to engaging in immoral behaviour in the form of academic misconduct, and thus dissuade students from intending to engage in this behaviour. In this study, students’ (
n
= 459) guilt and shame proneness, their expectations of feeling guilt and shame if they engaged in academic misconduct, and their intentions to engage in academic misconduct were measured. Three of the four facets of the guilt and shame proneness scale GASP: Guilt–Negative-Behavior-Evaluation (NBE), Guilt-Repair, Shame–Negative-Self-Evaluation (NSE) had significant negative correlations with academic misconduct intentions, and these relationships were mediated by anticipating shame and guilt related to engaging in academic misconduct. These results suggest that for some students expecting to experience negative moral emotions when engaging in academic misconduct may protect them from breaching ethical assessment rules.
Until recently, need frustration was considered to be the absence of need satisfaction, rather than a separate dimension. Whilst the absence of need satisfaction can hamper growth, experiencing need ...frustration can lead to malfunctioning and subsequent psychopathology. Therefore, examining these constructs separately is vital, as they produce different outcomes, with the consequences of need frustration potentially more severe. This study sought to examine predictors of need frustration using undergraduate students and individuals from the wider community (
= 510, females
404,
= 24.15). Participants completed the new need satisfaction frustration scale and measures of anxiety, stress, depression, and negative and positive affect. Support for the position that need frustration is separate to Need Satisfaction and is related to psychological health problems (i.e., ill-being) was found. However, autonomy frustration was not found to be a significant predictor of ill-being. Extending previous research, this study found relationships of stress and somatic anxiety with need frustration. Further, a relationship between need frustration with anxiety and depression occurred, when these symptom dimensions were examined separately, through distinct questionnaires. Support for the construct of need frustration highlights the necessity of examining need frustration in addition to need satisfaction within future studies. Interventions specific to reducing need frustration, specifically competence and relatedness frustration within both the educational and workplace setting are outlined.
The Cognitive Experiential Leadership Model (CELM) predicts that leaders' thinking styles will be related to transformational leadership and effective leadership behaviours, especially influencing ...tactics and conflict handling styles. However, most of the existing evidence for this model comes from studies that have used self-report methods where self-presentational biases may influence the studies' results. Moreover, there is incomplete evidence for the proposed connections in this model between thinking styles, leadership styles, and leadership behaviour.
Using anonymous other-report surveys, in Study 1, followers (N = 192) rated how their leaders think and lead, and in Study 2 followers (N = 129) rated how their leaders think, influence, and handle conflict.
As the CELM predicts, leaders' tendency to think rationally and experientially (especially imaginatively) was related to their transformational leadership (Study 1), and their use of effective influencing tactics and conflict management styles (Study 2).
Together these studies provide new evidence for the CELM that is not explained by social desirability biases, and suggest a role for follower ratings of leaders' thinking styles in leadership development.
Are more students cheating on assessment tasks in higher education? Despite ongoing media speculation concerning increased 'copying and pasting' and ghostwritten assignments produced by 'paper ...mills', few studies have charted historical trends in rates and types of plagiarism. Additionally, there has been little comment from researchers as to the best way to assess changes in plagiarism over time. In this paper, we discuss the relative strengths and weaknesses of research designs for assessing changes in plagiarism over time, namely cross-sectional, longitudinal, and time-lag. We also report the results of our own time-lag study of plagiarism. We assessed self-reported engagement in, awareness of, and attitudes towards plagiarism in three comparable groups of students at the same university on three occasions, each separated by five years (2004, 2009, and 2014). The data from our study paint an encouraging picture of increased understanding and reduced occurrence of several forms of plagiarism, with no upward trend in verbatim copying or ghostwriting. We suggest that technological and educational initiatives are counteracting the potential for increased plagiarism from online sources.
Contract cheating, or plagiarism via paid ghostwriting, is a significant academic ethical issue, especially as reliable methods for its prevention and detection in students’ assignments remain ...elusive. Contract cheating in academic assessment has been the subject of much recent debate and concern. Although some scandals have attracted substantial media attention, little is known about the likely prevalence of contract cheating by students for their university assignments. Although rates of contract cheating tend to be low, criminological theories suggest that people who employ ghostwriters for their assignments are likely to re-offend, and little is known about re-offence rates in this form of academic misconduct. We combined previously-collected datasets (
N
= 1378) and conducted additional, and previously-unreported, analyses on self-report measures of contract cheating prevalence. We found that few students (3.5%), on aggregate, ever engaged in contract cheating but this varied substantially among samples (from 0.3% to 7.9%). Of those who ever engaged in contract cheating, 62.5% did so more than once. The data also suggested that engagement in contract cheating is influenced by opportunity. These figures may help policy makers, and researchers who are creating contract cheating detection methods, to estimate base rates of contract cheating and the likelihood of re-offence.
Wrongful convictions continue to occur through eyewitness misidentification. Recognising what factors, or interaction between factors, affect face-recognition is therefore imperative. Extensive ...research indicates that face-recognition accuracy is impacted by anxiety and by race. Limited research, however, has examined how these factors interact to potentially exacerbate face-recognition deficits. Brigham (2008) suggests that anxiety exacerbates other-race face-recognition deficits. Conversely, Attentional Control Theory predicts that anxiety exacerbates deficits for all faces. This systematic review examined existing studies investigating the possible interaction between anxiety and face-race to compare these theories. Recent studies included in this review found that both anxiety and race influence face-recognition accuracy but found no interaction. Potential moderators existing in reviewed studies, however, might have influenced their results. Separately, in some studies reviewed, anxiety induced during retrieval impacted recognition, contrasting with the conclusions of previous reviews. Recommendations for future research are given to address moderators potentially impacting results observed previously.
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