Sex role socialization and perceptions of student academic dishonesty by male and female accounting faculty

ABSTRACT

We examine differences between male and female accounting faculty members’ perceptions of academic dishonesty and their uses of controls to prevent academically dishonest behaviour. We use socialization concepts to motivate our examination of these differences. Specifically, we find that females generally perceive academic dishonesty to be a more significant problem than do males, females see individual incidences of academic dishonesty as more frequent and more significant than do males, and female academics report they exercise controls to prevent academic dishonesty more frequently than do male academics. These findings are consistent with differential sex role socialization for women and men. We also find that male and female accounting academics’ perceptions converge with professional training and teaching experience, suggesting moderating impacts of professional and/or organizational socialization on perceptions of academic dishonesty. Lastly, we document some differences in how male and female accounting academics respond to known incidences of academically dishonest behaviour.

KEYWORDS:

• Socialization
• academic dishonesty
• accounting faculty
• controls
• sex

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 A full discussion of the WTS Framework, and graduate student socialization is beyond the scope of this article. More details can be found in Weidman et al. (2001).

2 The survey instrument and the research methodology received approval by the Research Ethics Board at the first author's post-secondary institution. Employing a 5-point Likert scale is consistent with prior literature (Dawes, 2008; Preston & Colman, 2000).

3 The purpose of the open-ended questions was to help validate the list of items in each section. The open-ended questions can also provide insights into the existence of any differences between males and females which are not captured by the Likert-scale questions.

4 This response rate is consistent with the prior literature (Baruch, 1999; Braun & Stallworth, 2009).

5 The level of significance for the mean differences tests is based upon a one-tailed Mann–Whitney U test with H₁: Professional designation median > No professional designation median. The statistical significance is corroborated with a t-test for mean difference between the two groups.

6 The level of significance for the untabulated mean differences tests is based upon a two-tailed Mann–Whitney U test with H₁: Terminal degree mean ≠ No terminal degree mean.

7 The resulting mean (standard deviation) for the control frequency percentage and control effectiveness percentages are 57% (14%) and 58% (13%), respectively. The distributions of the control frequency percentage and control effectiveness percentage are such that 69% and 71%, respectively, of the observations fall within one standard deviation from the mean, while 95% and 96%, respectively, lie within two standard deviations from the mean. For both distributions, 99% of the observations fall within three standard deviations from the mean. Doornik–Hansen, Shapiro–Wilk and Jarque–Bera normality tests (results untabulated) also support the conclusion that the distribution of these two discrete distributions (the control frequency percentage and control effectiveness percentage) have a reasonably normal distribution to allow for unbiased OLS regression estimations.