Academic Misconduct: A Goals–Plans–Action Approach to Peer Confrontation and Whistle-Blowing

Abstract

Academic misconduct is a serious, pervasive, communication phenomenon on college campuses. In this study, the goals–plans–action model (Dillard, 1990) was used as a theoretical framework to investigate peer confrontation of cheating and whistle-blowing to a course instructor. In an experiment, participants were asked to respond to measures of primary and secondary goals, plans, explicit confrontation of a peer, and whistle-blowing. The primary goal and secondary goal predicted explicit confrontation. Whistle-blowing was predicted by either the primary goal and the affect management secondary goal (for same-group peers) or the personal resource secondary goal (for peers in other class groups).

Keywords:

• Goals–Plans–Action Model
• Academic Misconduct
• Peer Confrontation
• Whistle-blowing

Notes

1. Dillard (2004) has recently renamed two of the secondary goals. In particular, Dillard changed the term interaction to conversation management and arousal management to affect management. The new terms are meant to respectfully acknowledge lines of research that have emerged since the publication of the initial primary and secondary goal study (Dillard et al., 1989). As such, the new terms are used in this paper.

2. The reported age of the participants indicates that several nontraditional students participated in the study. The majority of the participants, 97.1%, were between the ages of 19 and 28. Analyses were conducted, however, to determine if the age of the participant influenced the goals, planning, explicit confrontation, and whistle-blowing reported by the participants. The age of the participant did not have a statistically significant effect in any of the preliminary analyses. As a result, we did not control for age in the reported tests of hypotheses.

3. The goals–plans–action model predicts a meditational model. The best test of a meditational model would be structural equation modeling (SEM). Preliminary data analysis was performed using Baron and Kenny's (1986) method for evaluating mediation through regression analyses. The data clearly did not reflect the necessary criteria for mediation. The amount of planning does not have a statistically significant zero-order correlation with either predicted action. As a result, it was not possible to fit a model using SEM that showed the mediation of planning between goals and the two predicted actions. Regression analyses, therefore, are a more interpretable test of the predictions, are more statistically equivalent to an SEM with a nonmediated model, and are presented in the analyses.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mary Lynn Miller Henningsen

Mary Lynn Miller Henningsen (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, 2001) is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Northern Illinois University

Kathleen S. Valde

Kathleen S. Valde (Ph.D., University of Iowa, 2000) is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Northern Illinois University

Jessica Denbow

Jessica Denbow is a graduate student in the Department of Communication at Northern Illinois University. An earlier version of this study was presented at the 2012 conference of the National Communication Association, Orlando, FL