Criticism and justification of undergraduate academic dishonesty: development and validation of the domestic, market and industrial orders of worth scales

ABSTRACT

Despite university efforts to create honour codes and a culture of integrity, student academic dishonesty remains a widespread problem around the world. Previous theoretical and methodological approaches, which informed the development of measures for the prevention of dishonest behaviour, focus only on student justifications of academic misconduct as abnormal or deviant acts. However, understanding the arguments that both criticize and justify dishonesty at universities is crucial for developing an effective integrity policy. Based on Boltanski and Thevenot's theory, we develop and validate a questionnaire measuring the prevalence of students who draw on domestic, market and industrial orders of worth justifying or criticizing academic dishonesty. A total of 3,538 students from six Russian universities participated in the study. The results supported the applicability of the proposed model, demonstrating the validity and reliability of the instrument. The instrument can be utilized by universities for monitoring what order of worth prevails among students and developing honour codes and integrity policy.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic integrity
• higher education
• instrument development
• justification of academic dishonesty
• order of worth
• Boltanski and Thevenot theory

Acknowledgements

The data was collected in the study ‘Monitoring of Student Experience’ of the Consortium ‘Evidence-based digitalization for student success’ (https://en.edtechdata.ru/conso). We express our special gratitude to the coordinators of the universities participating in this study: Tatyana Apollonova (Yaroslavl State Technical University), Yulia Tsofina (Yaroslavl State University named after P.G.Demidov), Ksenia Lyakh (Novosibirsk State Technical University), Ksenia Mertins (Tomsk Polytechnic University), Olesya Shulezhko (Ulyanovsk State Pedagogical University named after I.N. Ulyanov), Kirill Zakharyin (Siberian Federal University), Natalia Zagritsenko (Southern Federal University), Evgeny Ledkov and Nikita Tutykhin (Far Eastern Federal University).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://en.edtechdata.ru/

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Oksana Dremova

Oksana Dremova is an analyst at the Centre for Sociology of Higher Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics. She is interested in research related to student academic dishonesty, academic integrity policies at university and student extracurricular engagement.

Natalia Maloshonok

Natalia Maloshonok is a senior research fellow at the Centre for Sociology of Higher Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics. She earned a PhD in Sociology in 2014. Her focus lies on student experience at a university, undergraduate and doctoral studies, gender stereotypes in education and Web survey methodology.

Evgeniy Terentev

Evgeniy Terentev is a senior research fellow at the Centre for Sociology of Higher Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics. He earned a PhD in Sociology in 2016. The area of his research interests lies in the undergraduate and graduate students’ experience, transformations of doctoral education in Russia and worldwide, academic profession.

Denis Federiakin

Denis Federiakin is a research fellow at the Centre for Psychometrics and Measurement in Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics. His interests are focused on methodology, psychometrics, and statistics in the social sciences.