Individual Differences in Cheating Ability and Likelihood

1
Individual Differences in Cheating Ability and
Likelihood

• Bradley J. BrummelUniversity of Illinois at
  Urbana-ChampaignChuah Siang Chee
• American Institute of Certified Public Accountants

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Presentation Outline

• Introduction
• Abilities
• Number of items remembered
• Quality of content remembered
• Self-efficacy and test scores
• Motivations
• Personality
• Cheating willingness
• Cheating motivations
• Likelihood
• Cheating experiences
• Conclusions

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Why Measure Individual Differences in Cheating?

• Understand the phenomenon
• Abilities
• Motivations
• Likelihood
• Help combat attempts at cheating
• It takes willingness and ability to execute an
  effect cheating program, so
• Knowing some of the how and why should help in
  creating best practices for preventing it

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Specific Testing Context

• Mimicking small scale cheating rings for academic
  achievement and placement tests
• Remember items tell a friend or post on a
  community website
• Ask student to focus on doing well on 26 critical
  reasoning items and then recall the items after
  filling out other info (personality,
  demographics, efficacy, and past behavior)

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Research Sample

• 289 undergraduate participants
• Course credit for participation
• 46 took a computer-based version
• 61 Female
• No extra motivation for doing well on the test or
  the item recall task.
• Recall was done individually

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Ability - Number items recalled

• Max of items 17
• Min of items 0
• Max of full items and answers 8

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Ability Quality of Content

• Categories and of items entries in each
• Items recalled 1249 entries
• Items recognizable 97
• Full stems 75
• Full stems answer 30
• Full stems right answer 18
• Easier to remember topics than full questions
• People tended to use one style of recall of items

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Self-efficacy and test scores

• Both self-efficacy and test performance (r
  .32) were related to remembering more items
• Both were most strongly related to remembering
  items in their more complete forms

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Personality Traits

• 44 item Big Five Measure (IPIP)
• Personality generally unrelated to cheating
  ability or motivation
• Small correlation between neuroticism and
  willingness

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Willingness to cheat

• If your friend asked you what the questions were
  on a test that he/she was going to take, would
  you tell him/her?
• Yes 62
• No 38
• Why
• Not all willingness answers match with reasons
• Only one answer per person

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Motivations for Cheating

• Helpful / Friendly - 34 (88)
• I like to help out my friends
• it would help him or her out. i am a helpful
  kind of person
• Reciprocity - 12 (30)
• I would expect the same from him/her
• because friends don't let friends fail exams
• Only General Topic Areas - 16 (40)
• I would only give hints on what to study
• Other - 4 (9)
• unfortunately those who succeed in life are
  those that take the most advantage of things and
  use all resources possible
• why not?

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Motivations not to Cheat

• Moral - 16 (40)
• cheating is wrong my friend should have studied
  and learned the materials success should be
  earned
• It's dishonest
• Hurt my performance - 10 (26)
• because unfair - they would get better score
  than me
• i am selfish
• Unable - 8 (20)
• I have a horrible memory and dont trust my
  ability in relaying information
• I tend to push the test behind me completely
  after I had taken it, therefore I can't remember
• Other - 1 (3)

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Cheating Experiences I

• Have you ever asked a friend who has taken the
  test that you will take in the future, what the
  questions were?
• Yes 82
• No 18
• Note that this is most likely for classes, not
  necessarily for certification or academic
  achievement tests

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Cheating Experiences II

• Has a friend ever asked you what the questions
  were on a test that they were going to take in
  the future?
• Yes 94
• No 6
• People are looking for this advantage in this
  type of a testing situation at a high rate.

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Cheating Experiences III

• Have you ever told your friend what the questions
  were on a test that he/she was going to take in
  the future?
• Yes 83
• No 17
• More people said they wouldnt help a friend
  cheat than have never done it. (38 to 17)

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Conclusions

• People did differ in their ability for this type
  of cheating and they were aware of their skills
• People did differ in their willingness to cheat
  and motivations to cheat or not to cheat
• Cheating behavior of this type is common, at
  least in educational settings
• It may be possible to target these differences
  when encouraging people not to cheat
• Highlighting moral elements and personal harm
  reasons for not cheating
• Pointing out the low likelihood of actually
  helping your friends