IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/che/ireepp/v4y2005i2p23-45.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Determinants of Cheating by High School Economics Students: A Comparative Study of Academic Dishonesty in the Transitional Economies

Author

Listed:
  • Paul W. Grimes

    (Mississippi State University)

  • Jon P. Rezek

    (Mississippi State University)

Abstract

Secondary school students in six transitional economies, Belarus, Croatia, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Russia and Ukraine, along with students in the USA, were surveyed about academic cheating. Regardless of geographic location, a substantial majority of all students reported that they had cheated on an exam or course assignment. In general, however, the percentages of students who reported that they had cheated and that they would assist others to cheat were higher in the transitional economies than in the USA. A bivariate probit regression model was estimated to determine the factors that contribute to the probability of cheating. The results indicated that the most consistently significant determinants were personal beliefs about the ethics and social acceptability of cheating and various attributes of the classroom environment. With the exceptions of Lithuania and Ukraine, students in each transitional economy had a higher probability of cheating relative to students in the USA, ceteris paribus. The relative differences ranged from 8.9% for Belarus up to 17.1% for Croatia. For Russia, the difference was a relatively high 15.4%. These and other results suggest that researchers must be extremely careful in making cross-national comparisons of student outcomes in the transitional zone if cheating trends are ignored.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul W. Grimes & Jon P. Rezek, 2005. "The Determinants of Cheating by High School Economics Students: A Comparative Study of Academic Dishonesty in the Transitional Economies," International Review of Economic Education, Economics Network, University of Bristol, vol. 4(2), pages 23-45.
  • Handle: RePEc:che:ireepp:v:4:y:2005:i:2:p:23-45
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/iree/v4n2/grimes.htm
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joe Kerkvliet & Charles L. Sigmund, 1999. "Can We Control Cheating in the Classroom?," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(4), pages 331-343, December.
    2. Clifford Nowell & Doug Laufer, 1997. "Undergraduate Student Cheating in the Fields of Business and Economics," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(1), pages 3-12, March.
    3. Jan R. Magnus & Victor M. Polterovich & Dmitri L. Danilov & Alexei V. Savvateev, 2002. "Tolerance of Cheating: An Analysis Across Countries," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(2), pages 125-135, June.
    4. Michael Watts & William B. Walstad, 2002. "Reforming Economics and Economics Teaching in the Transition Economies," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 2257.
    5. William B. Walstad & Ken Rebeck, 2001. "Teacher and Student Economic Understanding in Transition Economies," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(1), pages 58-67, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rodolfo G Ledesma, 2011. "Academic Dishonesty among Undergraduate Students in a Korean University," Research in World Economy, Research in World Economy, Sciedu Press, vol. 2(2), pages 25-35, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Togara Warinda, 2017. "Academic Dishonesty: Prior perceptions and behaviour on cheating of Bachelor of Accountancy Freshmen at a Zimbabwean university," Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies, AMH International, vol. 8(6), pages 82-93.
    2. Maria de Fátima Rocha & Aurora A.C. Teixeira, 2005. "College cheating in Portugal: results from a large scale survey," FEP Working Papers 197, Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Economia do Porto.
    3. Maria de Fátima Rocha & Aurora A.C. Teixeira, 2005. "Crime without punishment: An update review of the determinants of cheating among university students," FEP Working Papers 191, Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Economia do Porto.
    4. Maria Fátima Rocha & Aurora A.C. Teixeira, 2006. "A cross-country evaluation of cheating in academia: is it related to ‘real world’ business ethics?," FEP Working Papers 214, Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Economia do Porto.
    5. Vazquez, Jose J. & Chiang, Eric P. & Sarmiento-Barbieri, Ignacio, 2021. "Can we stay one step ahead of cheaters? A field experiment in proctoring online open book exams," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    6. Alessandro Bucciol & Simona Cicognani & Natalia Montinari, 2017. "Cheating in Academia: The Relevance of Social Factors," Working Papers 15/2017, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    7. Brinja Meiseberg & Thomas Ehrmann & Aloys Prinz, 2017. "“Anything worth winning is worth cheating for”? Determinants of cheating behavior among business and theology students," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 87(8), pages 985-1016, November.
    8. A. Yudanov & O. Pyrkina & E. Bekker., 2016. "On the limits of unsolvability of the "free rider problem"," VOPROSY ECONOMIKI, N.P. Redaktsiya zhurnala "Voprosy Economiki", vol. 11.
    9. Phillip Saunders, 2011. "A history of economic education," Chapters, in: Gail M. Hoyt & KimMarie McGoldrick (ed.), International Handbook on Teaching and Learning Economics, chapter 1, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. Richard Estes, 2007. "Development challenges and opportunities confronting economies in transition," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 83(3), pages 375-411, September.
    11. Paul W. Grimes & Meghan J. Millea, 2011. "Economic Education in Post-Soviet Russia: The Effectiveness of the Training of Trainers Program," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(2), pages 99-119, June.
    12. Giorgio Gulino & Federico Masera, 2023. "Contagious Dishonesty: Corruption Scandals and Supermarket Theft," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(4), pages 218-251, October.
    13. Schwieren, Christiane & Weichselbaumer, Doris, 2010. "Does competition enhance performance or cheating? A laboratory experiment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 241-253, June.
    14. Muñoz-Izquierdo, Nora & Gil-Gómez de Liaño, Beatriz & Rin-Sánchez, Francisco Daniel & Pascual-Ezama, David, 2014. "Economists: cheaters with altruistic instincts," MPRA Paper 60678, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Serguei MIKHAILITCHENKO, 2017. "Economic structure of educational process and its implications for the higher education reform," Theoretical and Applied Economics, Asociatia Generala a Economistilor din Romania - AGER, vol. 0(1(610), S), pages 69-82, Spring.
    16. Edward M. Scahill, 2006. "Evaluation of the Training the Trainers Programme. What Did Trainers Know? What Did They Learn?," International Review of Economic Education, Economics Network, University of Bristol, vol. 5(2), pages 9-28.
    17. Borisova, Ekaterina & Peresetsky, Anatoly, 2016. "Do secrets come out? Statistical evaluation of student cheating," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 44, pages 119-130.
    18. Seeun Jung & Kenneth Houngbedji, 2014. "Shirking, Monitoring, and Risk Aversion," PSE Working Papers halshs-00965532, HAL.
    19. César Martinelli & Susan W. Parker & Ana Cristina Pérez-Gea & Rodimiro Rodrigo, 2018. "Cheating and Incentives: Learning from a Policy Experiment," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 298-325, February.
    20. Senderski, Marcin, 2015. "Inhibited privatization: a hurdle race over vested interests," MPRA Paper 65482, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:che:ireepp:v:4:y:2005:i:2:p:23-45. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Martin Poulter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/iree .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.