The Factors of Contributing to Adademic Misconduct of Engineering Students Survey: Preliminary Results

Academic misconduct is a serious problem in engineering higher education as it undermines student learning as well as the credibly of higher education institutions. The Factors contributing to Academic Misconduct of Engineering Students (FAMES) is a student survey developed to examine students’ perceptions on academic misconduct behaviour and to identify factors that predict self-reported cheating on proctored and unproctored assessments. The survey has been distributed at two Canadian universities. Preliminary results indicate that while students indicate they perceive some academic violations as inappropriate, other behaviours are not reported to be problematic. Students’ attitudes toward misconduct also depends on the assessment type. In addition, the less serious students consider an attitude, the more frequent they reported to engage in that behaviour. As has been reported elsewhere, students perceive academic misconduct among their peers happens at a much higher rate than what is indicated by aggregate self-reports. Future data analysis will include examining which factors related to the Fraud Triangle theory influence students’ decisions to engage in academic misconduct.