Influence of Gender and Location Norms on Academic Corruption among Senior Secondary School Students in Bayelsa State, Nigeria

This study was to determine the influence of gender and location norms of the academic corruption among senior secondary school students in Bayelsa State. An instrumentation research design was adopted. The population of the study consists of all senior secondary school class three (SSIII) students during the 2023/2024 academic session in Bayelsa State. A sample size of 500 students consisting of 250 males and 250 females, were selected from the target population using multi-stage sampling technique. Data were obtained with the standardized academic-corruption -sensitivity-test (ACST) instrument which was validated through face, content and construct validity which gave a construct validity coefficients of .56, .86 and .90 as well as its reliability was determined through Cronbach alpha which gives a reliability coefficient of .89. Data were analyzed with percentiles ranking and stanine while the two null hypotheses were tested with t-test at .05 level of significance. It was observed that there is no statistically significant difference between male and female students on academic corruption while there was significant difference between rural and urban students on academic corruption. The ACST norms ranged from 0-100% indicating from very highly corrupt to not very corrupt. The study therefore concludes that male and female students have similar vulnerability to academic corruption while rural students have higher susceptibility to academic corruption than urban students. Based on these conclusions, the study further recommends that the ACST scale should be used alongside with aptitude test for admissions in order to identify corrupt candidates and refer them for counselling services before admissions. Keywords: Academic corruption, norms, location, sensitivity, gender and test