Pharmacy Students' Interpretation of Academic Integrity
Of the 849 respondents (an 80% overall response rate), 33% were first-year students and just over half of all respondents spoke English as their first language (Table 1). Only 38% of respondents had completed the university's online academic integrity tutorial earlier in the academic year, with the majority being first-year students. The most common age group represented in the sample was 18 to 19 years, corresponding with 1 to 2 years of postsecondary study.
The 2 control scenarios depicting stereotypical cases of cheating were correctly identified by 96% and 97% of students, respectively (Table 2). First-year students were the most certain about John's unacceptable actions, although no trend was obvious with advancing years of study.
Several scenarios designed to be ambiguous prompted first-year students to identify both John's and Mary's actions as academically unacceptable. However, first-year students failed to differentiate ethically unacceptable actions from other actions, as evident in scenario 7, where the researchers deemed neither of the characters to have committed an obvious act of academic misconduct. Ethical dilemmas posed in scenarios 6 and 10 also showed similar findings. In scenario 8, Mary's actions had not breached academic conduct, but were still perceived as wrong by 21% of the first-year students.
There was an inverse trend between the cohort years relating to whether Mary was wrong in not reporting John's purchase of his essay online (scenario 6) in that first-year students were more likely to perceive Mary's action as unethical. This trend was mirrored in scenario 9, another case that highlighted contention related to facilitating plagiarism.
In the scenarios related to the use of information technology (scenarios 1 and 6), no clear trends were evident. Students in later years of study appeared to increasingly recognize certain acts of technological cheating such as essay purchasing, although other scenarios did not support this trend.
Cross tabulation of response categories by sex revealed no significant variation in interpretation of the scenarios between male and female students. Respondents from all 4 years of study reported low rates of involvement across the 10 scenarios (Table 3), albeit with awareness of some of these behaviors among peers in up to 43% of fourth-year students. Awareness of these behaviors and self-reported involvement generally increased with the cohort year. The more common self-reported behaviors reflected students' lack of effort to complete assessments, such as copying answers to pretutorial questions (19%).
Results
Of the 849 respondents (an 80% overall response rate), 33% were first-year students and just over half of all respondents spoke English as their first language (Table 1). Only 38% of respondents had completed the university's online academic integrity tutorial earlier in the academic year, with the majority being first-year students. The most common age group represented in the sample was 18 to 19 years, corresponding with 1 to 2 years of postsecondary study.
The 2 control scenarios depicting stereotypical cases of cheating were correctly identified by 96% and 97% of students, respectively (Table 2). First-year students were the most certain about John's unacceptable actions, although no trend was obvious with advancing years of study.
Several scenarios designed to be ambiguous prompted first-year students to identify both John's and Mary's actions as academically unacceptable. However, first-year students failed to differentiate ethically unacceptable actions from other actions, as evident in scenario 7, where the researchers deemed neither of the characters to have committed an obvious act of academic misconduct. Ethical dilemmas posed in scenarios 6 and 10 also showed similar findings. In scenario 8, Mary's actions had not breached academic conduct, but were still perceived as wrong by 21% of the first-year students.
There was an inverse trend between the cohort years relating to whether Mary was wrong in not reporting John's purchase of his essay online (scenario 6) in that first-year students were more likely to perceive Mary's action as unethical. This trend was mirrored in scenario 9, another case that highlighted contention related to facilitating plagiarism.
In the scenarios related to the use of information technology (scenarios 1 and 6), no clear trends were evident. Students in later years of study appeared to increasingly recognize certain acts of technological cheating such as essay purchasing, although other scenarios did not support this trend.
Cross tabulation of response categories by sex revealed no significant variation in interpretation of the scenarios between male and female students. Respondents from all 4 years of study reported low rates of involvement across the 10 scenarios (Table 3), albeit with awareness of some of these behaviors among peers in up to 43% of fourth-year students. Awareness of these behaviors and self-reported involvement generally increased with the cohort year. The more common self-reported behaviors reflected students' lack of effort to complete assessments, such as copying answers to pretutorial questions (19%).
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