Academic Dishonesty Among Nursing Students

Abstract

This quantitative study identified sociodemographic and situational conditions that affected 336 nursing students' engagement in academic dishonesty, their attitudes regarding various forms of academic dishonesty, and the prevalence of academic dishonesty in which they engaged and witnessed. More than half of the participants reported cheating in the classroom and in the clinical settings. A positive relationship was found between the frequency of cheating in classroom and clinical settings. Results revealed differences in frequency of engagement in and attitudes toward academic dishonesty by gender, semester in the program, and ethnicity. Relationships were also found among peer behavior, personal beliefs and values, and frequency of engaging in academic dishonesty.

Academic Dishonesty among Undergraduate Nursing Students

“…Academic dishonesty amongst nursing students has become a common occurrence and has drawn a great amount of public scrutiny in recent times [1][2][3]. This is often viewed as the starting point of legal agitation to nursing educators because of the possible impact this will have on existing and subsequent professional practice and patient care [4].…”

“…Additionally, academic dishonesty can take many forms in both the clinical and classroom settings. These include cheating in examinations and/ or committing plagiarism and forgery, resulting in the student not obtaining the expected knowledge [2,6]. For the profession of nursing, academic dishonesty also extends to the clinical activities of nursing students in the clinical setting and this is evidenced by signing the clinical register but not reporting for duty or leaving the assigned shift early but signing the normal time.…”

“…Some researchers have indicated that in some cases, there is uncertainty as to what actions constitute academic dishonesty [2,3,9]. Though students indicate that they have engaged in the act of having access to examination paper, or falsify information on medication records, students sometimes believe that this is acceptable due to a lack of knowledge, poor practice behaviour and pressure to succeed and complete assigned tasks.…”

“…Interestingly, McCabe [4] suggested that there was no unusual difference between the occurrences of cheating behaviours (a common manifestation of academic dishonesty) in nursing programs, compared with other disciplines. Of note, cheating in nursing programmes is common and supported by literature [2,3,9].…”

Social desirability bias in relation to academic cheating behaviors of nursing students

“…[3] Even as extant research indicates that business students cheat the most frequently [3] Kruger [4] found that as many as 64.7% of nursing students admitted to cheating in the classroom setting, with 54% reporting having engaged in academic misconduct in the clinical setting. However, while previous research has investigated academic cheating in nursing programs, the literature has failed to explore the impact of social desirability bias, essential to assess when relying on self-reported instances of academic cheating.…”