self-reported rates of cheating remain at a constant 25-35% of the student body over large periods of time.
I’ve tried for hours, but I can’t figure out where you got these numbers. I can mostly find sources implying that far more people admit to engaging in cheating, not to mention sources which imply more people engage in cheating than those who admit to it. Perhaps I’m just in a filter bubble. Can you tell me where you got these numbers?
jwmgregory@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
you’re right to point to that hole in my rhetoric.
truthfully, it is a number i remember seeing widely cited while researching the topic years ago and i don’t have an immediate source to offer you. it largely comes out of studies around the late 80s through the early 00s; and it comes, for the most part, from studies that focused on narrow, immediate groups. think asking students currently taking or freshly out of a course about integrity. more recent research in this field shows that over a lifetime the vast majority of people engage in academically dishonest behaviors at least once and the research tends to focus on that, which is why you tend to see very high numbers reported: they have the caveat of the scope being expanded to lifetimes or careers rather than more momentary snapshots. because basically everyone has done it at some point, statistically speaking. maybe try looking for modern research focusing on serial cheating. those numbers tend to be more in line with the older figures i mention. whether or not that is ethically/statistically significant or not is up to the reader, obviously. i think it is a shift in methodology that looks at flashier and bigger percentages for dubious reasons, personally.
i will make an effort to find you specific sources when i get some time either today or tomorrow but for now you can likely find many of these figures cited by searching for the journal of academic ethics using ERIC, focusing on earlier sources to find the methodology behind the mythical “25-35%” idea. you will also see more modern research that paints a general picture showing academic integrity is more a systemic issue than an individual moral failing, which seems to be scholarly consensus at this point although I won’t make that claim outright because it isn’t my field. i admire you wanting to seek out sources and verify information, sorry if i wasn’t helpful enough in the immediate now! i will either edit this comment or make a new one so you get the ping once i find specific sources to share to help your research. for now, i hope the ERIC query i provided is a good enough jumping off point.