This paper presents analysis of qualitative data from a research project looking at staff perceptions of plagiarism at a post-1992 university. Twenty-six members of staff from departments and academic schools from across the university took part in open and semi-structured interviews. Analysis shows that variable definitions of plagiarism exist;…

INTEGRITY, an item analysis and statistical collusion detection (answer copying) online application, was reviewed. Features of the software and examples of program output are described in detail. INTEGRITY was found to be easily utilized with an abundance of well-organized documentation and built-in features designed to guide the user through the…

A statistical test for detecting answer copying on multiple-choice items is presented. The test is based on the exact null distribution of the number of random matches between two test takers under the assumption that the response process follows a known response model. The null distribution can easily be generalized to the family of distributions…

In the field of educational assessment, the "validity of assessment" can be defined as the degree to which evidence and theory support the interpretations of test scores that are entailed by proposed uses of the test. Many concerns have arisen over what is termed the "consequential basis" of validity, the intended and…

In 2004 South Africa embarked on a mission of reforming its higher education system, merging and incorporating small universities into larger institutions, and renaming all higher education institutions university. The democratic country's universities and technikons, which were incorporated with others and thus no longer exist, will be mentioned…

Published papers on the area of online assessment have mainly focused on instructors' assessment of online discussion forums or computer-assisted testing in a highly structured environment with a narrow focus on multiple choice or true-false types of questions. With the exponential growth of online courses and many educational institutions looking…

The ways in which universities and individual academics attempt to deter and respond to student plagiarism may be based on untested assumptions about particular or primary reasons for this behaviour. Using a series of group interviews, this qualitative study gathered the views of 56 Australian university students on the possible reasons for…

Graduate and professional school students face a variety of academic integrity issues and are sometimes academically dishonest. The author surveys the literature of the last decade on graduate student academic integrity, including plagiarism, cheating, falsification, and authorship conflicts, focusing on empirical studies in multiple disciplines,…

This article describes an incident involving twelve teachers at Anhui Haozhou Normal Junior College who used purchased dissertations to apply for professional titles over three consecutive years. Academic corruption is not merely today's problem, and the academic corruption at the institutions of higher learning that the author discloses in this…

Cheating, operationally defined as the falsification of scores on a word construction task, was found, as predicted, to be influenced by achievement anxiety and knowledge of the performance of a peer reference group in 111 high school subjects (Ss). However, achievement anxiety was positively correlated with cheating only when knowledge of…

Significant cheating occurred in the group who had initially been successful, but then failed; suggesting that failure following initial success may be more repugnant than failure following initial failure. (Author/DEP)

Irregularities regarding grants-in-aid assistance to athletes at the University of Illinois in the 1960s caused a scandal, which is described in this article. The results of the scandal and a discussion of intercollegiate athletics follow.(MT)

A statistical test for the detection of answer copying on multiple-choice tests is presented. The test is based on the idea that answers of examinees to test items may be the results of three possible processes: (1) knowing; (2) guessing; and (3) copying. Examinees who do not have access to the answers of other examinees can arrive at their…