The Honor System

Abstract

It was the purpose of this study(1) to discover the nature of and variations in attitudes toward academic honesty among students and faculty members of a certain institution where an honor system had been recognized for about twenty-five years. Academic honesty is here used to refer to honesty and integrity in respect to preparing assignments, writing examinations, and other exercises directly related to class or learning activities. A blank called a Personal Opinion Blank was constructed, using as a basis an early form of the Character Education Inquiry. It contained thirty-six descriptions of concrete situations involving academic honesty. The respondent was asked to indicate for each item whether he thought the described action was justified, unjustified, or doubtful. Evidence showed that the blank was sufficiently reliable and valid to justify conclusions concerning groups. The limits of space do not permit reproducing the entire blank, but the two descriptions which follow illustrate the concreteness of the situations presented in the test. 2. I had not been feeling well for a week. My theme was due on Friday. On Thursday night I had such a headache I couldn't think. But in order to come through with my work, I got my roommate to write it for me. 36. I used a crib on the examination because I felt that if I memorized the crib and then forgot it all after the examination it would be no worse than copying from the crib. I see no difference between copying from a crib and then destroying it, and copying from mental pictures and then letting them fade away. In Table I a brief statement summarizes each of the thirty-six situations as described. The figures are percentages of 494 representative students [TABULAR DATA FOR TABLE I OMITTED] and 46 faculty members, respectively, who were unable to justify the actions described. It can be seen that the faculty members did not justify these actions so often as the students did. The only exception to this general tendency was in the item, Used suggestion accidentally seen on neighbor's paper, toward which the faculty members were more lenient than the students. The faculty members agreed completely on only one item, Ill pupil had roommate write theme for him; all agreed that the action was unjustifiable. The wide variations within each group and the differences between the two groups raise interesting questions concerning the efficacy of an honor system based on any one set of standards. Table II shows the average percentage of responses given by various groups. There is a real difference shown between the attitudes of men and of women students toward actions involving honesty. Men seem to be able to justify more of these actions than women. A detailed study of responses by classes shows that there is no reliable difference between Freshmen and Sophomores or between Juniors and Seniors, but the differences between the two lower classes and the two upper classes are significant. They show, moreover, that the two upper classes are less strict in their attitudes toward academic honesty than the two lower classes. The question might well be raised, Is the college environment such that it tends to stimulate more lenient attitudes in respect to academic honesty? Some idea of growth in respect to attitudes toward academic honesty may be obtained by comparing the responses of groups of public-school pupils with those of college students on 20 of the 36 items previously submitted to pupils in public schools. In Table III it will be noticed that there is a gradual increase in the percentage of responses marked unjustified up to the sophomore year in college. From that point, the curve starts downward again. It would be interesting to know whether this is typical of conditions in most colleges. So far as is known, there is no factor in the selection of students for this particular investigation which would account for this phenomenon. …

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