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HEED
17,1 An empirical survey on prevalence
and demographic differences in
academic dishonesty among
52 undergraduates from four public
Received 16 November 2021
Revised 12 February 2022
universities in China
30 May 2022
Accepted 8 July 2022 Xinjuan Liu and Noryati Alias
SEGi University Kota Damansara, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

Abstract
Purpose – This empirical survey is conducted to investigate the prevalence rate of academic dishonesty (AD)
in examinations and assignments among undergraduates. The study compared the difference in admitted
behaviours of academic dishonesty between male and female students comprising second-year, third-year and
fourth-year students from the discipline of business, engineering, information technology (IT) and education.
Design/methodology/approach – A cross-sectional study was utilized in this study and collected data via
the online questionnaire. A total of 1,624 respondents participated from four public universities of four
provinces in China Mainland.
Findings – The findings showed that the proportion of respondents from China participating in AD is between
15.4 and 51.7%. The findings showed that more than two-thirds of the respondents stated involved dishonesty
in examinations and assignments at least once during the previous academic year. In addition, male and female
undergraduates in second-year, third-year and fourth-year showed statistically significant differences in
dishonest behaviours. Specifically, the male/senior students were more involved in dishonest behaviours than
the females/sophomores.
Originality/value – Unlike previous studies, this study found that discipline in the Chinese context was not a
significant demographic predictor of dishonesty. Although not significantly different, the respondents
majoring in business reported a high engagement rate of dishonesty, followed by engineering and information
technology undergraduates, but education undergraduates revealed the lowest engagement rate of dishonesty.
The target integrity education should be imparted among male and senior students.
Keywords Academic dishonesty, Cheating, Demographic difference, Chinese undergraduates
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
Most of the studies conducted in higher education institutions worldwide suggested that
academic dishonesty (AD) was a pervasive phenomenon. AD is defined as dishonest
behaviours that include cheating, copying, plagiarism and falsification at school or
university, which results in better performance of students involved in such behaviour.
Research on academic cheating dates back to the beginning of the century, with the earliest
studies conducted within education and educational psychology (Campbell, 1931; Hartshorne
and May, 1928). The topic is continuously being discussed and continues to remain a serious
and ubiquitous academic integrity issue in the higher education fraternity.

© Xinjuan Liu and Noryati Alias. Published in Higher Education Evaluation and Development. Published
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Development BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article
Vol. 17 No. 1, 2023
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2514-5789
DOI 10.1108/HEED-11-2021-0081 legalcode
 Most studies were conducted in the USA, and problems with academic integrity are not Academic
unique to Americans. In recent two decades, a large number of empirical studies concerning dishonesty
the prevalence of cheating in the academic arena have been published, with studies conducted
in Korea, Nigeria, Russia, Malaysia, UK, Czech, Poland, etc. Additionally, many studies were
among Chinese
also conducted within the Chinese cultures, such as Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao. students
However, a few of literature studies have been conducted in China Mainland focusing on the
area of AD in colleges and institutions of higher learning though these studies stay at the level
of phenomenon observation and theoretical discussion with a relatively narrow perspective 53
and lack of practice and depth research (Chen et al., 2020).
Undergraduates in China face severe employment involution, which may impact students’
attitudes toward AD. More cases of cheating-related undergraduates have been reported in
Chinese universities in recent years. In 2018, according to the official website of a university
in Shanghai, a fourth-year student was expelled who cheated in three final examinations. In
consideration of the Internet and smartphones having a high popularizing rate in the Chinese
college and universities and together with the sudden outbreak and worldwide spread of
Covid-19 that changed the teaching and studying mode, students had to stay at home to
accept online teaching and examinations, not the traditional face-to-face model. Therefore,
such related reports seem to become more common. The other two cases of dishonesty also
came from their official websites. In 2020, a student at a university in Guangdong was found
cheating twice sequentially and was eventually expelled. In the same year, two postgraduate
students from the same faculty in one national key university in Hunan province were
reported to have plagiarized 100% of other researchers’ dissertations, which led to their
graduate degrees being revoked.
AD or misconduct has been a common problem in Chinese universities and colleges (Ma
et al., 2013), which was supported by an online survey by the Social Research Center of China
Youth Daily through 2,000 samples (of the respondents, 51.2% were college or university
students or graduates) in 2015. The data showed that 60.4% of respondents confirmed that
they or their peers had cheated in college or university, and 66.6% felt cheating was common
among college or university students. The motivation for this study stems from the
researcher’s work experience in a university and concerns about what was going on in
Chinese universities and colleges of higher education concerning AD.
AD is contrary to academic and professional integrity ideals and has had an incalculable
impact on students, universities, institutions of higher education, academia and even
economic sociality. While concerns about academic integrity have been raised worldwide
(Ives et al., 2017), however, in China, there is a lack of empirical studies and a large amount of
data available on the exact extent of the behaviour of AD among Chinese students
(Yang, 2012) or the demographic factors that influence Chinese students’ dishonesty rate (Hu
and Sun, 2017). This empirical study focuses on the relationship between the three
demographic factors and dishonest academic behaviours, and the purpose is to investigate
the prevalence rate of AD among undergraduates in four public universities and explore
whether the undergraduates’ three demographic characteristics (gender, year of study and
discipline) have a significantly different frequency for the self-reported behaviours of AD in
examinations and assignments.

Literature review
ADAD is defined as any different behaviour taking place during an academic exercise (Hendy
and Montargot, 2019) that is aimed at achieving a positive outcome in education (Anderman
and Murdock, 2011). For example, it includes cheating on examinations, as well as cheating
on course assignments, plagiarism and similar immoral behaviours.
In order to more fully understand how undergraduates make decisions about dishonesty,
it would be to understand better how these behaviours vary by type of context, so they assess
HEED dishonest academic behaviours in two aspects. In the learning process of college and
17,1 university students in China, academic work susceptible to dishonesty includes cheating
during examinations (e.g. College English Test, FoxPro, tests, quizzes etc.), as well as on
course assignments (e.g. all projects, written assignments, presentations, experiment report,
etc.), which are the backbone of assessment in undergraduates’ achievement in university.
Previous studies reported rather high AD participation rates among college and
university students. Lin and Wen (2007) conducted a large-scale survey of 2,068 Taiwanese
54 college students to investigate the prevalence of four types of AD: cheating on exams,
cheating on homework, plagiarism and tampering with files. The authors found that the
overall rate of AD was 61.72%. Specifically, 57.5% of students admitted to cheating during
exams, 70.3% admitted copying others’ work and 66.1% admitted plagiarism (Lin and Wen,
2007). D€omeova and Jindrova (2013) reported that the Center for Academic Integrity (CAI), in
a study, found out that over 75% of higher learning students performed AD at least once in
their studies.
Furthermore, some recent studies (Li, 2015; Chen and Chou, 2017) reported that rates of
AD among students from Chinese cultures were higher. However, some researchers (Zhang
et al., 2014; Hu and Lei, 2015) revealed that Chinese students’ self-reported participation rate is
relatively low compared with other countries. The non-uniform conclusions on the frequency
of behaviours on AD reported by studies were of interest to the researcher as this study could
contribute to a better understanding of Chinese undergraduates’ dishonest behaviours.
The relationship between gender and AD remains inconclusive and is mainly reflected in
three points of view. The views are (1) men are more prone to AD than women, and there was
considerable evidence in the literature that females report less cheating than males (e.g.
Newstead et al., 1996; Hensley et al., 2013; Davis et al., 1992; Błachnio, 2019). Błachnio’s survey
calculated that women scored lower than men on plagiarism, falsification and AD in general
(Błachnio, 2019) because women always held stronger ethical views about AD (Selwyn, 2008;
Ledwith, Risquez and O’Dwyer, 2010). Very few studies have found that (2) female students
cheat more than male students (Leming, 1980; Graham et al., 1994; Simon et al., 2004). Several
others observed (3) no reliable gender differences (e.g. Vitro and Schoer, 1972; Houston, 1976;
Karabenick and Srull, 1978; Stevens and Stevens, 1987). Therefore, gender differences will be
taken into consideration in present studies on AD in the Chinese context.
Studies conducted on AD indicated two findings by examining AD rates concerning
students’ grades in university. First, younger (sophomores) students tend to cheat more than
older (seniors) students (e.g. Antion and Michael, 1983; Haines et al., 1986; Newstead et al.,
1996). Second, older students (senior year) and especially those close to graduation cheat more
often (Tang and Zuo, 1997; Crown and Spiller, 1998). Błachnio (2019) also supported this
result and pointed out that age (year of study) was positively correlated with AD, such as
cheating and fraud.
Meanwhile, with regard to disciplines differences, researchers have investigated AD in
different student’s academic fields of study, including business, engineering, nursing,
pharmacy, information science and economics (e.g. Kerkvliet, 1994; Lawson, 2004; Klein et al.,
2007; King et al., 2009; Smyth et al., 2009; Carpenter et al., 2010; Whitley and Starr, 2010).
Ledwith et al. (2010) found that the discipline variable was not associated with students’
ethical views regarding plagiarist behaviours from a sample of 708 undergraduate university
students at an Irish institution. Yet, most studies have found that students majoring in
business and engineering stand out in reporting dishonest academic behaviours.
McCabe (1997) surveyed 16 schools to compare business students with students from
other majors. The results showed that 84% of business students reported one or more
incidents of serious cheating in the past year, with 72% of engineering students and 66% of
all participating students (McCabe, 1997). Tsui and Ngo (2016) concluded that business
students cheat more than non-business students. In a study conducted in 1964, Bower
discovered that career-oriented courses such as business, education, and engineering led to Academic
the highest levels of cheating and that physical science produced quite low levels of AD dishonesty
(Bowers, 1964).
The topic of AD issue is sensitive; therefore, previous research related to interdisciplinary
among Chinese
differences in the prevalence of dishonesty in China has been very limited, and corresponding students
academic research is concentrated in western countries, especially in the USA. The extent of
AD among Chinese college and university students majoring in business, engineering,
information technology (IT) and education are worth investigating, which has yet to be fully 55
understood or surveyed in the Chinese context. The specific research results might be
different from those found in Western countries. The key contributing factors are rooted in
different exam-oriented education contexts, Confucian cultural backgrounds and attitudes
towards education in China.
This study aims to examine the different opinions about whether there is a relationship
and the type of relationship between college/university students’ gender, year of study,
disciplines and their likelihood of reporting AD.

Methodology
Participants
The target population comprises four provinces in four public universities’ undergraduates
who major in business, engineering, IT and education in China. The purpose of selecting
public universities for the survey was to ensure the stability of the academic quality level of
the research population. Stratified random sampling was utilized with discipline and year of
study. Data collection was conducted in the Autumn semester of 2020 via an online survey
among students who had just completed their final exams for the previous year. The
counsellors sent the URL containing the link to the QQ, WeChat groups that include all
the undergraduates of the faculty, with the research intention attached, and ensured the
anonymity and voluntary of the collected data. This study was conducted across four
universities and seven campuses to enrich the sample quality and eliminate regional
differences. This provided a representative sample that reflected the dishonest academic
behaviours of the corresponding disciplines’ undergraduates in the territory.
Table 1 displayed the results of the demographic information of the respondents. In this
study, a different quantity was represented in every university sample, in which University A
is an institute of science and technology in Gansu province (n 5 298), University B is a
comprehensive university in Shandong province (n 5 397) and University C (n 5 360) and
University D (n 5 570) are normal universities with the majority of female students in Hebei
and Shaanxi province, respectively. Therefore, the majority of the sample of this study is
female students, who account for the proportion of 67.2%, and 32.8% are male
undergraduates. Half of the respondents are second-year students, and third-year and

Characteristic M Percent % Cumulative percent

Gender Male 533 32.8 32.8

Female 1,091 67.2 100.0
Year of study Second year 825 50.8 50.8
Third year 503 31.0 81.8
Fourth year 296 18.2 100.0 Table 1.
Discipline Business 332 20.4 20.4 Demographic
Engineering 535 32.9 53.4 characteristics of
Information technology 316 19.5 72.8 respondents
Education 441 27.2 100.0 (N 5 1,624)
HEED fourth-year students are 31 and 18.2%, respectively. Respondents from four disciplines are
17,1 included in the sample for comparative purposes and are relatively evenly distributed across
academic disciplines. Business undergraduates accounted for 20.4% of the total samples,
engineering students are 32.9%, IT are 19.5%, and education are 27.2%.

Measures
The items used to measure the behaviours of AD constructs were adapted from ten items
56 published in the literature (Stone et al., 2009). Five new items to measure AD were added to
existing items for the further supplements for Chinese undergraduates. All 15 items were
measured on a five-point Likert scale that ranged from 1 (never) to 5 (always), which asked
respondents to indicate how often they engage in behaviours such as cheating on a test or
exam themselves or helping others cheat, unauthorized collaboration on an assignment, etc.
A high score indicates greater levels of AD than lower scores and vice versa.
The researchers identified dishonest academic behaviours with many specific distinct
forms, and simultaneously, students do not view cheating as a single construct, and their
decisions to cheat or not to cheat are influenced differently depending on the type of
assessment (Passow et al., 2006). Hence, the outcome of this study is self-reported behaviours
of AD in order to get a better understanding of how students make AD decisions. It is
necessary to know how this behaviour varies in different types of contexts; therefore, two
scenarios are depicted. In which, seven items were an index of cheating behaviours in tests or
examinations, themselves or helped others cheating, and eight items were an index of
dishonesty on assignments. In this research, the principal component analysis (PCA) with
varimax rotation method was utilized to extract factors as Gaskin and Happell (2014)
recommended, which method gets out factors based on the correlation among the items. The
PCA revealed the presence of two components with eigenvalues exceeding 1, which explained
66.673% of the total variance exceeding the 60% value as the minimum percentage of
acceptable variance. The two factors accepted 0.60 as the limit for factor loading, and
adequate alpha reliabilities were 0.913 and 0.910.

Procedure
The counsellors in related disciplines conducted an online briefing session for their
undergraduates to explain the procedure of the study. Students were invited to respond to an
online survey. This was a self-reported questionnaire on students’ AD based on their
experience during the past academic year. Potential participants were informed about the
research aims, and they were assured of the anonymity of their responses. Though this study
focused on the analysis of the items concerning unethical behaviours, students are not
penalized for reporting their misconduct.

Data analysis
Both descriptive and inferential data analyses were conducted using IBM-SPSS 25.0 with 0.05
as the significance level. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the frequency,
percentage, mean, range and standard deviation. Inferential statistics were carried out by
techniques of independent samples t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA),
followed by post hoc analyses using least statistical difference (LSD).

Result
The prevalence of academic dishonesty among Chinese undergraduates
Table 2 shows the percentage of participation in the four universities of undergraduate
samples admitting to various forms of AD in examinations and assignments. The data
showed that the proportion of undergraduates from four Chinese higher education
 Frequency of behaviours
Never Seldom Sometimes Often Always
Factor Dishonest academic behaviours Mean SD (%) (%) (%) (%) (%)

1 Cheating in examinations
Look at peers’ answers during a test/exam 1.678 0.929 56.7 22.8 15.0 3.5 1.0
Learning what is on a test from someone who has already taken it 1.567 0.868 64.3 18.7 13.5 3.0 0.5
Copying from other students on a test/exam without their knowledge 1.362 0.726 76.7 12.4 9.2 1.6 0.1
Helping someone else cheat on a test/exam 1.469 0.805 69.5 17.2 10.5 2.4 0.4
Copying from other students on a test/exam with their knowledge 1.394 0.747 74.0 14.9 8.9 2.0 0.2
Using unauthorized cheat notes during tests/exams 1.342 0.727 78.0 12.4 7.4 1.8 0.4
Using an electronic/digital device as an unauthorized aid during a test/ 1.306 0.738 82.0 8.6 7.0 1.7 0.7
exam
2 Dishonesty in assignments
Allow your assignment to be copied by your course mates 1.904 1.077 48.3 24.7 18.5 5.2 3.3
Paraphrasing/copying few sentences for your assignment from a written 1.711 0.898 53.6 26.4 16.0 3.3 0.7
source without acknowledging it
Paraphrasing/copying few sentences for your assignment from Internet 1.741 0.903 52.1 26.0 18.0 3.3 0.6
source without acknowledging it
Receiving unauthorized help from someone on an assignment 1.539 0.806 63.6 21.4 12.7 2.2 0.1
Copying another student’s assignment and submitting it as your own 1.431 0.750 70.7 17.4 10.2 1.5 0.2
Copying material almost word for word from a written source for your 1.463 0.753 67.8 19.5 11.3 1.2 0.2
assignment without citing the source
Working with others on assignments when it is required to be done as an 1.572 0.806 60.1 25.2 12.4 2.0 0.3
individual assignment
Pay someone to do your coursework for you 1.247 0.634 84.6 7.4 6.9 0.9 0.2
dishonesty
students
among Chinese

57

Percentage of

assignments
on examinations and
Academic

Table 2.

dishonest academic
behaviour frequency
HEED institutions participating in dishonesty in examinations is between 18 and 43.37%. Most of
17,1 the respondents (56.7–82%) reported they have never been involved in dishonest behaviours.
Relatively few of the respondents (8.6–22.8%) reported cheating on “seldom” tests or exams.
The remaining (7–15%) students reported cheating on tests/exams sometimes or (1.6–3.5%)
often. Very few (0.1–1.0%) students report always cheating in tests/exams. In which the most
common dishonest behaviour self-reported in examinations was “look at peer’s answers
during a test/exam” (Mean 5 1.68, SD 5 0.93), with its prevalence being significantly higher
58 than all other forms of misconduct (p < 0.05). Concurrently, the lowest participation rate was
“using an electronic/digital device as an unauthorized aid during a test/exam” (Mean 5 1.31,
SD 5 0.74), with its prevalence being significantly lower than all other forms of
misconduct (p < 0.001).
In the behaviour of dishonesty in assignments, more than half (51.7%, n 5 840) of
respondents allow their course mates to copy their assignments (Mean 5 1.90). The second
most involved in dishonest behaviour was that 47.9% of respondents admitted
paraphrasing/copying a few sentences seldomly or always for their assignment from an
Internet source without acknowledging it (Mean 5 1.74). Other incidences of dishonest
academic behaviours in assignments identified that 36.4% of respondents admitted that
they had received unauthorized help from someone, and approximately two-thirds
reported that they completed assignments independently (Mean 5 1.57). The lowest
participation rate paid others to do their coursework, and 84.6% reported they had never
paid anyone (Mean 5 1.25). In sum, most of them (48.3–84.6%) reported never having
dishonest behaviours in assignments, but few (15.4–51.7%) reported seldomly
participating to always.
Furthermore, this study revealed that more than half (55.97%, n 5 909) of all respondents
conceded to having been personally involved at least once in dishonest academic behaviours
in examinations throughout their previous academic year, whereas 66.19% of respondents
(n 5 1,075) reported dishonesty at least once in their assignments. It is obvious that students
report the participating rate in AD more frequently in assignments than in examinations. The
possible reason is that there are many supervision mechanisms during the period of exams or
tests, such as integrity education, faculty invigilation, cameras in the classroom and so on.
However, the time and form of done assignments are uncontrolled. The previous study
reported that students just wanted to finish their assignments instead of caring much about
the quality of their work; however, the worst penalty is just being asked to redo the
assignments without mark deduction, which does not affect their course grades (Khathayut
et al., 2020).

Gender difference in academic dishonesty

Several studies suggest that gender is an important predictor of moral judgements regarding
academic misdemeanours. One of the purposes of this study was to examine the difference
between male students and female students in dishonest behaviours. The result supported
that male and female undergraduates have statistically significant differences in reported
dishonest behaviours, as shown in Table 3.
In the scenario of cheating in examinations, male and female undergraduates have
statistically significant differences (t 5 6.00, p < 0.001), in which males reported more
participation rate than females significantly (Mean 5 1.594 > 1.373). Meanwhile, as well for
written assignments, male and female undergraduates still showed statistically significant
differences (t 5 5.33, p < 0.001), and males are engaged more frequently than females
significantly (Mean 5 1.709 > 1.511). As a result, the university males are statistically more
involved than the female undergraduates in dishonest behaviours in examinations and
assignments in the Chinese context.
Year of study difference in academic dishonesty Academic
The year of the study was another strong predictor of AD. This study will survey the dishonesty
difference among different academic year undergraduates on dishonest behaviours in
examinations and assignments. The results revealed that these three different academic year
among Chinese
groups of undergraduates had a statistically significant difference, as shown in Table 4. students
Findings show statistically significant differences among the second-year, third-year, and
fourth-year undergraduates for the behaviours of AD in examinations (F 5 3.490, p < 0.05) and
assignments (F 5 9.553, p < 0.001). In order to exactly determine which group means differed 59
significantly, the Scheffe test was carried out to do post hoc multiple comparisons. The
examination results revealed significant differences between the sophomores and seniors
(Mean difference 5 0.12), with sophomore respondents who self-reported dishonesty at lower
means than the seniors. Regarding the report on dishonest behaviours in assignments, the
undergraduates who are sophomores and juniors (Mean difference 5 0.14), sophomores and
seniors (Mean difference 5 0.19) performed significantly different senior respondents have
greater means than juniors which is greater than sophomores.

Discipline difference in academic dishonesty

Some studies indicated that the percentage of undergraduates reporting engagement in
various cheating behaviours differs by college major. Therefore, another target is to enquire
about the difference among undergraduates in four disciplines (business, engineering, IT and
education) on the dishonest behaviours in examinations and assignments.
Based on the results as shown in Table 5, it could be seen that in the frequency of
involvement in dishonest behaviours in examinations and assignments, these four different
discipline groups of undergraduates were not significantly different (p > 0.05). It is important
to note that the respondents majoring in business self-reported relatively highest

Cheating in examinations Assignments

Gender M SD F t p M SD F t p Table 3.
T-test result of gender
Male 533 1.594 0.754 78.32 6.00 0.000 1.709 0.752 59.46 5.33 0.000 on the behaviour of
Female 1,091 1.373 0.570 1.511 0.593 academic dishonesty

Cheating in examinations Assignments

Year of study M SD F p M SD F p Table 4.
ANOVA result of year
Second year 825 1.405 0.652 3.490 0.031 1.509 0.633 9.553 0.000 of study on the
Third year 503 1.474 0.638 1.627 0.674 behaviour of academic
Fourth year 296 1.508 0.629 1.678 0.669 dishonesty

Cheating in examinations Assignments

Discipline M SD F p M SD F p
Table 5.
Business 332 1.510 0.760 2.327 0.073 1.612 0.709 1.769 0.151 ANOVA result of
Engineering 535 1.463 0.643 1.610 0.681 disciplines on the
IT 316 1.419 0.585 1.541 0.638 behaviour of academic
Education 441 1.395 0.587 1.532 0.592 dishonesty
HEED participation rates of AD in examinations (Mean 5 1.51) and assignments (Mean 5 1.61),
17,1 followed by respondents in the program of engineering, IT and undergraduates in education
were shown to have the lowest engagement rate of dishonest academic behaviours.

Discussion and conclusion

The researcher collected 1,624 samples via an online questionnaire from four university
60 settings in four provinces in China to investigate and compare the prevalence rate of AD
among male and female undergraduates with the year of study and discipline. The
respondents were required to report the participation frequency of dishonesty in
examinations and assignments they have been involved.
The findings revealed that the proportion of participants in China from four Chinese
universities is relatively lower than other country students, ranging from 15.4 to 51.7% in the
past academic year. Meanwhile, Lewellyn and Rodriguez (2015) reported in 1960, the AD rate
in America was at 39% and dramatically increased in 1993 to 64%. Simkin and Mcleod (2010)
found that it was at 60–86%, and Olafson et al. (2013) reported the present level of dishonesty
is high from 54.1 to 70.4%. Though the prevalence rate of AD in China is not low compared
with other Western countries, such as the USA, Malaysia, Bangladesh, etc., the rate is
relatively lower than previous investigations in Asian countries (Lin and Wen, 2007; Li, 2015;
Chen and Chou, 2017).
This study revealed that Chinese samples’ self-reported cheating in examinations was
55.97 and 66.19% in assignments at least once in the past year. Whereas Mustapha et al.
(2016) conducted a study in Malaysia on university students and found that 62% of Muslim
university students admitted to performing AD in 2015 and 56% admitted to performing AD
in 2014. According to survey data from Alam (2016), in Bangladesh, about 85% of the
respondents have been involved with AD one or several times. About 74% of respondents
said they had prepared their assignments one or more times by copy-pasting from Internet
sources.
The results of this study indicate that although the AD participation rate of students is
high, it still decreased compared with previous studies among students from Chinese
cultures. The possible explanation is that the Chinese educational oversight bodies and
universities have attached great importance to the integrity of education of students from
higher learning institutions. A series of regulations on academic integrity and ethical
standards have been issued, and universities have formulated their institutional policies on
academic integrity to govern the academic activities of their faculty and students.
Additionally, integrity (Chinese is ChengXin) is a moral quality that is highly esteemed
and socially expected in the Confucian culture, also one of the Socialist Core Values strongly
promoted by the Chinese government. Therefore, the decrease in the frequency of students
participating in AD is a natural consequence.
According to the difference in gender, the findings indicated that male students were
involved statistically significantly more in dishonest behaviours than the female students in
the Chinese context, which is consistent with several research studies (e.g. Selwyn, 2008;
Ledwith, Risquez and O’Dwyer, 2010; Hensley et al., 2013; Błachnio, 2019). The possible
reason was that females were more prone to the influence of social desirability than males,
especially with ethical issues (Dalton and Ortegren, 2011). Similarly, the female participants
are inclined to maintain a socially favourable image. This explanation was partially
supported by gender socialization theory by Gilligan in 1982 that females show greater
ethical sensitivity and concern about others’ expectations compared with males.
Other findings related to research duration were that fourth-year undergraduates were
engaged in more than the third-year, and third-year undergraduates were engaged in
statistically significantly more than second-year dishonest academic behaviours in the
Chinese context. This is consistent with the previous studies (e.g. McCabe and Trevi~ no, 1997; Academic
Yu et al., 2016; Zhang et al., 2017). This finding can be interpreted as senior students staying dishonesty
longer in college/university, having greater experience with tests and assignments, and being
observed more dishonesty. According to observational learning and imitation learning from a
among Chinese
social learning perspective, they are more prone to be engaged in AD. Especially in Chinese students
universities, most undergraduates are full-time and stay on campus except for 2–3 months of
vacation every year. They spend most of their time with peers and faculty members, and
interaction effects are immeasurable therein. 61
However, when it comes to the characteristic of age or grade level, some scholars have
consistently reported that younger college students cheat more than their older peers
(McCabe and Trevi~ no, 1997; Klein et al., 2007; Olafson et al., 2013). They explained that
first-year or second-year students are more likely to be at the early stages of cognitive
and moral development, where they are influenced by peer influences and are therefore
less likely to develop their ideas and take appropriate actions, which may lead to young
students entering college are less inclined to cheat, but they are then easily influenced by
their peer culture to engage in cheating (McCabe et al., 2012). Even if they hold opposing
views, this explanation is congruous with the reason that the longer students have been
in university, the more experienced they were in examinations and assignments, the
more likely they were to observe peers’ violations and the more likely they were to
involve in.
The students in business, engineering, IT and education discipline did not show a
significant difference in the dishonesty prevalence rate and indirectly supported by Yang
et al. (2013), which examined Taiwanese students and discovered no differences in
students’ willingness to report dishonest behaviour by classmates or friends based on
major. However, most prior studies have shown that business students reported the
highest dishonesty participation rate in examinations and assignments (e.g. Stone et al.,
2010; Bagraim et al., 2014). That is probably because of differences in context, cultural
background and other educational context factors; this finding may differ from those
obtained in other nations.
This non-significant discipline difference may possibly reflect cross-cultural differences in
teaching and learning styles in China (prior research has indicated that learning workloads
tend to be very high for Chinese students). Undergraduates, in particular, mainly those
learning the basic professional course, must memorize and understand a lot of professional
vocabularies and theory constantly in the second and third academic year. Only in the
summer, winter vacations and last year of the study, will there be practical learning, such as
curriculum design or practicums. Teaching and learning style is similar in both hard
disciplines (e.g. the natural sciences, IT and engineering) and soft disciplines (i.e. the social
science, humanities, business and education). Another explanation for the non-significant
discipline difference was influenced by the way Chinese university students are assessed in
terms of their academic performance. And Chinese undergraduates’ final grade is calculated
by taking a percentage of the examination result and extra-curricular assignment. Even
extra-curricular practice is no exception. Therefore, Chinese undergraduates in all disciplines
generally have similar teaching, learning and assessment styles, and understandably, it is
not significant according to the discipline. Furthermore, more research is needed to
explore whether the disparities in results are due to differences in students’ attitudes and
perceptions.
In conclusion, the data provided evidence of the relatively common prevalence of AD
among undergraduates in the four Chinese public universities. The male/senior respondents
reported being involved in dishonest behaviours more than the females/juniors in the Chinese
context. Gender and year of study were important demographic predictive variables of
dishonesty in these four public universities, which were also applicable to other public
HEED undergraduates in China, and indicated well-directed measures for males and senior students
17,1 to strengthen education integrity. However, the reasons behind the non-significant discipline
difference deserved further exploration.

Acknowledgment
The authors would like to acknowledge the help provided by administrative officers at four
62 universities located in Shaanxi, Shandong, Hebei and Gansu provinces of China in the
collection of data for this study.
Funding details: No funding was received for this study.
Disclosure statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Data availability statements: The data that support the findings of this study are available
on request from the corresponding author.
Materials availability statement: The material that was used for this study is available on
request from the corresponding author.
Ethics approval statement: The study was approved by Human Ethics Committees at
the participating universities. Students’ participation occurred on a voluntary basis.
Potential participants were informed about the research aims, and they were assured
about the anonymity of their responses. The survey was distributed online and students
were given the website reference to access and complete the questionnaire.

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About the authors

Xinjuan Liu, PhD candidate of Faculty of Education, Languages and Psychology, SEGi University,
Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. Xinjuan Liu is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: liuxj0905@
163.com
Noryatii Alias, Senior lecture of Faculty of Education, Languages and Psychology, SEGi University,
Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.

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