How College Students Cheat On In-Class Examinations: Creativity, Strain, and Techniques of Innovation

Phillip C. H. Shon

E-mail: pshon@isugw.indstate.edu

Abstract

There is adequate consensus among researchers that cheating is widely practiced by students and poses a serious problem across college campuses. Previous studies of academic dishonesty have systematically identified the psychological and social variables correlated to cheating, but how students actually cheat has often been overlooked. Using in-depth narratives from 119 students enrolled in an introductory criminology class, this paper examines the variety of creative tactics that students use to cheat during in-class examinations. Findings indicate that students manipulate variables such as the psychological and behavioral profiles of their professors, unwitting accomplices, technology, peers, spatial environments, and their own bodies, to negotiate the contingent intricacies and dialectics of academic dishonesty.

Introduction

There is adequate consensus among researchers that cheating by college students is a pervasive phenomenon (Aiken, 1991; McCabe and Bowers, 1994; McCabe and Trevino, 1996; Spiller and Crown, 1995). The literature on academic dishonesty provides a structural framework for understanding exactly what constitutes cheating. It also documents the social and personal characteristics of cheaters, their motives, where they are most likely to cheat, and when they are most likely to cheat; but where the literature is less thorough is when it comes to documenting what the students do to cheat—that is, how they cheat. This gap in the literature exists because the techniques and tactics that students use to cheat have been largely presupposed rather than thoroughly examined.

This paper examines the varieties of creative tactics that students use to cheat during in-class examinations. Analysis of such tactics indicates that aside from the brute mechanics of cheating, some very basic variables play a role in students' decision to cheat: the possibility of detection, surveillance from proctors, strategies for escape, projection of normalcy, and minimization of culpability. Cheating during in-class examinations is mediated by certain variables which are part of the student's decision to cheat as well as the overall negotiation and management of the cheating strategies and processes themselves. Based upon this study of how students cheat, specific techniques for enforcing academic integrity during in-class examinations will be suggested along with speculations as to the emotional and moral attractions of academic dishonesty.

Previous Work On Academic Cheating

An understanding of cheating on college campuses today must account for its pervasiveness (Baird, 1980; Diekhoff et al., 1996; Graham et al., 1989; Hollinger and Kaduce, 1996; Karlins et al., 1988; Labeff et al., 1990; McCabe, 1992), the personal and social characteristics of cheaters (Cooper and Peterson, 1980; Flyn et al., 1987; Kelly and Worell, 1990; Newsteadt et al., 1996; Ward and Beck, 1990; Whitley et al., 1999), their motivations (Barnett and Dalton, 1981; Drake, 1941; Labeff et al., 1990; Schab, 1991), and the situational and environmental factors that facilitate it (Bonjean and McGee, 1965; Bushway and Nash, 1977; Genereux and McLoed, 1995; Houston, 1976, 1977, 1983, 1986).

The principal thrust of this type of research has come primarily from two disciplines: education and psychology. Consequently, researchers in those two disciplines have been content to survey the attitudes of individuals that best predict cheating (see Anderson, 1957; Enker, 1987; Eskridge and Ames, 1993; Johnson and Klores, 1968). However, aside from the attitudes about cheating that students, faculty, and peers hold, cheating is a suitable topic for researchers within disciplines such as sociology and criminology. From a sociological/criminological perspective, cheating behavior represents an illegitimate means of dealing with perceived frustrations encountered in the pursuit of a desired goal (Merton, 1938).

In the context of higher education, that goal is a college degree—seen by many students to be a pre-requisite for upward mobility. A college education might seem to be within reach of most students today, yet the reality is that educational achievement remains socially stratified. Academic dishonesty has little sociological relevance if students conform to culturally prescribed aspirations and means toward attainment of their educational goals; however, when students assimilate "the cultural emphasis on success without equally internalizing the morally prescribed norms governing means for its attainment," then the illegitimate methods employed to achieve the desired state becomes a pivotal focus of rule-breaking behavior (see Merton, 1938, p. 678).

A recent application of two dominant criminological theories to academic dishonesty hypothesizes that students whose ambitions are thwarted from achieving their valued goals (i.e. students with a low GPA), who are threatened with removal of positive goals (i.e. loss of scholarship), and who are bombarded with negative stimuli (i.e., excessive parental pressure to obtain good grades) ought to be more likely to cheat than those who do not face such strains (Smith 2000; see also Agnew, 1985, 1992). However, Smith's (2000) findings did not support the claims of general strain theory, and the perceived strains did not significantly affect students' decisions to cheat. [1]

In some cases, attempts to address prevalent cheating have had to grapple with an absence of standardization regarding exactly what constitutes academic dishonesty, but there is remarkable consistency in the literature as to what behaviors count as cheating—especially on exams (see Cizek, 1999; Eve and Bromly, 1981; Graham et al., 1994; Wright and Kelly, 1974). For example, McCabe and Bowers (1994, p. 7) define the parameters of cheating on tests/exams as:

1. copying from another test or exam
2. helping someone on a test
3. using a crib note
4. copying from someone without their knowledge (see also McCabe and Trevino, 1996, p. 31).

Smith's (2000: 100) work offers a more nuanced way of differentiating and classifying cheating on tests, but his questionnaire also implicitly hints that there might be other places and ways that crib notes may be creatively imported and used during an exam. This leads to a logical question that is not addressed in the current literature: what type of innovative and creative tactics do students use to cheat during in-class examinations? And once crib notes are used, what strategies do students use to destroy the evidence of their illicit actions? Newstead et al. (1996) and Smith (2000) note that prearranged signal systems are used to receive or communicate answers to and from others; if this is so, are hand signals and tapping one's pencils the only way that cheating occurs? How do students avoid the obvious possibility of drawing the teacher's suspicions while employing such intrusive methods of communication?

Using crib notes has long been noted as a common tactic that students use to cheat, but how students actually plan, manage, and execute the intricacies of importing the crib notes to the exam and then use it while eluding detection from proctors—a situational and routine activities approach to rule breaking—has not been addressed sufficiently in the existing literature (Cohen and Felson, 1979). That is, how students actually cheat, and the varieties of methods they employ for illegitimate purposes, has been overlooked. This gap in the literature exists because the techniques and tactics that students use to cheat have been largely presupposed and not examined as a justifiable topic in their own right.

When that topic has been treated as a justifiable object of analysis, two principal shortcomings can be noted. First, the novel methods that students use to cheat have not been rigorously and cogently developed. Thus, Cizek (1999) noted that in-class cheating involves "Giving, Taking, and Receiving" (GTR) of information, the use of "Forbidden Materials" (FM), and "Taking Advantage of the Testing Process" (TAP), but these categories are too broad and lack thematic coherence and specificity. Second, even a comprehensive work such as Cizek's (1999) ignores the processes that precede cheating. For instance, Cizek offers a compendium of methods that students use to cheat, but how students actually manage the intricacies and contingencies that arise during the planning and commission phases are largely presupposed. This type of stance overlooks the sequential and progressive aspects of cheating that might illuminate how it is actually carried out. This paper attempts to remedy that gap in the existing research by classifying and collating the innovative methods that students use to adapt to their perceived strain in the pursuit of scholastic aspirations, and presents a typology of the innovative methods students use to cheat on in-class examinations.

Data and Methods

This study was concerned with identifying and classifying the specific techniques that students use to cheat during in-class exams; it was exploratory in nature, designed to elicit detailed narratives. Consequently, no hypotheses were tested. Rather than using pre-formulated surveys and coding schemes, students were instructed to be as detailed and as descriptive as possible in their narratives. The narrative responses were then inductively categorized into recurring analytical patterns (see Emerson et al., 1995). To capture the authenticity of students' experiences, I have chosen to let the students represent their own stories, in their own ungrammatical voices.

The data for this study were collected from a medium-sized regional university in the Midwest (MU) and a medium-sized regional university in the South (SU) in the spring of 2003 and fall of 2003. The subjects were chosen from a convenience sample of 128 undergraduate students, 72 male and 56 female, who had enrolled in an introductory criminal justice/criminology course. Although participation was voluntary, and for extra credit, two respondents did not give consent to use their responses so they were excluded from the analysis; furthermore, seven respondents stated outright that they had never cheated on any exam, so their responses were not included in the substantive portions of the paper. While it could be argued that these two courses are not representative of the university population as a whole, the two courses fulfilled the general education requirements of both universities; hence, students from a broad range of majors and disciplines, as well as class standing, were represented in the sample.

Each student was asked to complete a semi-structured questionnaire. [2] The students were asked two questions:

1. Have you ever cheated during an in-class examination? (Cheating was defined as copying a test from others, using unauthorized crib notes and "cheat sheets" during an exam.)
2. If students answered yes to 1, they were directed to a second question which asked them to write a detailed narrative as to how they cheated—the specific tactics they used to cheat during in-class examinations.

There were wide variations in the length and detail of students' narratives, ranging from one paragraph to several pages; for the purposes of this paper, narratives that are rich in descriptions and representative of the analytical category under discussion are chosen as examples.

"Qualifying" the Professor

Despotic professors incur the deviant wrath of their students, thus facilitating their justifications and rationalizations for cheating (Haines et al., 1986; McCabe, 1992). Practically, however, students who decide to cheat on in-class exams have to find innovative ways to avoid the surveillance of professors and teaching assistants. Thus, in addition to completing the exam, students who decide to cheat must first determine their potential for success; to this end, they engage in a "qualifying" process whereby they determine if "the person is desirable as a victim" (Leo, 1996, p. 266).

Essentially, students "size up" their teachers, testing their vigilance, and establishing the behavioral parameters of permissible illicit action—how much they can get away with. This process is similar to the way police detectives "size up" a suspect in an interrogation room in that students, too, create a psychological "profile" of their professors, and conjure up ways to dupe them. In the following, a student explains her decision to cheat on an in-class quiz as a function of the difficulty of the course, her pressing need to pass, and the physical limitations of the teacher:

From the outset, this student makes a distinction between regular faculty members and department chairs, assuming that the courses taught by department chairs are substantively more difficult, the teacher more vigilant and strict—"hard" ("she would not play any games"). That assumption is initially confirmed when the student fails the first quiz, despite the student's assiduous morning study. In this narrative, the difficulty of the exam is formulated as an "extreme case," and offered as an implicit justification of her decision to cheat (see Edwards, 2000). That is to say, the student almost talks herself into cheating.

After the first failed quiz, however, the student re-evaluates the professor's suitability as a potential target for cheating after discovering an obvious limitation in the professor's surveillance capability: she has to remain stationary, hence, limited in her field of vision. Furthermore, the student has already identified the situational and normative contours which affect the feasibility of her illicit action during the in-class exams and quizzes: she knows that they will be conducted in a predictable way, and relies on her knowledge of situational routines to mobilize and execute her illegitimate plans. In this excerpt, the student "sizes up" the professor's constraints in her mobility, range and scope of her surveillance, and typifications of test administration and uses them to her unfair advantage; consequently, she is able to successfully cheat without detection. In the next narrative, a student elaborates in considerable detail how he "sizes up" the professor and constructs a working "profile":

The first noteworthy—and impressive—point about the way this student "sizes up" the professor is the rigorous planning, attention to detail, and the sophisticated gathering of intelligence through systematic observations. Similar to the way an armed robber "cases" a potential victim through staged ploys and reading of subtle "cues," the student does not just observe the teacher; he collects, sorts, and analyzes behavioral data, carefully noting the professor's reading habits, body and eye movements, and general comportment in the classroom (see especially Jacobs, 2000, pp. 47-72; Katz, 1988, pp. 164-236; Wright and Decker, 1997, p. 94). Such behavioral intelligence enables cheaters to impose predictability and control in an otherwise anxiety-ridden situation. In this narrative the student notes the teacher's favored reading materials, and brings a stopwatch to calculate the window of opportunity that he has to cheat. By knowing the professor's habits and routines, the student is able to delineate the situational, normative, and temporal boundaries of illicit action; moreover, such systematic observations reveal the victim's vulnerabilities and weaknesses. In other words, the student knows what he can get away with and how long he can look at his cheat sheet.

The second noteworthy point is that the student actually "cultivates" the professor, meaning that the student manipulates the professor through a "pattern of psychological dependence" (see Leo 1996, p. 271). For most teachers, I would presume, a student's desire to learn and do well in class, through expression of interest and class participation, is a gratifying experience and an enduring source of motivation. The aforementioned student displays a sound understanding of these qualities that "cultivate" a professor; and it is precisely this occupational foible that the student usurps by establishing intimate rapport, feigning interest and participation. Like a good confidence man or a car salesman, an experienced cheater exploits the weaknesses of professors and betrays his/her trust for a chance to improve his/her grade. Once students have "sized up" their professors, and have decided to cheat (or not), then they must decide if they are going to cheat alone or do so in collusion with others.

Collaborative Cheating

Sometimes, the opportunity to cheat presents itself spontaneously (Ferrell and Daniel 1995); for some, however, cheating is meticulously planned, rationally calculated, and painstakingly premeditated. It is erroneous to believe, however, that all students cheat with sophistication, their "ingenuity" being used to outwit unsuspecting professors. Bluntly put, some tactics do not take much creativity at all, and only require minimal vigilance from instructors to deter—and catch—students from cheating. Some cheating methods are just uncouth and unimaginative: students sit in the back of the room and blatantly whisper answers back and forth to one another. In this section, some of the recurring, yet not so obvious, methods that students use to cheat in conjunction with their peers are discussed.

Solitary Cheating

The data collection instruments used by prior researchers demonstrate a firm grasp of the way students cheat during in-class examinations (Aiken, 1991; Baird, 1980; Drake, 1941; Franklyn-Stokes, 1995). For instance, using crib notes ("cheat sheets") is mentioned in virtually all of them, as is peeking at someone else's answer sheet; writing the answers on the bottom of one's shoes, on top of desks, and hands are part of academic folklore. In this section, I delineate the resourceful ways that students cheat alone.

Conclusion

For some students, a rift between the culturally prescribed symbols of success (i.e. a college degree) and the absence of legitimate opportunities for their attainment translates into adopting innovative methods of adaptation (Merton, 1938). Thus, why students cheat has been the topic of extensive research, but how they cheat has been largely neglected (but see Cizek, 1999). This paper supplements the established findings on academic dishonesty by delineating the innovative techniques that students use to respond to perceived strains and frustrations encountered within the context of pursuing a college degree.

Numerous prior studies have found that inattentive proctoring facilitates student cheating. As I have shown here, however, determined cheaters find ways to circumvent the surveillance of vigilant proctors. Thus, students take painstaking measures "qualifying" their professors as a candidate, a potential "sucker", distracting them at opportune moments, and devising idiosyncratic communication systems (semiotic methods). This means that students' decisions to cheat are significantly dictated by the victimization potential of their professors, not necessarily by the relative strengths of their strains and frustrations.

Previous studies of academic dishonesty have systematically identified the psychological and social variables correlated to cheating, based primarily on subjects' responses to surveys. For instance, prior researchers have adamantly maintained that students' propensity to cheat is influenced by the attitudes of their peers. However, my analysis indicates that peers are integral and collusive agents in the cheating processes, in the way academic dishonesty is manifested. Moreover, the variety of tactics used to cheat illustrates the creativity and ingenuity of students today (that is, the ones who decide to cheat). Even a macro-level variable such as gender has been observed to be adapted as a micro-level situational tactic in cheating scenarios.

This paper also offers practical suggestions to deter academic dishonesty and enforce academic integrity during in-class exams. Traditional criminological thought suggests that the severity and swiftness of sanctions would serve as adequate deterrents (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990). Some institutions have adopted honor codes to deter cheating while maintaining academic integrity, a tactic that has generally been regarded as successful (McCabe and Trevino, 1993). My data, however, suggest a more routine activities approach to "crime" prevention strategies (Cohen and Felson, 1979); the first step in formulating and implementing such policies involves knowing how rule-breaking behavior is conducted (see Wright and Decker, 1994).

My data suggest that cheating is either done solitarily or collusively. In the latter instance, paying attention to in-class group dynamics (i.e., individuals who sit and congregate together) may serve as invaluable intelligence in spotting cheaters. Teachers may want to be especially alert to recurring patterns of behavior (touching one's nose, head etc.) from students during in-class examinations. In the former instance, it may be prudent for professors to know who the "good" students are and where they sit in order to cast a vigilant eye on the students who sit near them (see Cisek, 1999, p. 40-43). [4] As my data indicate, cheaters are never far from the "good" students. It may also be practical to inspect ordinary items (e.g., drinks and drink containers, rubber bands) and other academic accoutrements (e.g., pens, calculators), along with non-trouble-rousing body parts (e.g., hands, arms) since they may be used as cheat sheets. Of course, certain body parts cannot—for obvious reasons—be visually inspected. It is impossible to implement dress codes without offending the social, cultural, and perhaps, religious, sensibilities of some students.

Enforcing academic integrity by limiting the opportunity for academic fraud in the first place is no small task, but it is one that is manageable: professors can do simple things such as making sure that desks are free of scribbled notes, that book bags are closed, that hats are removed. Further, they can look for gazes that repeatedly veer off into areas other than the test; multiple versions of exams can be administered in small classrooms rather than auditoriums; instructors can also employ additional proctors during exams, adopting wide and fixed space seating. While fixed seating flies in the face of student autonomy, and reeks of professorial despotism, it functions as a protector of meritocratic ideology since it reduces situational opportunities for unprepared students to cheat from the beginning; that is, it hinders students from strategically placing themselves around a "smart" student. [5] It robs potential cheaters from victimizing an unwitting student, a student who has—ideally— diligently toiled for the grade.

Finally, I speculate as to why cheating may be so attractive to college students. Cheating, like criminal behavior in general, represents the adoption of illegitimate means of responding to a perceived frustration in the pursuit of a valued goal. As critics of strain theory have noted, however, explaining the prevalence of cheating as a function of materialistic motives ascribes an overly instrumental view of human behavior, and neglects the moral and emotional dimensions of rule breaking (Katz, 1988). So what non-material gain does cheating provide? We can begin by noting that the origins of students' strains and frustrations are irrelevant to the psychological and social reality of the consequences which may result. The result of having an overly active social life, numerous extracurricular activities, a demanding work schedule, and consequently being unable to devote the necessary study time, is a highly stressful and anxiety producing condition. Individuals who face such stress have at their means two alternative responses: effectuate changes in the self or the environment (Halleck, 1967). Cheating represents an adaptation to that stress.

The most effective way to reduce tension and stress in one's condition, according to Halleck, is through motoric activity/physical action; and if we apply this conceptual framework to student cheating, we can begin to see the non-material allure of cheating. As outlined in this paper and evident from my data, cheating involves a significant investment of one's time, energy, and resources; moreover, it involves a considerable amount of physical action prior to and during the exam. That is, students have to sift through their assigned readings and notes and determine which ones they will place in the cheat sheet; not only that, they must expend great care and cunning while cramming such information into their cheat sheets; next they have to devise where and how they will store their unauthorized notes and how they will retrieve them. For a standard fifty minute exam, it is possible to spend three to four times that much time thinking, writing, and preparing to cheat. And during this process they actively—physically and mentally—become engrossed in the task at hand.

That is, frustration, a highly noxious and tension producing state, is incrementally transformed into physical action; it is precisely during this corporeal metamorphosis that an individual senses the tingling sensations of hope (obtaining a high/passing grade), along with a non-negligible heaping of excitement and the possibility of danger (O'Malley and Mugford, 1995). But most significantly, these actions provide creative outlets for students to transform their impotent and frustrated existential situation into an autonomous mode of being in the planning, preparing, and execution of their deviant plans (see Halleck 1967, p. 77).

Students who are caught cheating face embarrassment, shame, and possibly, expulsion. Thus, the risks associated with cheating are very real. Yet, despite such formal and informal sanctions, research indicates that an astounding 60-70% of college students admit to cheating. I am almost certain that most (if not all) instructors have wondered why students spend their time planning, rehearsing, and executing illegitimate plans when they could spend that same time devoting themselves to their studies. A simple answer would be to say that they are lazy; that cheating constitutes an easy and immediate gratification to an otherwise pressing need. However, to view cheating as an impulsively conceived and executed form of academic dishonesty, and conceptualizing cheaters as persons lacking "self control" as a result of poor parenting and deficient moral training, overlooks a socio-structural fact (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990): cheating persists across class, race, gender, and national boundaries (Cizek, 1999). The cheating act itself is suffused with an unmistakable tinge of existential boundary crossings that are manifested in the corporeal, emotional, and moral experiences of cheaters (Katz, 1999). Thus, a more troubling—and theoretically titillating—answer would be to explore how cheating presents a set of morally fun challenges that students attempt to work through, that somehow, the possibility of outwitting authority figures provides an unfathomable moral and sensual delight for those who commit such acts (Forsyth and Marckese, 1993). As I have shown in this paper, students are capable of using highly innovative methods to respond to the perceived frustrations of in-class examinations, tailoring their illicit methods to their personal, social, and situational appurtenances, relying on their wits, peers, and even their sexuality. It is perhaps the allure of these moral and emotional challenges and gains through illegitimate means that is perhaps even more worthy of further investigation than the allure represented by the more material challenges and gains so often represented as underlying students' motivations to cheat.

Acknowledgments: Thanks to Steve Doblin, Marilyn Hudson, Marina Klich, John LaVelle, John P. Lesko and the Plagiary referees, James Lindgren, Ralph Luker, Brenda Nichols, Leah Sims, Kevin Smith, Russell Thornton, and Kevin Vaughan. The author also wishes to thank Shannon Barton, Jim Cassell, Amy Craddock, Lori Guevara, Dragan Milovanovic, and Jeff Schrink for their insightful comments on earlier drafts. The author alone is responsible for any errors.

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Notes

1. Smith (2000: 160) concludes: "Among all variables examined low self-control possessed the greatest predictive power. This study finds encouraging support for the theory's ability to explain another form of misconduct among the many that have already been investigated. Thus, the predictive breadth and scope of self-control lends further credence to its claims of theoretical generality."

2. The respondents were asked to identify only their gender to examine if tactical differences existed between the two sexes.

3. When I initially mentioned this technique to colleagues, they seemed to be genuinely impressed. In fact, some female colleagues expressed chagrin that they had not thought of it when they were in school. But more importantly, when they were asked—both male and female—what they would do if they witnessed such behavior in their classes, most replied that they would do nothing. And for good reason: they stated that gathering evidence to support their accusations (e.g., asking them to lift up their skirt to check for answers) would be nothing short of sexual harassment. Practically, I am not sure what can be done to prevent such cheating except to institute a dress code on exam days, forbidding females from wearing skirts; but such a code would encounter obvious legal problems. Theoretically, male students could do the same to female professors; but in my data, I encountered no such creativity on the part of the male students. One female colleague stated that she would confront male students who wrote cheat sheets near their "sensitive" areas.

4. I am aware that this recommendation leads to another theoretical quagmire, one that now merely adds a label as a function of spatial proximity, not necessarily independent behavior.

5. Of course, this suggestion is based on the assumption that the exams will not be administered in a large auditorium that seat 500 plus students; moreover, it assumes that students who are forced to sit in a certain order will not form alliances and collusions of sorts.

Phillip C. H. Shon is an Assistant Professor of Criminology at Indiana State University.