engleski

Students come to medical schools prepared to cheat: A multi-campus investigation

Objectives were to investigate high school cheating experiences and attitudes towards academic misconduct of freshmen at all four medical schools in Croatia, as a post-communist country in transition, with intention of raising awareness of academic (dis)honesty. Students were given an anonymous questionnaire containing 22 questions on their high school integrity atmosphere, self-reported educational dishonesty, perception of cheating behaviour, and on future expectations on integrity atmosphere at their university. Settings were all Schools of Medicine of Croatian Universities (Zagreb, Rijeka, Split, and Osijek). Descriptive statistics and differences in students’ self-reported educational dishonesty, perception of cheating behaviour, and evaluation of the high school integrity atmosphere. Of the 761 freshmen attending the 4 medical schools, 508 (67%) completed the questionnaire: 481 Croatian, and 27 international students. Out of all Croatian respondents almost all (>99%) self-reported engaging in at least one behaviour of educational dishonesty, and 78% respondents admitted to have frequently cheated in at least one form of assessed academic misconduct. Only 3 students admitted to have reported another student for cheating. For most of the questions there was no significant difference in the response among Croatian students themselves. However, significant differences were found in most responses between Croatian students and their international counterparts who were significantly less likely to engage in dishonest behaviours. No individual factor could be related to the incidence of self- admitted dishonest behaviour. Frequent-cheaters evaluated academic dishonesty significantly more leniently than non-cheaters. Academic dishonesty of university students does not begin in higher education -students come to medical schools ready to cheat.

academic dishonesty; medical students; student cheating

nije evidentirano