An Analysis of Discussions on Academic Dishonesty in Journalism & Mass Communication Educator,Volumes 1 Through 74

Abstract

Research has shown that professionals who act unethically in the workplace likely have an academic background with academic dishonesty violations. Given that understanding and teaching academic honesty behaviors are critical to best prepare future media professionals, this research examines discussions of academic dishonesty in Journalism & Mass Communication Educator’s (JMCE) 74 volumes to understand what topics emerge as guiding the discussion. Through a qualitative content analysis using emergent design, 14 JMCE articles are compared with 53 Communication and Mass Media Complete database articles to identify trends and needs for future research of the topic.

Keywords

academic dishonesty content analysis students subjective norms pedagogy

Introduction and Purpose

Educators have struggled to deal with the issue of student cheating, probably for as long as there have been teachers and students but certainly since the early 1960s when William Bowers conducted the first national examination of cheating behavior in colleges. Researchers have found that students cheat for a variety of reasons, including the need to be at the top, stay ahead, or merely scrape by. Research has also shown that peer influence is strongly linked to academic dishonesty. The need to succeed and the need for social conformity may lie behind most cases of cheating, but the effect of a society where lack of ethics runs rampant in business, government, church, and academia provides fertile ground for students to believe that cheating is acceptable and expected.

In 2007, the now inactive website CollegeHumor.com conducted an informal poll of its users—a targeted demographics of young adults 18 to 25 years of age—and found that nearly 61% of the 30,000 respondents confessed to cheating regularly in college. Of the respondents who admitted to cheating, 16.5% felt no guilt (CollegeHumor.com, 2008). Although this poll was not conducted scientifically, its results parallel those conducted by Rutgers University in 2014 through a questionnaire administered to a random sample of its student base (Rutgers University, 2016).

An awareness campaign conducted by the Educational Testing Service and the Ad Council sought to provide educators with information about cheating and its prevalence in the classroom. A major theme of the campaign was that cheating no longer carries the social stigma that it did in the past due to the increased pressure for grades and getting into a desired college program. Research conducted for the campaign revealed that the general public (41%) felt that cheating was a problem more often than university administrators (35%); however, it should be noted that no method details were provided to describe how these results were obtained (Educational Testing Service, 1999).

Nonetheless, cheating and academic dishonesty remain a significant mainstay on the collegiate campus. Kleiner and Lord (1999) found that 85% of college students surveyed by U.S. News and World Report felt that cheating was “essential” for their success. Interviews with undergraduates revealed that the risk of cheating usually was worth taking because less than 5% of cheaters were caught and penalties could be minimized through pleading with instructors.

Cheating takes many forms, including plagiarizing material, purchasing projects from paper mills, making up stories for assignments, and using technology to cheat on tests. These actions run counter to the ethical behavior that media industries need to build and keep trust in their work among the public. Ethical behavior must be at the center of our educational focus.

A 2018 Pew Center Research study found that 52% of the public have “not too much” or no confidence in media institutions and 44% expressed the same sentiments for journalists. Cries of “fake news” in recent years certainly have influenced that level of trust. However, media behaviors and journalists’ actions have also contributed to that level of media distrust. From Dateline’s rigged 1992 fiery test crashes of General Motors trucks to fabricated stories by Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass at the New York Times and New Republic, respectively, media professionals who have engaged in unethical behavior have given the public reasons for distrusting their news content. The 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer report found that one third of the respondents expressed distrust in media and journalists.

Given our role in educating future journalists and media professionals, it is important to see how we have conceptualized academic dishonesty and advanced our understanding of it through research. Most would agree that personal integrity and strong moral reasoning are important characteristics for media professionals. However, research has consistently demonstrated that most students cheat (Auger, 2013) and cheating students are likely to cheat in the workplace (Lawson, 2004; Sims, 1993).

Strong ethics and moral reasoning are critical for developing and building trust in media institutions, and educators must be aware of their role in creating an environment that eliminates unethical behaviors such as academic dishonesty. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate how the concept of academic dishonesty has been addressed in mass media research, especially in Journalism & Mass Communication Educator (JMCE), which has provided insights and information for media educators for 75 years. Through an emergent, qualitative content analysis, the study identifies key dimensions that have been explored and neglected, which can be used to outline a call for future inquiry into academic dishonesty in our discipline.

Literature Review

Overview of Academic Dishonesty

Educators are aware of academic dishonesty despite having little guidance by the structures that inform our behaviors in and out of the classroom. A search for academic dishonesty at the Association for Education of Journalism and Mass Communication’s website found only two conference abstracts from 1998 and 2008 where the concept was studied. The National Communication Association website search results only in a 2016 Communication Currents column that lumps academic dishonesty into a discussion of 12 student misbehaviors that disrupt the classroom environment. Searches on both International Communication Association and the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s websites return notices that no information was found about academic dishonesty.

Kibler (1993) defines academic dishonesty as “forms of cheating and plagiarism that involve students giving or receiving unauthorized assistance in an academic exercise or receiving credit for work that is not their own” (p. 253). However, others argue that such definitions that try to prescribe specific behaviors fail to capture the complexity and robustness of the topic and favor a streamlined definition that refers to any type of misconduct that occurs in relation to a formal academic exercise as an example of academic dishonesty (Eaton, 2017).

Academic dishonesty represents a range of the behaviors that faculty, administrators, staff, and students are involved in. This perspective allows classroom misconduct by students and teachers to be considered as academic dishonesty. Similarly, it applies to faculty and student misconduct during the research process (Fanelli et al., 2015; Pupovac & Fanelli, 2015). It also covers questionable behavior occurring on outside the classroom by administrators, internship supervisors, or institutional staff. This perspective, therefore, supersedes views that narrowly focus on a limited range of behaviors. For example, while “Responsible Conduct of Research” training covers significant detail about research misconduct, authorship and publication issues, data management, and conflicts of interest, it fails to consider any aspect of classroom management with daily teaching activities (Jensen et al., 2018). Similarly, many that focus exclusively on cheating and plagiarism in the classroom often ignore the potential for researcher misconduct. Both fall under the umbrella of academic dishonesty.

The National Honor Society strives to elevate students’ academic integrity by focusing on scholarship, service, leadership, and character. Serving high school students around the world, the National Honor Society has crafted one of the most comprehensive definitions of academic dishonesty by including plagiarism, fabrication, deception, cheating, bribery, sabotage, impersonation, and complicity. Briefly, plagiarism refers to the use of another’s words or ideas without acknowledgment. Fabrication involves the falsification of data, information, or citations. Deception focuses on providing false information connected to any aspect of an academic exercise, and cheating represents any attempt to obtain unpermitted help. Bribery consists of a quid pro quo where something is offered in exchange for something else. Sabotage involves acts that prevent others from completing work. Impersonation involves assuming another identity with the intent to provide an advantage for the student, and complicity is knowingly contributing or going along with another’s act of academic dishonesty.

Although the National Honor Society primarily serves students and educators in secondary education, the eight categories represented by their definition of academic dishonesty are more inclusive of the full range of academic exercises. Their definition covers classroom management and research. They sufficiently represent actions that faculty, administrators, staff, and students engage in. To begin this examination of the framing of academic dishonesty, RQ1 was created to determine the principal focus of discussions:

RQ1: Are articles discussing academic dishonesty in JMCE’s first 75 years focused more on student or faculty/administration/staff behaviors?

Themes and Operationalization of Academic Dishonesty

Bowers (1964) produced the seminal work in operationalizing academic dishonesty behaviors of students, which was revisited and adapted by McCabe and Trevino in the early 1990s, where they incorporated 10 of the original scale questions and added two (McCabe & Trevino, 1993, 1996). The 12-item scale operationalized cheating as using crib notes on a test, copying from another student during a test, using unfair methods to learn what was on a test before it was given, copying from another student during a test without their knowledge, helping someone else to cheat on a test, cheating on a test in any other way, copying material and turning it in as your own work, fabricating or falsifying a bibliography, turning in a work done by someone else, receiving substantial unpermitted help on an assignment, collaborating on an assignment when the instructor asked for individual work, and copying a few sentences of material of a published source without citing or footnoting.

The bulk of McCabe and Trevino’s research took place between the early 1990s and the early 2000s. The purpose of their studies was to understand the relationships between academic dishonesty and future workplace behavior. As they note, “With few exceptions, the thrust of this research has centered on one of the most basic ethical decisions faced by college students—to cheat or not to cheat on their academic work” (McCabe et al., 2001, p. 220).

As a result, there are many words used to discuss academic dishonesty, including plagiarism, academic integrity and misconduct, student ethics, and cheating. Themes within the literature include the need for institutional codes of student academic conduct (Tatum et al., 2018), measurement of cheating in a wide range of disciplines (Bowers, 1964; McCabe & Trevino, 1993), techniques to minimize cheating (Hall, 2011), technology (Sidi et al., 2019), correlations between academic cheating and cheating at work (Lawson, 2004), and peer influence on cheating (Henningsen & Valde, 2013). Additional studies consider sociological and psychological motivations for students to cheat (Curasi, 2013). The specific operationalization by McCabe and Trevino (1993, 1996) and the broad themes found when investigating the terms “academic dishonesty” lead to the following question:

RQ2: How has academic dishonesty been discussed and operationalized in mass media literature that focuses on the subject?

Linking Academic Dishonesty and Professional Behavior

Multiple studies found connections between one’s predilections for cheating in school and for employee dishonesty and unethical behavior. Some, like Lawson (2004), have argued that academic dishonesty leads to engaging in negative business practices, such as lying to management and coworkers, plagiarizing work reports, and intentionally misleading clients. Others have found that many who admitted to cheating in school also confessed to engaging in dishonest work-related behaviors (Sims, 1993). Business school students are more likely to devalue business ethics when they have previously engaged in academically dishonest practices. For example, Cole and Smith (1996) found that business students were more apt to accept questionable business practices and to perceive business professionals as unethical. This disconnect between student perception of ethical practice and the perception of practice from those in the field lends itself to potential future conflict when these students enter the workforce and engage in questionable behaviors that they perceive as the ethical norm for the field.

Academic honor codes are among the strategies suggested for reducing instances of academic dishonesty, yet the codes are not necessarily sufficient. Results from McCabe and Trevino’s (1993) study highlighted the importance of embedding the language of academic honesty into organizational culture wherein a non-code school had lower instances of academic dishonesty than a school with a long-standing institutional code. They note, “At [the non-code] school, administrators and faculty clearly conveyed their beliefs about the seriousness of cheating, communicated expectations regarding high standards of integrity, and encouraged students to know and abide by rules of proper conduct” (McCabe & Trevino, 1993, cited in McCabe et al., 2001, p. 224).

Teaching personal ethics has been found to help reduce instances of academic dishonesty; however, the impact of these lessons was reduced with the introduction of professional codes of ethics and corporate norms (Lau et al., 2012). Although students expressed a desire to adhere to professional norms and ethics, the language used in association policies and codified ethics often varies considerably from what is used in academic honesty policies at colleges and universities (Welch, 2005). Payan et al. (2010) argue that when students were presented with both academic dishonesty and corporate ethical norms, they were more able to identify and follow corporate behaviors that define what constitutes dishonesty. These findings tie to the results of tests of moral judgment reasoning where public relations practitioners and journalists scored significantly higher for domain-specific scenarios (Coleman & Wilkins, 2002).

Thus, academics must speak bluntly about academic honesty and clearly define what constitutes dishonesty or recognize that students will turn to corporate culture for guidance. What they see passing for corporate norms through their internships and work experiences will guide behavior (Metwally, 2013). As Karassavidou and Glaveli (2006) suggest, it is important to build students’ internalized code of ethics to provide moral guidance sufficient to resist both academic cheating and ethical challenges in the workplace and throughout their lives.

Given the connection between academic dishonesty, professional behavior, and the misunderstanding that often exists over what constitutes unacceptable behavior for students, the following question is posed:

RQ3: How have JMCE’s 74 volumes and the Communication and Mass Media Complete (CMMC) database addressed the role of honor codes and/or professional codes of ethics?

Method

This content analysis focuses on the content of JMCE in comparison with mass media research to compare how discussions of academic dishonesty are presented to communication and mass media audiences. Its unit of analysis is the single article published in either JMCE or CMMC database. The authors searched for the term “academic dishonesty” in the CMMC database rather than a broader database such as Academic Search Complete so as to compare discussions of the topic by scholars likely to share disciplinary perspectives and backgrounds. Results that emerged in the academic dishonesty search in CMMC were divided to represent nine education-focused journals and 31 non-education focused journals to aid in JMCE comparisons. A listing of the CMMC journals by classification is located in Supplemental Appendix A.

The CMMC search returned 56 articles, but three were removed because they were from JMCE. Only eight articles were found in JMCE’s 75-year history that focused on academic dishonesty, and one was removed from analysis due to being a 2004 book review on decision making in journalism that mentioned the phrase in passing. Given the small number of articles on the topic in JMCE, an additional search using “cheating” and “ethics” was also done and resulted in 12 additional articles. Of those 12, one was removed for being a book review, one for being an editorial that tangentially addressed the topic during a lament on the future of journalism education, and three that casually mentioned monitoring for academic dishonesty when working in service learning or cross-institutional learning situations. Therefore, a total of 14 articles were examined to represent JMCE. All JMCE and CMMC articles were downloaded for review.

For RQ1, articles were analyzed to determine their approach to academic dishonesty focused on student or faculty behavior. For this research, the “faculty” label broadly applies to instructors, administrators, and staff necessary to represent teaching, management, and research behaviors.

For RQ2, an emergent qualitative design approach was used to evaluate all of the articles. According to Pailthorpe (2017), “[t]he researcher takes cues from the data, process, or conclusions, and the whole study is a reflection of varying levels of emergent characteristics within that research process” (p. 1). This type of study is data-driven rather than theory-driven, and is an “attempt to engage with a research situation as it is, as far as possible putting assumptions and preconceptions aside” (Dick, 2001, p. 48-1).

JMCE and CMMC articles were reviewed and organized into emergent themes focusing on academic dishonesty behaviors. The initial themes identified in CMMC articles were internet plagiarism and digital phones, administrative issues, types of deception, teaching resources, student perceptions, and plagiarism. Themes that emerged from JMCE were plagiarism, technology aides, student perceptions, teaching advice, conducting and advising research, and professional performance/codes of ethics. Emerging themes were then recategorized into the corresponding National Honor Society typology of what constitutes academic dishonesty.

A final review of the articles was done to review specific operationalizations of academic dishonesty used by the published articles. The operationalizations were examined to determine whether a focused research agenda was developing around academic dishonesty that centered on tested, reliable scales or whether researchers were reinventing the wheel when researching academic dishonesty by creating new measures.

RQ3 sought to contextualize academic dishonesty in relation to professional behaviors by reviewing the JMCE and CMMC articles for references to honor codes and professional codes of ethics. Each article was reviewed for discussions about student honor codes and specific professional associations representing mass media industries, such as Society for Professional Journalists, American Advertising Federation, and Public Relations Society of America. Articles varied from detailed discussions about specific aspects of codes of ethics to general discussions about the value of honor codes in mass communication curricula.

Results

Given the complexity of academic dishonesty behaviors, RQ1 sought to determine whether articles in JMCE were more focused on students’ or faculty behavior. Table 1 shows that JMCE articles were focused on student behaviors more often than faculty behavior in six of the eight types of academic dishonesty. For bribery, JMCE authors only referenced faculty behavior (e.g., advising a thesis or dissertation only if the student first agreed to list the faculty member as a co-author), and there were no discussions of sabotage.

Table 1.

Number of Articles Mentioning Each Type of Academic Dishonesty and Source of Behavior by Journal Type.

NHS academic dishonesty categories	Journal typology^a
	JMCE		CMMC education journals		CMMC “other” journals
	Student	Professor	Student	Professor	Student	Professor
Plagiarism	5 (14)	3 (3)	2 (3)	0	11 (42)	0
Fabrication	4 (17)	1 (2)	0	0	6 (7)	0
Deception	2 (6)	0	0	0	3 (11)	0
Cheating	9 (22)	4 (2)	3 (11)	0	6 (11)	1 (1)
Bribery	0	1 (1)	0	0	0	0
Sabotage	0	0	0	0	0	0
Impersonation	1 (2)	0	0	0	1 (1)	0
Complicity	5 (4)	3 (4)	0	0	2 (2)	0

Note. While the number outside the parentheses represents the total number of articles discussing that type of academic dishonesty behavior, numbers inside the parentheses indicate the number of ways that behavior was operationalized in the articles. JMCE = Journalism & Mass Communication Educator; CMMC = Communication and Mass Media Complete, NHS = National Honors Society.

^a CMMC education journals are listed in Supplemental Appendix A, CMMC “Other” includes all non-education focused journals from CMMC database.

The breakdown of these behaviors is helpful to see what the focus of JMCE has been during its 75 years. The articles and commentaries that have focused on faculty behavior typically reflect the role of the faculty member exploiting relationships with student researchers by taking credit for their work and using student work to advance careers. Table 1 shows this type of academic dishonesty was represented through discussions of plagiarizing student work (21.4%) and fabrication of research data (7.1%). It also includes a discussion of the faculty member’s responsibility for fostering an environment where cheating occurs (28.6%) and looking the other way when cheating is brought to his or her attention by students (21.4%).

Students were the main focus of the academic dishonesty work published in JMCE with articles mostly focused on cheating on exams and assignments (64.3%), plagiarizing others’ work (35.7%), being complicit with other students cheating (35.7%), and making up quotations, data, and information (28.6%) in assignments and projects.

Although not the expressed focus of RQ1, analysis of JMCE and CMMC articles allowed for a comparison of their content. CMMC articles were almost exclusively focused on student behaviors with only one article focused on manipulation of standardized testing due to pressures to achieve certain success in K-12 education. JMCE has been more willing to publish commentaries and articles critical of academic dishonesty by faculty and discussions of ways to eliminate these improprieties than other CMMC journals.

The articles from JMCE and CMMC were examined to determine how academic dishonesty has been addressed in these journals for RQ2. Among the 14 JMCE articles, plagiarism was the most often discussed, found in six articles (42.8%). Using technology to aid in cheating was featured in five of the articles (35.7%). Students’ perceptions of what constituted academic dishonesty were measured in four articles (28.6%). Application of questionable behavior to professional situations was published 4 times (28.6%) though the authors used language grounded in professional codes of ethics rather than academic dishonesty. Two articles each addressed issues involving conducting and advising research (14.3%) and teaching students (14.3%), primarily focusing on professors’ relationships with graduate students.

For the 53 CMMC articles, the emergent analysis found that six articles dealt with lying and deception (11.3%). Two articles dealt with student incivility and classroom misbehavior (3.8%), and three addressed administrative issues such as the development of honor codes and policies on cell phones in the classroom (5.7%). Nine articles addressed plagiarism in publication—five focused on academic publishing (9.4%), three on journalistic plagiarism (5.7%), and one discussion of differences between plagiarism in academic and technical writing (1.9%). Other articles were broadly related to dishonesty, for example, teachers who cheat, film portrayals of cheating on examinations, and cheating on online surveys.

The largest category of articles is related to teaching. Fifteen articles (28.3%) provided insight into student motivation to cheat, tips for class preparation to minimize cheating, suggestions for teaching students more clearly about plagiarism, and the role of coaches in forensics to guide students to ethical speech delivery. The remaining articles were loosely tied to academic dishonesty, for example, recent court rules on whether cell phones should be allowed in schools, compliance-gaining, and Australian teachers’ experience with standardized testing.

Results indicate that cheating, plagiarism, and dishonesty are used interchangeably with academic dishonesty. Seventeen articles included description or measurement scales of the behaviors associated with these terms. Most described specific types of plagiarism, for example, copying words without attribution, but there were also instances where the term plagiarism was used without explanation of what that behavior entailed. CMMC articles also had focused on deception by operationalizing behaviors associated with deception of professors interpersonally and through email (Griffin et al., 2015).

The second component of RQ2 looked at the operationalizations of academic dishonesty that were used by the JMCE and CMMC articles. Six of the 14 JMCE articles (42.9%) had specific operationalizations for academic dishonesty compared with the 13 of the 42 CMMC articles (30.9%) and four of the 11 articles from education-focused journals (36.4%) in the CMMC database. A full listing of the operationalizations used is available at online access at the JMCE website. The analysis revealed that several mass media scholars are exploring academic dishonesty but without a common operationalization. Even when a common behavior is measured across multiple studies, the phrasing of that question is often presented in many different ways, resulting in a less focused research agenda.

RQ3 sought to determine whether academic dishonesty discussions were connected to larger discussions about student honor codes. Given the focus of professional focus of journalism schools and programs housed in these institutions, researchers also sought to determine whether professional associations’ ethical codes were referenced in relation to acts of academic dishonesty. Table 2 highlights the handful of articles that reference honor codes and professional codes of ethics. Ten of the 67 total articles (14.9%) discussed academic dishonesty in relation to student honor codes while only seven articles (10.4%) discussed them alongside a discussion of professional association codes of conducts. Four articles (5.9%) discussed other entities with authority (e.g., research clearinghouse) that offered insights on how to act ethically with academic endeavors. Proportionally, JMCE was more likely to discuss student honor codes (21.4%) and professional association codes of ethics (28.6%) than either CMMC education journals (9.09% for honor code, 0% for professional codes) or CMMC non-education journals (14.3% for honor code, 7.14% for professional codes).

Table 2.

Articles Containing Reference to Academic Honor Codes, Professional Codes, or Other Types of Authorities That Monitor Behavior.

Academic honor code	JMCE CMMCeCMMC	Professional codes	JMCE CMMCeCMMC	Other authorities	JMCE CMMCeCMMC
Griffin et al. (2015)	CMMC	Fedler (2006)	CMMC	Wickelgren & Holm (2008)	CMMC
Hall (2011)	CMMC	Ince (2004)	CMMC	Reyman (2008)	CMMC
Newkirk-Turner et al. (2019)	CMMC	McKerral (2011)	CMMC	Bugeja & Dimitrova (2007)	JMCE
O’Donnell (2011)	CMMC	Auger (2013)	JMCE	Schiff & Ryan (1996)	JMCE
Pactor et al. (1990)	CMMCe	Fullerton et al. (2013)	JMCE
Spain & Robles (2011)	CMMC	Hickerson & Kothari (2017)	JMCE
Stearns (1997)	CMMC	Shipley (2009)	JMCE
Auger (2013)	JMCE
Parsons (2003)	JMCE
Shipley (2009)	JMCE

Note. Journals are listed as being from JMCE, or as a CMMCe database (see Supplemental Appendix A), or as a general CMMC article. JMCE = Journalism & Mass Communication Educator; CMMCe = education-focused journal in the Communication and Mass Media Complete; CMMC = Communication and Mass Media Complete.

Discussion

Academic Dishonesty Is a Broad Concept, Lacking Focus

The articles returned under the search term “academic dishonesty” from JMCE and the CMMC database indicate a lack of focus and consensus of understanding. Forty publications carried the 53 CMMC results, with seven found within a special issue of Business Communication Quarterly. Most publications carried just one article revealing that the breadth of studies was large but the depth of research was not.

Similar results emerged from the examination of JMCE. From the initial search using “academic dishonesty” within the SAGE Premier platform, only eight results emerged with one being removed due to being a book review. Using a Boolean search with “cheating” and “ethics” doubled the JMCE articles to 14 once five unrelated items were removed. Through the emergent content analysis, these articles covered a range of topics, but very few did more than a surface-level analysis of the topic.

Academic Dishonesty in JMCE’s First 75 Years

Academic dishonesty is a complex construct that academics have not clearly defined, much less developed a rigorous research agenda around. Although recent research used scales from McCabe and Trevino as inspiration, these have not pervaded academic dishonesty research. Looking at the emergent analysis results, there were topics that were examined more than others, including plagiarism, lying about assignments, and use of technology in cheating schemes. Other topics were found in one or two studies addressing topics, such as classroom activities and working with graduate students conducting research. The volume of work on academic dishonesty is growing as is the range of topics covered by this umbrella term. While this work has been significant exploratory work, it is all too often very narrowly defined.

For example, plagiarism was the largest focal point in mass media literature. Of the fields that fall under mass media (e.g., advertising, public relations, and journalism), authors only wrote plagiarism as it pertains to the journalism assignments or news stories. Little was noted in JMCE about plagiarism issues as they pertain to content of news releases and advertising copy from public relations and advertising. Further complicating our understanding of plagiarism, there were no articles devoted to academic dishonesty with the use of photography or other images, information found in social media posts or comments that could be used as original ideas without attribution, use of music and lyrics, or other easily obtained material from the internet.

Need for Revised Measurement Scales and Operationalization

With increased exploratory work on academic dishonesty, academics should revisit the work of McCabe and Trevino (1996) and refine these initial academic dishonesty scales. Shipley (2009) and Auger (2013) used these scales in their works on journalism and public relations, respectively. They note that while the scales are helpful, they are somewhat limited in their application due to how the nature of academic dishonesty is presented. Solomon (2018) argues that academic dishonesty is difficult to create lasting definitions due to changing norms and student expectations based on technological evolution. Wagler (2019) asks whether students watching online lectures together and discussing content/assignments constitute academic dishonesty when students are expected to take the classes individually; however, given that similar discussions exist in physical class settings, it is difficult to say confidently whether this behavior is questionable. These types of situations need to be addressed through continued refinement of scales and research to define academic dishonesty so that there can be greater clarification and understanding of what behaviors are forbidden in the classroom.

Research on student perceptions of academic dishonesty behaviors as well as their motivations for engaging in these behaviors has been explored more than what defines academic dishonesty. Scholars need to operationalize this construct so that a research agenda for the discipline can be developed more robustly.

Academic Dishonesty Is Primarily Student Focused Rather Than Educator Focused

According to our research, academic dishonesty is viewed almost entirely as a student-focused behavior with classroom consequences. JMCE has had a stronger examination of faculty’s questionable behavior; however, the handful of articles that include this perspective mostly have come from editorials on improving the state of higher education. In addition to perceptions of what constitutes academically dishonest behaviors, researchers have also explored what students consider appropriate consequences for engaging in those behaviors. Students have even had their personality traits linked to inclination to cheat or plagiarize. The state of academic dishonesty research has presented a one-sided discussion. Very few scholars have looked at the journalism academy to gauge its understanding or perceptions of academic dishonesty.

Schiff and Ryan (1996) surveyed AEJMC members to gauge their perceptions and participation in questionable activities when advising students’ theses and dissertations, but researchers have not examined academics’ views on what they consider to be academic dishonesty. Ethics and education scholars have found great disagreement over what constitutes academic dishonesty (Pincus & Schmelkin, 2003). The lack of clarity creates an environment where academic dishonesty thrives, particularly when faculty are not regularly provided updated information at conferences or in academic journals. Academics need proper education on the topic so they can mentor and prepare graduate students on how to manage classrooms and be on the lookout for academic dishonesty (Parsons, 2003). McCabe et al. (2006) argue current faculty may need guidance from administrators on how to manage these situations before they are able to mentor graduate students due to lack of clear boundaries.

Educating the Whole Person

Finally, because academic dishonesty is largely presented in the language of plagiarism and assignments, students miss out on greater connections to industry-specific discussions. The most common presentation of dishonesty centered on plagiarism in classroom assignments. Given continued media scandals from the 1980s (e.g., Janet Cooke at Washington Post), 1990s (e.g., Stephen Glass at the New Republic), and the 2000s (e.g., Jayson Blair at the New York Times), academics should move beyond discussions of classroom cheating to make connections to the consequences of professional dishonesty in the workplace.

Karassavidou and Glaveli (2006) found an interrelationship of internalized codes of ethics, academic dishonesty, and unethical behavior in workplace scenarios. It is important for educators to understand what academic behaviors are most egregious and clearly tie those behaviors to personal ethics and integrity and the importance of ethics in the workplace.

For example, all mass communication fields need to further explore academic dishonesty as it pertains to industry-specific work. Advertising, public relations, health communication, and political communication all actively are involved with developing and publishing content for stakeholders. That content is filled with questions worthy of examination through an academic dishonesty/professional dishonesty lens. For example, how much work can be recycled from one piece to the next, especially when standard boilerplates are used for news releases? Is it acceptable for organizations publishing white papers to use their own material verbatim in multiple pieces if it is for different audiences? These questions are central to questionable behaviors outlined in the JMCE and CMMC journals that have yet to really be examined.

Conclusion

Admittedly, our understanding of academic dishonesty has only scratched the surface. Scholars in business ethics have shown linkages between a student’s willingness to engage in academic dishonesty and professional dishonesty, regardless of the existence of honor codes or code of professional conduct. Based on this emergent content analysis of articles and operational definitions used by JMCE and CMMC scholars, we have a long way to go to define the construct and discuss why students should adhere to the principles of honor and ethical codes not only while in school but also in professional practice. Establishing a clearly defined research agenda that can benefit from reliable, valid scales by a community of scholars is one of the first clear steps that needs to be taken to deepen our understanding of academic dishonesty.

While our research suffered from several limitations including a limited number of articles that emerged using our search terms and the inclusion of several research articles that tangentially connected to the topic rather than truly delving into examining academic dishonesty, the work here provides an important benchmark for future examinations of the topic and a framework for examining all aspects of academic dishonesty—research, teaching, and any other formal academic exercise. The eight categories outlined by the National Honor Society represent a more encompassing perspective on the topic than any of the singular articles examined in either JMCE or the CMMC database. We hope that scholars will act on these results and pursue a research agenda that more comprehensively defines academic dishonesty across journalism school disciplines. With a more unified operationalization that can withstand technological advances, we can better explore the motivations and pressures that students face in coursework as well as understanding to what extent faculty are concerned with academic dishonesty. Management of these instances and how it is handled by faculty, students, and administrators would provide greater insights as to how this topic can best be addressed in developing clearly understood policies that engender educating the whole personas with strong moral reasoning and integrity.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material, JMCE75th_AppendixA - An Analysis of Discussions on Academic Dishonesty in Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, Volumes 1 Through 74

Supplemental Material, JMCE75th_AppendixA for An Analysis of Discussions on Academic Dishonesty in Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, Volumes 1 Through 74 by Giselle A. Auger and Richard D. Waters in Journalism & Mass Communication Educator

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

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