Academic dishonesty among health science school students.

ACADEMIC achievement; STUDENT cheating; STATISTICAL correlation; DIETITIANS; EDUCATION research; ETHICS; HEALTH occupations schools; HEALTH occupations students; RESEARCH methodology; MEDICAL education; MIDWIVES; NURSING students; PROBABILITY theory; SCALE analysis (Psychology); STATISTICS; DATA analysis; SOCIOECONOMIC factors; EDUCATIONAL attainment; CROSS-sectional method; DATA analysis software; DESCRIPTIVE statistics; KRUSKAL-Wallis Test; ONE-way analysis of variance

Background: Academic dishonesty has become a serious problem at institutions of higher learning. Research question: What is the frequency of academic dishonesty and what factors affect the tendency of dishonesty among Turkish health science school students? Research design: This descriptive and cross-sectional study aims to evaluate academic dishonesty among university nursing, midwifery, and dietetic students. Participants and research context: The study sample consisted of 499 health science students in Turkey. The tendency toward academic dishonesty was investigated using the Academic Dishonesty Tendency Scale. Ethical considerations: Institutional review board approved the study. Written permission was obtained from the researcher to use Turkish version of the Academic Dishonesty Tendency Scale. Findings: Of all the students, 80.0% claimed to refer to Internet during homework preparation and 49.1% of students reported to cite the references at the end of article on some instances. Of the students, 56.1% claimed never to have cheated in the exams. It was found that academic dishonesty was partly low (1.80–2.59) in students. For students using a library while doing their homework, mean scores were significantly lower (p < 0.05). There were also statistically significant difference between mean scores and student’s year in school, student’s perception of school success, and frequency of Internet use while doing homework (p < 0.05). Discussion: The tendency of academic dishonesty was lower among students who use Internet and library more frequently. These findings are consistent with previous studies. Conclusion: Measurements to take against academic dishonesty should be directed toward not only students but institutions and instructors as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]