Disciplinary action for academic dishonesty: does the student’s gender matter?

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify if gender differences exist with respect to conviction of university students for academic dishonesty. To investigate this phenomenon, data from the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education (SNAHE) and from disciplinary boards of several Swedish universities were evaluated from a gender perspective. To identify whether the penalty severity for academic dishonesty is gender biased, the ratio of suspensions/warnings for male and female students was calculated. It was identified that female students are less prevalent in disciplinary matters and that there was no systematic gender bias in penalty severities (warnings or suspensions). In addition, female students deny academic dishonest behaviors more than male students, indicating a possibly higher false conviction rate.

The Role of Gender When Faculty Members Assign Consequences for Academic Dishonesty

“…The behaviors listed from lesser to greater offenses are as follows: cheat sheets, unauthorized collaboration, plagiarism, forging documents, disruptive behavior, and sexual/ethnic harassment. The most frequently reported form of academic misconduct was plagiarism and fabrication, and the least was sexual/ethnic harassment (Witmer & Johansson, ).…”

“…Based on these statistics and self‐reports on academic dishonesty behavior, it was found that female students were less represented in disciplinary matters. Furthermore, there was no systematic gender bias in the severity of penalties whether it be warnings or suspensions (Witmer & Johansson, ).…”

“…In comparison to the average suspension time for plagiarism (HSV, 2006), this is a comparatively short time period. Even if both of these cases have untypical features (in the first case, the male is freed and the female is convicted for apparently the same infraction; in the second case, the suspension is uncommonly short, they are consistent with the conclusion of Witmer and Johansson's study (). They are presented to illustrate this but also to demonstrate that cases can differ a lot.…”

“…These examples are consistent with the study's overall findings that the severity of the infraction, not the gender of the student, was the determinant for the discipline assigned by the faculty. Furthermore, categorization of statements from sentenced students indicated that female students do not admit to academic dishonesty to the same extent as male students (Witmer & Johansson, ).…”

An investigation on Turkish EFL Majoring Students’ Unethical Behaviors

“…Plagiarism and other practices of academic misconduct constitute a growing problem as these actions spoil the coherence of educational process and probably debilitate the reliability of educational programs (Witmer & Johansson, 2015). At this point, a significant number of studies have provided considerable advice on the ways dealing with plagiarism regarding educative, preventative and punitive precautions (Beasley, 2004;Bretag & Mahmud, 2009;Carroll & Appleton, 2001;Coughlin, 2015;Park, 2003;Sayed & Lento, 2015).…”