Deshonestidad Académica: Gravedad percibida y Desarrollo de la Escala de Deshonestidad Académica en estudiantes universitarios mexicanos

Abstract

Academic dishonesty has been related to dishonest workplace behaviors, decreased learning, and a bad reputation for academic institutions. For this reasons several questionnaires have been developed to measure it, but only a few studies have reported the factorial structures of their instruments. Similarly, not many research projects have described the correlation between perceived seriousness and the frequency of cheating.  Therefore, the objective of this article is to identify the factorial structure of the Academic Dishonesty Questionnaire (ADQ), and to report the correlation between cheating frequency and perceived seriousness. To fulfill these objectives several students answered the ADQ, and a perceived seriousness scale. Results show that the ADQ has three factors, which include cheating behaviors, like copying and plagiarizing, among many others. Likewise, a negative correlation between the frequency of cheating and perceived seriousness was observed. Therefore, the ADQ is considered to provide a correct estimation of academic dishonesty, and perceived seriousness is likely a relevant factor in the frequency of cheating.