Peer Influence, Procrastination and Educational Anxiety Contribute to Academic Dishonesty in Malaysian University
Students
Aidil Hanafi Amirrudin1*, Suraiya Ibrahim1, Nurshahirah Salehuddin1, Intan Maizura Abd Rashid2
1 Faculty of Science and Human Applied, Universiti Malaysia Perlis, Perlis, Malaysia
2 Faculty of Business and Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Melaka, Malaysia
*Corresponding Author: [email protected] Accepted: 15 June 2022 | Published: 30 June 2022
DOI:https://doi.org/10.55057/ajress.2022.4.2.9
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Abstract: Educational topics have been increasingly common in the mass media in recent years. There are a few individuals who engage in dishonest academic activity. Furthermore, students' poor behaviour has tarnished the image of the country's educational institutions.
These troublesome individuals' behaviour is tough to regulate and has resulted in academic dishonesty. Academic dishonesty is a violation of the academic community's dignity. Even though specific actions of suffering have been committed, academic dishonesty continues to be prevalent among university and high school students. This study aimed to discover and investigate the association between academic dishonesty and peer influence, procrastination, and education anxiety. A minimum of 370 surveys to all students at Universiti Malaysia Perlis (UNIMAP) has been sent. SPSS was used to assess the data collected for this investigation.
The findings indicate that academic dishonesty is positively connected with all variables examined, including peer influence, procrastination, and educational anxiety.
Keywords: Academic dishonesty; Peer Influence; Procrastination; Educational Anxiety _________________________________________________________________________
1. Introduction
Education is getting more challenging as innovations simplify the teaching and learning process. Following the expansion of modernism in higher education, a new issue arose when so-called academic dishonesty became prevalent. Additionally, Malaysia's educational system should be more straightforward to produce educated citizens in the future. (Sarita &
Dahiya, 2015). It is an obligation to educate the community and develop a self-assured spiritual attitude. Throughout many countries, academic dishonesty is not a strange thing anymore. Academic dishonesty is a student's use of illegal help to deceive an educator or any person designated to evaluate the student's work in achieving the course and degree requirements. Academic cheating may take various forms, including sharing work, purchasing a term paper or exam in advance, or paying another person to complete our job (Sarita &
Dahiya, 2015). Students are required to be aware of, comprehend, and adhere to the university's ethical standards but may engage in illegal or dishonest behaviour during their studies.
Additionally, it is a student's responsibility to report dishonest behaviour to higher authorities.
Previous research reveals that student misbehaviour is a substantial concern at all levels of education worldwide (Sarita & Dahiya, 2015). With the number of academic establishments in
the private and public sectors increasing daily, it is critical to examine the impact of dishonest education conduct on prospective employees' lives and develop practical strategies to mitigate such fraudulent activities in the corporate and educational sectors.
Academically dishonest students frequently demonstrate the same unethical and dishonest behaviours in the job as they did throughout their schooling. Therefore, academic institutions must understand the elements that influence a student's decision to commit academic dishonesty to prevent it from occurring. Fraud is perhaps one of the most serious issues confronting the school since it poses a considerable impediment to student development. For instance, if a candidate is ineligible for an academic course, this may be considered dishonest and inappropriate. Furthermore, if pupils seek to cheat, their educational activities will not include the right (valid) information about their knowledge and expertise. Although most studies on academic dishonesty have focused on individual characteristics and motivational elements, other scholars have examined a variety of aspects associated with academic dishonesty.
2. Research Objective
This study aims to examine the factors that contribute to academic dishonesty among university students. Additionally, this study will determine whether peer influence, procrastination, and educational worry all contribute to academic dishonesty.
3. Literature Review
3.1 Academic Dishonesty
According to Sarita and Dahiya (2015), academic cheating is defined as disguising someone else's work as your own. Cheating is a term that refers to the act of replicating one of the kinds of cheating that has become a significant source of worry for other students' educational institutions during examinations (Sarita & Dahiya, 2015). On the other hand, technical advancements make fraud simpler to commit and more complicated to detect; it makes academic dishonesty manifest itself in various ways, including exam fraud, plagiarism, and unethical cooperation (Ellahi et al., 2013). Along with increased academic dishonesty on college campuses, cheating tactics have gotten more sophisticated (Diego, 2017).
Over the last two decades, academic dishonesty has been a significant source of concern in higher education. The issue of students' dishonest behaviour at the higher education levels has become increasingly severe, mainly when students appear to engage in the same behaviours at their place of employment (Bashir & Bala, 2018). Moreover, the problem becomes more severe as the number of educational institutions in the private sector grows daily. As a result, the impact of unethical academic conduct on the lives of future workers must be carefully studied, and appropriate measures must be implemented to reduce such dishonest activity in the corporate and educational sectors (Bashir & Bala, 2018).
3.2 Peer Influence
Peer influence is defined as an act whereby an individual chooses to do something they would not normally do in order to feel liked and appreciated by their friends (Sarita and Dahiya, 2015).
The stage of adolescents is experiencing a period of intense peer control and peer pressure (Diego, 2017). Therefore, the accomplishments of their social group may also impact peers, and it becomes more severe if they see academic dishonesty among their colleagues, they are more inclined to commit academic dishonesty themselves (Sarita & Dahiya, 2015). While most
students realize that cheating is against the law, they also seek information from their peers regarding their schools' prevalent behaviours and attitudes (Sarita & Dahiya, 2015).
Additionally, the notion that numerous other students cheat and that some feel cheating is permissible might result from social pressure to cheat (Chuang et al., 2016).
Assuming that peer pressure is the best determinant of cheating reduces an organization's cheating capacity. Simultaneously, it means that management will leverage peer group influence in devising new measures to reduce abuse and bribery. For instance, students should participate in the development of good moral values. According to Costley (2019), there is a correlation between students' perceptions about their peers' cheating activity and their likelihood of engaging in dishonest behaviour. They saw that individuals were less likely to steal on the presumption that their peers were opposed to intellectual dishonesty. This resulted in their discovery that peer feedback is the most significant predictor of behavioural changes associated with cheating (Bashir & Singh, 2018). Therefore, peer influences can substantially impact how students rationalize academic dishonesty. Peer activities and behaviours serve as a channel via which students make academic delinquency judgments (Costley, 2019).
3.3 Procrastination
Procrastination is described as an excessive delay in initiating or completing crucial actions, which is typically accompanied by feelings of failure and tension (Bendezu et al., 2020). It was observed that it began in high school and persisted throughout college, with more than half of students demonstrating a chronic and worrying delay (Svartdal, 2017). Nonetheless, it's worth mentioning that the proclivity for continually postponing labour has concerning relationships with age and academic degree. It was originally believed to be inversely proportional to age, as younger children were reported to waste more time than older ones (Svartdal, 2017).
However, in recent years, as procrastination has diminished in secondary and university education, it has been positively connected with academic performance (Bendezu et al., 2020).
On the other hand, procrastination is a major issue in the academic world. It is more emphatically stated as harmful, dangerous, and dumb, and over 95% of procrastinators make an endeavour to minimize it (Svartdal, 2017). Additionally, several researchers have demonstrated the consequence of procrastination, and it is frequently substandard (Svartdal, 2017). Regrettably, despite several notable articles, little is known about the elements that contribute to procrastination in such a widespread and sometimes hazardous occurrence (Svartdal, 2017). While realistic and scientific research has established a link between procrastination and disastrous outcomes, experts noted that procrastination may have some short-term advantages. For instance, Ahmad (2019) discovered that procrastinators experience less anxiety and have better physical health when deadlines are a long way off. Procrastination can be used to control unpleasant emotions in this case, momentarily reducing the individual's pain (Ahmad, 2019).
3.4 Educational Anxiety
Educational anxiety is a kind of anxiety that combines social and intellectual worry (Sarita &
Dahiya, 2015). Adolescents face several issues associated with education, such as pressure from parents and schools to get high test results, which has increased students' stress levels. A student is always striving to be first, and in order to do so, therefore they employ unethical measures. Students understand that cheating is immoral, but they believe that the most essential thing they can do is earn the grades, by whatever means necessary. Indeed, most of the research on academic dishonesty has focused on revealing the psychological underpinnings of students'
cheating behaviours. Significantly associated with cheating include, among other things, test anxiety, impulsivity, intellect, self-esteem, locus of control, social desirability, and guilt.
4. Research Framework
As shown in figure 1, the research framework enables the researcher to view the study variables more clearly, including the relationship between the independent and dependent variables.
Frequently, the system reflects on human behaviour, which may affect intellectual dishonesty.
For example, peer influence, procrastination, and educational anxiety are independent factors.
Figure 1: Research Framework
5. Research Methodology
This study chose quantitative techniques over qualitative methods because they are more practical for use by the larger groups affected by the investigation. Qualitative methods, on the other hand, would need limited surveys and time-consuming interviews. In terms of respondent demographic, this study picked students presently enrolled at Perlis University of Malaysia (UNIMAP) as the project's focal population. On the other side, this study uses the krejcie and morgan table to compute the responder count. Therefore, this research was able to elicit data from 370 respondents, which served as an adequate sample size for this analysis.
6. Finding
6.1 Demographic Analysis
The following demographic characteristics of respondents were examined gender, age, race, year of studies, and current CGPA. According to the data, there were more female respondents than male respondents among the 370 respondents. (60%) of responders are female, while (40%) are male. In terms of age, the majority of respondents are between the ages of 21 and 23, accounting for (60.8 %), while the least number of respondents are beyond the age of 27, accounting for (1.6%). Additionally, the majority of respondents are Malay (50%), followed by Chinese (30%), Indian (17.6%), and other races (2.4%). Following that, in terms of year of studies, third-year students have the largest proportion (50%) followed by second-and fourth- year students that have the same percentage (20%) and first-year students that have the lowest percentage (10%). As for the current CGPA, 2.76 – 3.00 CGPA have (30%) and the least is Below 2.00 CGPA (0.5%). (Refer to Table 1).
Peer Influence
Procrastination
Educational Anxiety
Academic Dishonesty
Table 1: Respondent Profile
Categories Frequency Percentage%
Gender Male Female
148 222
40 60 Age
18 – 20 21 – 23 24 -26 Above 27
44 225
95 6
11.9 60.8 25.7 1.6 Race
Malay Chinese Indian Other
185 111 65
9
50 30 17.6
2.4 Year of Studies
First Year Second Year Third Year Fourth Year
37 74 185
74
10 20 50 20 Current CGPA
Below 2.00 2.01 – 2. 50 2.51 – 2.75 2.76 – 3.00 3.01 – 3.50 Above 3.51
2 72 74 111 108 3
0.5 19.5 20.0 30.0 29.2 0.8
6.2 Reliability Analysis
Cronbach's Alpha was used to compare the stability of the construct-measurement items in this study. As a result, a high Cronbach's Alpha coefficient for construct-related items shows a high degree of consistency and a high proclivity to assess the construct. Cronbach alpha levels less than 0.60 are deemed unsatisfactory but the values between 0.70 and 0.80 are considered acceptable, and values between 0.80 and 0.90 are considered quite acceptable (DeVellis,1991).
According to Table 2, the Cronbach's Alpha values for peer influence, procrastination, educational anxiety, and academic anxiety are 0.826, 0.904, 0.810, and 0.760, respectively, indicating that the study's questions assess independent and dependent variables are reliable.
Table 2: Reliability Result
Categories Cronbach’s Alpha
Peer Influence 0.826
Procrastination 0.904
Educational Anxiety 0.810
Academic Dishonesty 0.760
6.3 Regression Analysis
According to Table 3, the p-values for all independent variables (Peer Influence, Procrastination, and Educational Anxiety) are 0.000, which is less than the 0.05 standard. The outcome supports the study's findings, suggesting that each independent variable (Peer Influence, Procrastination, and Educational Anxiety) has a significant effect on academic
dishonesty. On the other hand, the correlation coefficient indicates a t-value of -6.726 for the relationship between procrastination and academic dishonesty, indicating a negative correlation between the two variables, indicating that both variables have a reasonable and inverse relationship, that is, the more success or failure is attributed towards academic dishonesty, the less tendency to procrastinate exists.
Table 3: Regression Result
Categories
Beta
(β) Standard Deviation
(SD)
t - values p - values
Peer Influence 0.445 0.043 6.413 .000
Procrastination -0.565 0.049 -6.726 .000
Educational Anxiety 0.963 0.048 21.148 .000
7. Discussion
The study must begin by framing accepted and rejected hypotheses. Each section should describe the preceding analysis's objective. The subject that must be recognised is peer influence, procrastination, and educational anxiety. This article makes an attempt to ascertain the factors that may have contributed to academic dishonesty.
The first purpose is to ascertain the extent to which peer influence contributes to academic dishonesty. Negative peer pressure is likely to induce students to engage in academic dishonesty. Not only are they capable of doing so, but the impact of peer influence also lingers with pupils until they enter the job world. Being a student at a university is not an easy challenge. Students will be exposed to a greater variety of things, including challenging assignments. Therefore, Students received experience in a more difficult environment as a result of their experience. As a result, students must be perceptive and resistant to peer pressure in order to be successful learners.
The second purpose is to ascertain the extent to which academic dishonesty and procrastination have an effect. Researchers may conclude from this data that procrastination has a significant contributor to academic dishonesty among university students. This is not an appropriate exercise for pupils to practise learning. Procrastination is bad conduct that may be dangerous if repeated. Numerous prior researches indicated that procrastination happens on a constant basis regardless of age or gender. According to the data collected, the majority of respondents concur that procrastination is a factor that contributes to academic dishonesty. Each task must be completed within the time frame stated. From a student’s perspective, it is their responsibility to complete any task as efficiently based on the due date. However, some students continue to procrastinate despite their knowledge that it is improper.
Finally, the aim of this study is to examine the relationship between educational anxiety and academic dishonesty. The problem arises when academic success is rather prevalent among students. Academic success is critical to a student's capacity to lead a successful life. However, some schools need students to attain academic success in order to advance in life. Encourage young people to excel academically and discourage them from academic dishonesty. Students who are pressed for time are more prone to commit acts of dishonesty. Anxiety in the classroom can manifest itself in a variety of ways. This is because adolescents are subjected to considerable pressure from a variety of sources, including their parents, their school, and their community. Students had educational anxiety as a result of external pressures, and some
students developed mental diseases like depression. Academic achievement alone does not ensure a pleasant life following graduation. As a result, students do not need to worry which contributes to educational anxiety, which may lead to academic dishonesty.
8. Conclusion
The current study has aided in the knowledge of academic dishonesty in Malaysian universities.
Academic dishonesty has developed significantly in recent years in Malaysia, owing to intense rivalry among students. Three critical criteria were picked to guide the entire study in this work.
This research accomplished its primary purpose of establishing that peer pressure, procrastination, and educational anxiety have a major effect on academic dishonesty among students. Following this research, the ministry of education may place a high value on those factors and continue strengthening Malaysia's education system. Future researchers may completely utilise the knowledge gained from this study to create reference materials. Thus, this research provides a more complete picture of the factors that impact academic dishonesty among Malaysian university students.
Reference
Ahmad, Z. (2019). Relationship Between Procrastination, Job Performance and Mindfulness in Male and Female Employees: A Mediating Model. European Online Journal of Natural and Social Sciences, 8(3), Pp-535.
Bashir, H, & Singh, K. (2018). Role of Personality Hardiness and Peer Influence on Academic Dishonesty Among College Students.
Bashir, H., & Bala, R. (2018). Development And Validation of Academic Dishonesty Scale (ADS): Presenting A Multidimensional Scale. International Journal of Instruction, 11(2), 57-74.
Chuang, Y. R., Voss, A., & Wu, D. (2016). Differences In Perceptions of Cheating Between College Students and Professors.
Costley, J. (2019). Student Perceptions of Academic Dishonesty at A Cyber-University In South Korea. Journal Of Academic Ethics, 17(2), 205-217.
Devellis, R. F., Blalock, S. J., Holt, K., Renner, B. R., Blanchard, L. W., & Klotz, M. L. (1991).
Arthritis Patients' Reactions to Unavoidable Social Comparisons. Personality And Social Psychology Bulletin, 17(4), 392-399.
Diego, L. A. B. (2017). Friends with Benefits: Causes and Effects of Learners' Cheating Practices during Examination. IAFOR Journal of Education, 5(2), 121-138.
Ellahi, A., Mushtaq, R., & Khan, M. B. (2013). Multi Campus Investigation of Academic Dishonesty In Higher Education of Pakistan. International Journal of Educational Management.
Sarita, R. D. (2015). Academic Cheating Among Students: Pressure of Parents And Teachers. International Journal of Applied Research, 1(10), 793-797.
Svartdal, F. (2017). Measuring Procrastination: Psychometric Properties of The Norwegian Versions of The Irrational Procrastination Scale (IPS) and The Pure Procrastination Scale (PPS). Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 61(1), 18-30.
Quispe-Bendezu, L. E., Araujo-Castillo, R. L., García-Tejada, J. E., García-Tejada, Y., Sprock, A. S., & Villalba-Condori, K. O. (2020). Relationship Between Academic Procrastination and Attributions of Achievement Motivation. International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research, 19(1), 188-205.
