Cheating

Cheating

Cheating has seemingly become an everyday phenomenon in exam

situations at most of Hungarian universities. Almost every student prepares

for the examinations making handy little bits of paper, contemplating on

where to sit and, during the exam itself, the most sophisticated even use

their mobile phones to surmount the numerous gaps in their knowledge. Day

after day in the exam period stories such as the following circulate in the

corridors of the School of English and American Studies, as well as other

faculties of ELTE and oother universities in our country. It may seem

surprising, but the story is not fiction, in fact, a student at ELTE told

it to HVG last year. ‘I always elaborate on all the possible topics at home

and write them down on A/4 sheets of paper. My special ‘examination suit’

has an A/4 size pocket. I always put the sheets into it, and, at the

examination I wait until the topic of the essay is given out, then pick the

right sheet in my pocket, and hhand that one in.’ 2.1. Research Questions Is

cheating really such an everyday phenomenon as it appears to be? Is

cheating so easy to manage? What about morals? 3.1. Theoretical Background

Brown, Earlam and Race reported in their practical handbook for teachers

that ‘Sitting wwritten exams is one of the most stressful parts of life for

many pupils’ (p. 44). The book also suggests that if candidates get away

with cheating, it is going to be regarded as the teacher’s fault. Most

teachers feel uncomfortable when encountering cheating and they do not

think it is their task to prevent pupils from doing it. At least, they try

to minimise the possibilities by telling students to leave their bags

someplace far from the desks, and before starting the exam they are

reminded to double check that they have nothing on their person that could

be interpreted as a crib (Brown, Earlam & Race, 1995, p. 44). But there are

always a few who take the risk. ‘Better safe than sorry!’ – say students

afraid of nnot knowing one single answer to the exam questions. This is why

they invented their own means, the ‘illicit aid’, as termed by teachers:

the cheat-sheet. Students know hundreds of methods to avoid spending long

hours preparing for examinations and tests. Of these, everyone can choose

the one which best suits his cheating skills and of course the aim.

Cheating, in general, begins at senior primary school. The most widespread

methods at this age are hiding small bits of paper (which contain all

relevant information) in their ppockets, under the question sheet or into

their pencil cases, and writing things on their palms. The creation of the

small sheets is quite time (and patience-) –consuming as kids do not use

computers to design these pieces. Writing on one’s hands is risky as there

is no way to remove the text when the teacher approaches suspiciously. As

you can see now, these methods are quite elementary, easy to discover and,

in fact, mostly done to amaze classmates rather than instead of learning.

The next age group, 14-18 years old, uses more sophisticated methods.

Modern technology is often of great help to the secondary school student:

the computer edited A4 page can be reproduced on a much smaller scale.

Experts on the topic say that the smallest font legible to the students’

eyes is the 3 pt size. The laziest do not bother with typing, they simply

photocopy the book at about 8 pages / A4 rate and cut the pages apart.

University students prefer the ‘previously-written-essay method’, which is

often much more dangerous than the others, that is why they use those as

well. Everyone tries cheating once. After that, he decides whether it is

worth it or not (Réka & Bunny, 1999). In September 1996 a research was

carried out at the University of EEconomics (BKE), Budapest for personal

purposes under the co-ordination of G. Vass (personal consultation, March

3, 2000). A small group was interested in students’ opinion about honesty.

Similar to us, the research group used a questionnaire as a measuring

instrument, which had, beside 45 others, 5 questions about cheating at

university examinations. They asked about 100 participants from different

faculties to fill the questionnaire. However astonishing the results were,

the research has not been published in any way. The first two questions on

the topic had four possible answers: ‘Always’, ‘Often’, ‘Sometimes’ and

‘Never’. The first question concerning cheating was the most obvious one,

‘Do you cheat in exam situations?’. The results showed that the vast

majority of the participants were ‘regular cheaters’, in fact, 12% said

‘Always’, 53.5% ‘Often’, 26% ‘Sometimes’ and a strikingly low 6.5%

proportion said ‘Never’. It must be noted, though, that cheating was

defined as ‘making use of any source of information apart from the

student’s own mind’. The second question of their questionnaire was ‘Do you

get caught cheating?’. The answers partly explain the results of the first

question. Most of the students never get caught, the risks are minimal, ‘So

why not?’ – said youths at the University of Economics – ‘It’s much more

convenient than learning.’. Table 1.a – Questions and rresults of the 1996

research at BKE Question Always Often Sometimes Never Do you cheat in exam

situations? 12% 53.5% 26% 6.5% Do you get caught cheating? 0% 5% 18% 77%

The following three were Yes/No questions focused on the fact that cheating

is something dishonest, something that should not be done, a fact which

they ought to be aware of. They were, as it was clearly shown by the

answers to the questions ‘Can you be proud of a mark which is the result of

cheating?’, ‘Do you feel uncomfortable when cheating?’ and ‘Would you say

that cheating is a ‘normal’ way of passing exams?’ (The answers given to

these questions are summarised in Table 1.b below.) Table 1.b – More

questions and results of the 1996 survey at BKE Question Yes No Can you be

proud of a mark which is the result of cheating? 8% 82% Do you feel

uncomfortable when cheating? 62% 38% Would you say that cheating is a

‘normal’ way of passing exams? 27% 73% The overall conclusion of this

survey was that students at the University of Economics are not as honest

as one would expect educated people to be but they are at least aware of

it. Another fact may be of some significance concerning the topic of

our

research. It is the fact that Western European and U.S. Universities are

not experiencing the problem of cheating as a problem at all. Of course,

their students do cheat sometimes, but so few of them and so seldom that it

cannot be considered ‘general’. A quick survey of only one simple question

shows that, for example, at the Utrecht University only 3 out of 50

students would risk cheating at an exam (personal consultation with Tobias

Kulka, March 6, 2000). Much the same is the situation aat the Massachusetts

Institute of Technology (MIT). Of the 20 students asked only one person

answered that he does cheat sometimes at examinations (personal

consultation with Sarah Thomson, March 2, 2000). Unfortunately, the

question ‘How can you manage so well without cheating?’ was not asked

either in Utrecht or in Massachusetts – in fact, Hungarian students might

have made good use of the answers for that. 4. Method 4.1. Participants As

our research group was interested in the opinions of students as well as

teachers, so there were ttwo target groups of the survey. On the on hand,

the students at ELTE – SEAS irrespective of what year they are or whether

they are students at the Dept. of American Studies, the Centre for English

Teacher Training or the Dept. of EEnglish Studies. On the other hand, there

were the teachers at these departments. The only criterion was that every

participant should have taken part in some examination at SEAS. All in all,

40 people took part in the survey, 12 teachers and 28 students. It is a

relatively low proportion of the total number of teachers and students;

therefore it cannot be considered a representative research. 4.2. Measuring

Instrument As a measuring instrument our research group chose the

questionnaire. Some features of this instrument are of great importance

when dealing with a question of such great nicety as the one when a person

has to provide information about his own uprightness. One of these features

is anonymity, which obviously facilitates being sincere, and another one is

the time factor. Using a qquestionnaire requires much less time than any

other method in research. More people can answer the questions at a time,

and participants can take their time answering the questions. If someone

wants to, he can take the questionnaire home to fill it at a later time and

then give it back. This also promotes honesty: it is always easier to be

honest when nobody is paying attention. An interviewee asking the same

questions in person would have resulted in completely different results, as

participants would have answered aaffected by public opinion. Two

questionnaires were used for data collection; both are included in the

Appendix section. The two variants, the Students’ Questionnaire and the

Teachers’ Questionnaire share many features. In fact, the only difference

between the two is that four questions that do not refer to teachers were

left out and replaced by others. Both versions consist of ten questions.

Four of them are yes/no items including sometimes an ‘I cannot decide’

option; there are some questions referring to frequency or proportion, and

one multiple-choice question. The last item of both variants is an open-

ended question where a short (five-line) answer was expected but, in fact,

only 3 of the participants answered that one. Apart from this drawback,

choosing the questionnaire as our measuring instrument was a good choice.

(See Appendix A & B for the two questionnaires.) 4.3. Procedures of data

collection We began data collection with the students. They were all very

helpful and enthusiastic; no one refused filling in the questionnaire

because, as one of them told us afterwards, ‘it took only about five

minutes and when I saw the topic I got curious’. It took only two days to

collect the 28 questionnaires. The situation with teachers was quite

different. It was rather difficult to find them and they were not aas

helpful as students. I cannot believe that they do not have five minutes to

fill in such a questionnaire. Most of them were mannerly, though, they took

one and promised to bring it back later. But this way out of the 20

questionnaires we distributed we got only two back. We managed to collect

the other 10 by standing beside them while they filled it. It was rather

surprising that generally about 15% of the teachers had the willingness to

help us in this research. 4.4. Procedures of data analysis Apart from

summarising the collected data and reckoning the percentages, there were

some interesting results that we further analysed. In some cases teachers’

and students’ general opinion was much the same, in others they were in

contrast. These cases required further analysis, the results of which shall

be discussed in the next chapter. 5. Results and discussion 5.1. What is

cheating? Why do students do it? Question 1. – How detailed is the material

students have to learn for a SEAS examination? One participant told us, ‘I

only cheat when the material is too detailed. Dates and other small details

are rather hard to memorise and quite easy to confuse. Stress mixes me up.’

The aim of the first question was to find out whether the sstudents think

they have the argument ‘material is too detailed’ as a bogus excuse for

cheating. The teachers’ questionnaire included this question as well to

check if there is a contrast between the two opinions. It occurs sometimes

that teachers do not realise how much they overload students; this often

abets cheating. But that does not seem to be the case at the SEAS. In fact,

the responses of the two groups are quite parallel. Most of both students

(68%) and teachers (59%) told us that what students have to learn is ‘quite

detailed’, and only one teacher and three students think the material is

‘very detailed indeed’. The only significant difference between answers’ of

the students that no student chose ‘not detailed at all’ which was the

opinion of only one teacher, and, the answer ‘very detailed indeed’ was

chosen by only 11% of the students and no teacher. (See Diagrams 1/ Student

& 1/ Teacher below.) Question 2. – What is cheating? Everyone thinks about

cheating differently, according to their values. Some consider every little

thing illegal, even ‘looking at the neighbour’s paper’, which I cannot

accept. It is a psychological fact that a person is not able to look in the

same direction for hours. Looking at the neighbour’s paper not always

serves ‘cheating purposes’.

Some argue that it is just a compulsive

movement of the eye because it is not used to situations when part of its

field of sight is visible but should not be focused on. However, this

activity is considered cheating by most participants (77%). The most

controversial result was that more than 60% of the students said ‘asking a

neighbour a question’ is not cheating but taking a look at his sheet is.

‘Using a pre-designed cheat-sheet’ is considered cheating by all

participants. But it is also aa good way of preparing. If one has written a

cheat-sheet he has half learned the material. The rest of the results are

represented in Diagrams 2/ Student and 2/ Teacher below. 5.2. Is cheating

an everyday phenomenon? Question 3 – How many cheat? The third question

referred to the proportion of cheaters at an average written examination.

Exactly it was ‘Imagine a written examination where 100 students take part.

How many of them would you expect to do any of the activities mentioned in

the previous qquestion?’ There were six possible choices: ‘no one’; 0-25; 26-

50; 51-75, 75-99 and ‘all of them’. In this question the teachers were much

more optimistic about the possible proportion of cheaters. The vast

majority estimated the average number of them between 0 aand 25.

Nevertheless, the students’ opinion may be closer to reality as they are

the ones who ‘live’ it. Many of them (43%) said 26-50, but 76-99 was also

estimated by 25%. The other three variations were less frequent. This

difference between the teachers’ and the students’ estimation can be

accounted for in two ways, One possible explanation is that teachers are

naive or they just do not see people cheating; the other is a bit more

complicated. A story about a lucky cheating goes round the corridors of the

building, changes several times. When somebody was not cheating, that is

not a story. Much is heard of cheaters; this might explain why students

think more people are cheating at examinations. (See Diagrams 3/ Student &

3/ Teacher below.) Question 4.a –– How often do YOU cheat? (Included in

Students’ Questionnaire only) In this question we tried to check how

realistic the estimations of students were about the proportions; this

required some mathematics. A student has an average of three written

examinations per semester. Lets say that people who never cheat (I do not

believe such a person exists) cheat on no exam out of the three. The people

who said ‘seldom’ do it once, and those who told us ‘quite often’ do it two

times. Nobody said tthat he always cheats but that is also relative. If 11%

cheats on one exam and 75% on two exams out of three, that means on an

average exam one third of the 11% (which is 3.7%) and two thirds of the 75%

(which is 50%) cheat. That makes a total of 53.7%, which means that the

students were closer to reality when estimating the number, not the

teachers. But this also suggests that the gap between the teachers’

estimations and reality, which is at least 28.5%, are those who cheat

unnoticed. Further analysis reveals that more than half (53%) of the

cheaters remain unnoticed. 5.3. Is it easy to cheat? Question 4.b – When

you were a student, did YOU do any of the activities listed in 2) above?

(Included in Teachers’ Questionnaire only) It seems, according to the

teachers’ answers, that decades ago cheating was a much less common

phenomenon than it is today. Only ‘looking at a neighbours’ paper was

something most students (83%) done. Using pre-designed cheat-sheets was not

a possible method for the students at that time. There was only one teacher

who admitted using one. For the results see Diagram 4.b/ Teacher. Question

5.a – Would YOU do any of the activities listed in 2) above? (Included in

Students’ Questionnaire only) LLooking at the neighbour’s paper is the most

common method which students use. 71% said they would do it when in need.

Asking a neighbour a question is less common, but still many students (60%)

risk it; the third most popular method, which is used by 46%, is the pre-

designed cheat-sheet. This suggests that students consider ‘looking at the

neighbours’ papers’ the least risky. Question 5.b reveals that teachers see

this differently. Question 5.b – Which one of the above could a student

actually do? (Included in Teachers’ Questionnaire only) Teachers estimated

that 92% of students could use a pre-designed cheat-sheet; 83% could look

at the neighbour’s paper and 67% ask a neighbour a question, which means

that students consider some of the methods less risky. Teachers think that

the situation today is best for the cheat-sheets instead of looking at the

neighbour’s paper. Maybe youths should change their methods according to

these results. See diagram 5.b/ Teacher. Question 6.a – Do you think any of

those activities are accepted by teaches in general? (Included in Students’

Questionnaire only) There is a common opinion among students that there are

some teachers who think cheating is the attribute of examinations. In fact,

there are teachers in every school who pretend they have not noticed

anything and students do wwhatever they want to. They do not do anything to

prevent cheating. Question 6. in the Students’ Questionnaire refers to this

problem, and the results are rather interesting. The answers show that

students are still ‘afraid of’ being caught. Only 43% said that there are

some teachers who might accept looking at the neighbour’s paper. More-

evidently-cheating methods have really low percentages such as 7% and 10%.

Consequently, if the students still fear, the situation may not be so bad.

Question 6.b – How often, in exam situations, do you encounter cases when

teachers overlook cheating? (Included in Teachers’ Questionnaire only) The

aim of this question was finding out teachers’ opinion of their colleagues.

Surprisingly, most teachers (59%) claimed that they face such situations

quite often. But, as you will see in question 7. (See diagram 7.b/

Teacher.), only one third of these people admitted doing it ‘quite often’.

It does not seem very likely that they lied about their experience;

instead, they might not have been honest about their own behaviour. (See

diagram 6.b/ Teacher.) Every teacher faces situations when he knows one’s

reasons for cheating and understands them or he simply does not care and

lets students do it. The easy way to account for this is obviously by

saying ‘they cannot cheat me, only themselves’.

Theoretically it is right

but what about morals? This behaviour on the part of the teacher often

results in students thinking cheating is the way. They will never learn it

this is not the method to cope and will go out into ‘real life’ in the

belief that cheating is a normal and accepted way of solving problems.

Question 7.a – How often so students see teachers overlooking cheating?

(Included in Students’ Questionnaire only) It is interesting to note here

that students are rather critical concerning this qquestion. He, who has

once been caught, will remember every other case when someone else is

caught and thinks of the problem differently from others. Most students

(68%) said that teachers are seldom so generous, generally they punish the

cheater instead of ‘not noticing him’. (See Diagram 7.a/ Student.) Question

8. – Why do you think students cheat? Strikingly, answering this question,

all except for two students admitted that ‘They are too lazy to learn

everything for an examination’, which was in fact the opinion of every

teacher. MMany students also chose ‘They have to many examinations’ and

‘They have too much to learn for one particular examination’ but the

majority was honest enough to us and also to themselves that the case is

simpler than anyone would expect it to bbe. Being lazy is not the teachers’

fault; it is something isolated from any other factors, and also maybe the

only thing that depends entirely on the student himself. 5.4. What about

morals? Question 9. – Do you think cheating is sin? It is not surprising

that all teachers, except one, claimed cheating is sin. Students regard

this question differently, which indeed causes some controversy. We argued

in the previous questions that students are generally afraid of getting

caught cheating, which is, psychologically speaking, an indication that

they are aware of its being bad. But if they know it, why then do they say

that it is not sin? Majority of the students say so, as Diagram 9.a/

Student below indicates. 6. Conclusion The aim of this research was to ffind

out how widespread cheating in the School of English and American Studies

is, and what people think about it. We agreed that the main reason for

cheating are the numerous details in the material. Teachers and students

both think that the material students have to learn for a SEAS examination

is ‘quite detailed’, which suggests that quite many people use such illegal

means as a cheat-sheet in exam situations. 6.1. Is cheating so common as it

seems to be? At an average written examination 53.7% of tthe participants

use illicit sources such as the neighbour’s paper, which is almost the same

number as the number of those who ‘often’ cheated at the University of

Economics in 1996. Of the cheaters about 28.5% remains unnoticed every

time. 6.2. Do students find cheating difficult? ‘Looking at the neighbour’s

paper’ or asking him a question are the methods, which the majority of the

students would use in exam situations. According to the teachers, the

methods which a student could actually do are ‘using a pre-designed cheat-

sheet’ and ‘looking at the neighbours’ paper’ rather than the others. There

are students who think some teachers do not mind cheating at their exams.

42% of them consider ‘looking at the neighbours’ paper’ is ‘permitted’ by

many teachers. What is more, 59% of the teachers even admitted that they

sometimes do look over cheating. 6.3. What about morals? In the light of

the results discussed above we can say that most of the students do not

think of cheating as sin, whereas teachers do. But neither group seems to

behave according to their opinions. Teachers, 92% of whom believe that

cheating is sin, sometimes pretend not having seen anything and let

students do it. Students in general do not regard cheating as sin but when

they say that there are tteachers who allow it, they question teachers’ .

The psychology of the situation is obvious: Students do not want to admit

that what they do is wrong, that is why they say it is not sin but they

feel it inside. It is always more comfortable not to accept morals but form

an opposition against the authorities. Students reinforce each other in the

belief that cheating is really ‘not that bad’, inducing this way a false

idea that makes them feel more comfortable while being aware of doing

something they should not do. This way, students and teachers complement

each other; there is no clash of interests in this case. Students want to

minimise their efforts and choose the easier way; teachers want to avoid

conflicts and walk along as if everything were all right.