Factor structure of the attitudes toward cheating scale: An exploratory structural equation modeling analysis
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Factor structure of the attitudes toward cheating scale: An exploratory structural equation modeling analysis Chester Chun Seng Kam 1
&
Ming Tak Hue 2 & Hoi Yan Cheung 1 & Stephen D. Risavy 3
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract Although the attitude of students toward academic cheating has been an important variable in academic misconduct research, few researchers have examined the factor structure of cheating attitudes. The current research analyzed the factor structure of an important scale in this area—the Attitudes toward Cheating (ATC) scale. The findings of the current research revealed a threefactor solution of academic cheating: conservativeness in the cheating accusation, justification of cheating, and perceived immorality of cheating students. In addition, the three factors that were identified were only weakly correlated; meaning that cheating attitudes are multi-faceted. Therefore, the common practice of calculating an overall ATC scale score may not be adequate for fully capturing cheating attitudes. Finally, the current paper serves as an example of how to employ the powerful statistical technique of exploratory structural equation modeling. Keywords Attitudes toward cheating . Exploratory structural equation modeling . Factor analysis . Factor structure . Scale dimensionality . Theory of planned behaviour
The concept of academic cheating has been an ongoing concern in the field of education in part because of the negative effects of cheating on students, schools, and society (Christakis and Christakis 2012; Harding et al. 2004; Rabi et al. 2006; Seipel 2015; Sims 1993). According to the theory of planned behavior (Beck and Ajzen 1991), behavior is directly caused by behavioral intentions, which are caused by attitudes. Applied to academic cheating, the attitude of students toward academic cheating is an important factor in understanding cheating behavior. Previous researchers have conceptualized an attitude as the degree of an individual’s favorable or unfavorable evaluation of a particular behavior (Fishbein and Ajzen 1975; Nonis and Swift 2001). The attitudes of individuals have been found to
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-018-9887-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Chester Chun Seng Kam [email protected] 1
The University of Macau, Taipa, Macau, China
2
The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
3
Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, Canada
influence academic cheating; for example, Lim and See’s study (Lim and See 2001) examined 518 Singapore university students and their attitudes toward cheating in school. Their study utilized 21 items of perceived seriousness of cheating to measure the students’ attitudes and their results demonstrated that the students essentially considered the most serious cheating behavior to be related to taking unauthorized materials to a quiz, a test, or an exam. As another example, Bolin
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