Influence of negative parental attachment styles, self-efficacy and moral competence on academic dishonesty among undergraduates in Selangor, Malaysia
Academic dishonesty is a rising trend in the current academic world, especially in tertiary education levels. Undergraduates will resort to cheating for the sake of their CGPA, to maintain their scholarship or to even secure their work opportunity upon graduation. The objec...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2019
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/84521/1/FEM%202019%2025%20-%20ir.pdf |
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| Summary: | Academic dishonesty is a rising trend in the current academic world, especially in
tertiary education levels. Undergraduates will resort to cheating for the sake of their CGPA, to
maintain their scholarship or to even secure their work opportunity upon graduation. The
objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between negative parental
attachment styles (anxiety and avoidant), self-efficacy, moral competence and academic
dishonesty among undergraduates in Selangor, Malaysia.
The respondents for the study were 244 undergraduate students recruited from two public
universities in Selangor. The questionnaires that were distributed were the Perceptions
and Attitudes towards Cheating among Engineering Student Survey 2 (PACES-2) to assess the
academic dishonesty, the Experiences in Close Relationship- Revised (ECR-R) to assess for anxiety
or avoidant attachment, General Self-Efficacy scale to assess self-efficacy and Moral Competence
Test to assess moral competence. The data were analysed using the Statistical Package for
Social Sciences (SPSS), version 24. Spearman’s correlation was performed to assess the
relationship between the independent variables of negative parental attachment styles (anxiety and
avoidant), self-efficacy and moral competence have any correlation with academic dishonesty. In
addition, Mann-Whitney U test was performed to assess gender differences in academic dishonesty
among the undergraduates. Kruskal-Wallis analysis was performed to investigate the
differences on academic dishonesty based on year of study. Stepwise multiple regression analysis
was then performed to determine the unique predictors of
academic dishonesty.
The present study found that there was a negative significant relationship between self- efficacy
with academic dishonesty (r = -0.10; p ≤ 0.05). In addition, year of study was found to have a
positive significant relationship with academic dishonesty (r = 0.11; p
≤ 0.05). However, gender (r = 0.04; p > 0.05), anxiety attachment (r = 0.03; p > 0.05), avoidant
attachment (r = 0.02; p > 0.05) and moral competence (r = 0.02; p > 0.05) were not significant
with academic dishonesty. Similarly, The Mann-Whitney U test revealed no gender differences (U
= 3720, p = 0.49) between male and female in academic dishonesty. In addition, the
Kruskal-Wallis analysis found no differences in year of study (H (2) = 4.96, p = 0.08) with regards
to academic dishonesty. The stepwise regression analysis found that self-efficacy (β = -0.18, t =
-2.82, p = 0.05) predicted academic dishonesty among respondents.
In conclusion the study found that self-efficacy was a good predictor of academic
dishonesty among the undergraduates in Selangor, Malaysia. Self-efficacy proves to reduce the
unethical behaviour through the cognition of an individual by acting as a rational point for a behaviour. |
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