Personal and Contextual Factors Associated With Students’ Cheating in Science

The authors conducted a correlational study to investigate the relations among seventh-grade Turkish students’ cheating behavior, academic self-efficacy beliefs, usage of self-handicapping strategies, personal goal orientations, and classroom goal structures specific to the science domain. The Patterns of Adaptive Learning Scales was administered to 1,950 seventh-grade students enrolled in 12 public schools. The authors conducted hierarchical linear modeling analyses to measure to what extent personal and contextual factors can be used to predict students’ cheating behavior. Analyses revealed that although students’ cheating behavior was positively predicted by performance-approach goals, it was negatively predicted by mastery goals. Students who used more self-handicapping strategies and who were less self-efficacious were also more likely to demonstrate cheating behavior. The authors found that the mastery goal–structured science-learning environment, in which understanding the material and self-improvement was emphasized, discouraged cheating.