Academic dishonesty and cognitive dissonance

This dissertation attempted to decrease students' attitudes and behaviors regarding academic dishonesty. 113 students from a small Catholic junior/senior high school on Long Island took part in the study. One day after recruitment, students in the experimental group left their classes during their religion period completed the Academic Honesty Scale (AHS) as a pretest and were asked how many tests they took since the beginning of the term and how many of these tests they cheated on to assess their rate of cheating. The following day, these participants again left their religion classes and took part in the policy development focus group activity. One day later, after participating in the policy group, participants in the experimental group went to the separate location and completed the AHS again. The students in the control group completed the AHS and the two cheating rate questions at the same times and in the same locations as the experimental group, but did not take part in the focus groups. Ten weeks later, all students in the study were again asked how many tests they took since the beginning of the term and how many of these tests they cheated on to reassess their rate of cheating.; By having the students take an active role in addressing academic dishonesty, I predicted that cognitive dissonance would be created between their attitudes toward academic dishonesty as well as their own history of academic dishonesty and their active role against academic dishonesty (i.e., establishing the school policy). The results of this did not support the hypotheses. Psychometric analyses appear to support the use of the AHS as a research tool. Additionally, several relationships emerged between subject descriptor variables and self-reported academic honesty.