Our students are asked to sign an "academic integrity" pledge with each assignment and exam, vowing that they have not given nor received unauthorized assistance on the assignment.
What (peer-reviewed) evidence is there to support the claim that these pledges make a significant impact on the rate of cheating, plagiarism, and other forms of academic dishonesty at the university level?
There is some research on this, with inconclusive results. Some problems with the existing literature:
See:
McCabe, Donald L., and Linda Klebe Trevino. "Academic dishonesty: Honor codes and other contextual influences." Journal of higher education (1993): 522-538.
Hall, Teresa L., and George D. Kuh. "Honor among students: Academic integrity and honor codes at state-assisted universities." NASPA Journal 36.1 (1998): 2-18.
McCabe, Donald L., Linda Klebe Trevino, and Kenneth D. Butterfield. "Academic integrity in honor code and non-honor code environments: A qualitative investigation." Journal of Higher Education (1999): 211-234.
McCabe, Donald L., Linda Klebe Trevino, and Kenneth D. Butterfield. "Honor codes and other contextual influences on academic integrity: A replication and extension to modified honor code settings." Research in higher Education 43.3 (2002): 357-378.
Roig, Miguel, and Amanda Marks. "Attitudes toward cheating before and after the implementation of a modified honor code: A case study." Ethics & Behavior 16.2 (2006): 163-171.
Vandehey, Michael, George Diekhoff, and Emily LaBeff. "College cheating: A twenty-year follow-up and the addition of an honor code." Journal of College Student Development 48.4 (2007): 468-480.
Konheim-Kalkstein, Yasmine L., Mark A. Stellmack, and Margaret L. Shilkey. "Comparison of honor code and non-honor code classrooms at a non-honor code university." Journal of College and Character 9.3 (2008).
LoSchiavo, Frank M., and Mark A. Shatz. "The impact of an honor code on cheating in online courses." Journal of Online Learning and Teaching 7.2 (2011): 179.
There is evidence that when the integrity pledge is signed makes an important difference in its effectiveness. One laboratory study asked participants to solve math puzzles for a financial reward, self-reporting the number of math puzzles they had solved. Unknown to the participants, the researchers did know the actual number of puzzles they solved.
The researchers found that signing the statement of honesty after self-reporting was no more effective at curbing dishonesty than having no pledge at all (about two thirds of participants overstated the number of puzzles solved). But signing the statement of honesty before self-reporting had a measurable effect on reducing dishonesty (only about one third overstated their performance).
Shu, L. L., Mazar, N., Gino, F., Ariely, D., & Bazerman, M. H. (2012). Signing at the beginning makes ethics salient and decreases dishonest self-reports in comparison to signing at the end. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(38), 15197-15200.
An indirect answer... Similar to highway speed limits (I'm thinking of the U.S. in this analogy), the effect is not at all to induce everyone to conform... but it has a useful inhibiting effect, generally reducing behaviors that are collectively dangerous.
So, based on some decades of observation of 20-ish peoples' behavior, a great many will have a very positive reaction to being implicitly trusted, and many more will be inhibited from behaving dubiously, while, yes, still, a certain number will see "a business opportunity"... to game the system, for what it's worth.
An idea that I only glommed-onto in the last few decades (I'm old...) is that one should not corrupt one's dealings with the vast majority to defend against the ... infelicities... of a tiny minority. E.g., it's not a good thing to behave distrustfully to everyone just because one anticipates that there will be people trying to game the system rather than learn anything and demonstrate that knowledge in some (stylized but...) reasonable fashion.
Yet I do have many qualms about how this happy idealism could apply to kids in less-advantaged situations. As in the question of whether it's really a crime to steal bread for one's starving children in a hostile situation... well, no, perhaps it's not actually immoral to "cheat" in certain circumstances. (I recall the quote on my homepage, that it is illegal for both rich and poor "to beg, to steal bread, and sleep under bridges"...)
It may be true that all these fictions have financed "education" in the U.S., and elsewhere. Still, presumably, education is preferred to dys-education? To ignorance? But/and why do we give grades and frighten or penalize people about real-life issues?
Very strange, in my opinion... and/but this is veering away from the literal question... sigh...
The point is not so much to prevent cheating as to make it clear that cheating (as defined in the statement) is unacceptable and that all parties involved understand and accept this.
This meas that if cheating is detected at a later date you have a very clear and mutually agreed statement that what the accused person did was unacceptable and reduces any arbitration to establishing the facts rather than arguing the toss in terms of academic morality.
While this may not prevent determined cheats it will certainly remove any ambiguity for anyone tempted to cheat on the spur of the moment.
It also means that you have a definite legal basis for a civil contract where accepted academic practice is not covered by general civil or criminal law.
Equally it meant that any academic sanctions have a basis in a civil contract rather than just being arbitrary, especially in the context where academic qualifications are increasingly seen as paid for commodities.
I graduated from a very small (~1200) college that uses an honor code. It has been my general experience that simply having an honor code is far less important than having a culture that is centered around the honor code. For example, my college welcomes every incoming class with a huge honor ceremony where the students sign the pledge. The signed pledges of the current students are hung in the dining hall as a daily reminder, and this has been the tradition for ~100+ years. The honor code is also framed in every classroom and required for all major assignments. There is also a student-led (faculty and staff also play a part) honor court, which handles any alleged violations of the honor code. At my alma mater, there are relatively few violations per year.
In contrast, I know students from colleges that have a younger, less salient honor code and culture who have out-right admitted to cheating. While this is by no means empirical, I've talked with others who have had similar experiences.
