The relations of academic cheating with academic self-concept and perceived autonomy support among Chinese university students

Academic cheating as a kind of dishonest behaviour has always been a major concern to educators in higher education. With the advancement of technology, the situation will get worse if the problem remains unattended. There are many factors that could explain why a student might cheat on an assessment task. At personal level, students who have low academic self-concept could have low confidence in getting good grades and cheating is a way to increase the likelihood of getting high grades. Besides, students could be tempted to cheat if they perceived a low level of support from teacher(s). In this chapter, our speculations were tested with a sample of 205 Chinese university students from a Macao university. Results provided empirical evidence to support our speculations. Both academic self-concept and perceived autonomy support from teachers were associated inversely with the likelihood of cheating. However, only the main effects of academic self-concept and perceived autonomy but not their interaction was found to be significant predictors of cheating. Implications for promotion of academic honesty in higher education among students are discussed. © 2012 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.