Research Blog #8--Interview/Primary Source (Survey)

I sent out a short survey to some peers who are also international students (Chinese & Korean) in order to get more ideas in terms of the attitudes that they hold towards academic disintegrity (cheating and plagiarizing).

Here are my questions: What do you think are the possible reasons that international students tend to conduct more unethical academic behavior (cheating and plagiarizing)? How can you justify such act? Do you think it is caused by cultural differences? \

I received four replies so far and most of them conclude that language deficiency is the main reason that causes international students to cheat during exams and that some of them are unwilling to learn any new words or do any extra readings outside classroom. Also, international students, especially students from culture that values collectivism prefer doing activities only with people from the same ethic group. Therefore, their language skills can rarely get improved when they immerge themselves in the limited social group.

Cultual differences also play a significant role in how international students view exams. One person concludes: "International students care about GPA much more than American students. The standard of a horn or student to student who could get scholarship is different between International students and local students. Thus, International students need try harder to get higher grade. Some may choose the easy way, cheating." Chinese students and Korean students are used to compete with each other acadmically due to the education system in their home countries, and when they perceive the fact that they are lack the ability to outperform their American peers, they are more likely to collaborate with each other in order to get good grades.

Another interesting point is that a person says:"They simply don't know how to refuse when others' asking for help (cheating) in exams". This is an interesting point because it seems as if helping each other cheat during exams is a "social norm" in collectivist culture. If one person refuses the request, he/she may be viewed as uncooporative and face the consequences of being marginalized.

The results are similiar to the findings of some scholarly articles that international students use certain excuses, or in this case, neurtralizing techniques to justify their unethical academic behavior (cheating and plagiarizing) by counteracting the guilt. Nevertheless, no one relates the tuition cost/school support to alleged cheating but language problems seem to be the most troubling cause.