Academic cheating interferes with learning among middle school children.

There has been extensive research on the causes of academic cheating, but little is known about its consequences. The current research sought to fill this gap in the literature by examining how cheating by middle school children (total N = 198) affects their learning outcomes. In a naturalistic paradigm, children scored a math test they had taken previously, which gave them an opportunity to cheat by falsely scoring incorrect answers to be correct. Results from this phase showed that 54 % of the children cheated on at least one question. One week later, the children took the same test again, but this time without being given an opportunity to cheat. Among children who cheated, items they had answered incorrectly on the first round showed significantly less improvement on the second round if they had dishonestly scored them as correct rather than honestly scoring them as incorrect. This finding provides the first experimental evidence that academic cheating can interfere with children's learning.

Dataset of the effect of difficulty messaging on academic cheating in middle school Chinese children.

The present dataset was reported in a paper entitled "Effects of test difficulty messaging on academic cheating among middle school children" [1]. It reports the findings of an experimental study that used a naturalistic math test-taking paradigm to assess children's academic cheating behavior under different test difficulty messaging conditions. The participants were Grade 8 middle school children (N = 201). The primary dependent measures were whether each participant spontaneously decided to cheat (presence of cheating), and among participants who cheated, the specific number of test items on which they cheated (extent of cheating). We used logistic regression, ANOVA, and Pearson correlation to assess whether various predictor variables (e.g., conditions) predicted the presence of cheating or the extent of cheating. This dataset should be of interest to researchers who are interested in the development of moral behavior in children generally, and academic dishonesty in particular.

Effects of test difficulty messaging on academic cheating among middle school children.

Academic cheating is a serious worldwide problem that begins during childhood. However, to date there has been little research on academic cheating with children before high school age. The current study used a naturalistic experimental paradigm to evaluate the possibility that systematically manipulating messages about the difficulty of a test can affect whether middle school children (N = 201) would cheat by reporting a falsely inflated test score. We found that test difficulty messaging significantly affected children's cheating behavior. Specifically, telling children that a test was either easy or hard produced higher rates of cheating than telling them that the difficulty level was on par with their current skills. In addition, among the children who chose to cheat, telling them that the test was easy led to a greater degree of cheating. These findings are consistent with theories of academic cheating that point to the importance of approach and avoidance motives in achievement motivation. The findings also suggest that simple messaging can have a significant impact on children's moral behavior and that seemingly innocuous messages such as describing the difficulty of a test can influence children's decisions about whether and how much to cheat.