Statistical Analysis for Contract Cheating in Chinese Universities

Yuexia Wang and Zhihuo Xu
Additional contact information
Yuexia Wang: School of Transportation, Nantong University, Nantong 226019, China
Zhihuo Xu: School of Transportation, Nantong University, Nantong 226019, China

Mathematics, 2021, vol. 9, issue 14, 1-17

Abstract: Contract cheating refers to students using third-party online resources to complete their coursework. It is not only a unilateral result of the student, but also has a relationship with educators, as well as social resources. However, little work has been performed to analyze the complex behavioral aspects behind contract cheating in Chinese universities. To this end, this article presents a statistical analysis of contract cheating in Chinese universities. First, a unique parallel survey of educators and students was conducted to collect data from August 2018 to August 2020. Next, statistical analyses were performed to explore students’ experiences and attitudes toward contract cheating and the contextual factors that relate to these behaviors. Additionally, Pearson correlation tests were conducted on the survey data to find potential factors for contract cheating. Finally, a multivariate statistical technique, partial-least-squares regression (PLSR), was applied to interpret the results. The results of the statistical analysis showed that the main motivation for contract cheating is to receive good grades (the correlation coefficient ? is 0.1309) from the perspective of students’ personal learning; from the side of university management, clear regulations ( ? = ? 0.1378 ), penalties for cheating ( ? = ? 0.1275 ), and the use of cheating-detection software ( ? = ? 0.1186 ) can directly reduce cheating; from the perspective of teachers’ teaching, lecturers’ feedback on cheating on assignments ( ? = ? 0.1510 ) can effectively reduce students’ cheating behavior; in addition, increasing students’ sense of achievement in course learning ( ? = ? 0.2619 ) also helps to reduce the probability of cheating.

Keywords: academic cheating; contract cheating; partial-least-squares regression (PLSR); Pearson correlation tests; statistical analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/9/14/1684/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/9/14/1684/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jmathe:v:9:y:2021:i:14:p:1684-:d:596219

Access Statistics for this article

Mathematics is currently edited by Ms. Emma He

More articles in Mathematics from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().