Theory of Planned Behavior and Personality

Academic misconduct in the forms of cheating and plagiarism is a large and growing problem that has been acknowledged in both the public and academic realms. In 2000, three-quarters of American college and university students said they had cheated on an exam (Williams, 2001). Additionally, according to a survey by Who’s Who Among American High School Students, more than four-fifths said cheating was common in top-rated high schools (Williams, 2001). Cheating, plagiarism and other forms of academic misconduct have been documented in several large, multi-institution survey-based studies (Davis, Grover, Becker, & McGregor, 1992; McCabe & Trevino, 1993, 1997; Whitley, 1998) as well as in a number of smaller survey and experimental studies conducted at individual institutions (Bolin, 2004; Bunn, Caudill, & Gropper, 1992; Smyth, & Davis, 2004). There has been a relative paucity of work, however, that has tried to explain academic misconduct behaviors based on a theoretical model. In the current study, we draw on Ajzen’s (1991) Theory of Planned Behavior to integrate previous research and predict academic misconduct.