Description
Student plagiarism remains a pervasive problem within education. In order to better manage its occurrence, the immediate process of a student’s decision to plagiarize must be better understood. The Situational Cheating Assessment of Motivation, or SCAM, incorporates two key constructs of risk assessment and situational self-efficacy as well as other influencing factors in order to determine their effects upon a student’s immediate decision to plagiarize. Said constructs were organized into a theoretical model through a series of linked hypotheses. Students were given a questionnaire assessing multiple variables influencing the likelihood of plagiarism. From the collected data, proposed hypotheses were tested, with the resultant model presenting a poor fit for the data. Path analysis was then utilized to construct a competing model of greater, although still imperfect, fit. Relevant insights are discussed, as well as future directions for plagiarism research. Keywords: Plagiarism, academic dishonesty, self-efficacy, risk assessment, theoretical model
