Psychometric Properties of Academic Dishonesty Scale

The aim of the present study was to investigate the psychometric properties of Bashir and Bala’s scale for measuring academic dishonesty. Participants in the study were 452 undergraduate students (163 men and 289 women) at Shiraz University in the academic year 1398-99. They completed the scales of Bashir and Bala’s academic dishonesty, Khormaei and ghaemi’s moral character, Bandura et al.’s moral disengagement, Rimkus’s cheating, Goldberg’s conscientiousness, Akbay et al.’s academic responsibility, and Savari’s academic procrastination. The reliability of the scale was assessed using Cronbach's alpha method; on the other hand, confirmatory factor analysis, internal consistency and correlation with other scales were the measures taken to determine its validity. The results of confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the six factors of cheating in examination, plagiarism, outside help, prior cheating, falsification and lying about academic assignments underlying the academic dishonesty scale. The results of the correlation with other tests also confirmed the convergent and divergent validity of the scale. Cronbach's alpha also revealed the acceptability of all the coefficients pertaining to the internal consistency of the subscales and the total score of the scale. The results suggest that Bashir and Bala’s academic dishonesty scale yields quite reliable and valid results for Iranian students and has the necessary efficiency to measure academic dishonesty in the six dimensions the scale specifies. The results are discussed based on research and theoretical evidence.