A Perceived Causal Relations Model for Social Control of Academic Transgressions Among Faculty Members

Academic transgression (AT), as any behavior, belief, or condition that violates a social and academic norm, is a serious problem threatening academic integrity, especially when committed by faculty members, who are supposed to be educational role models. Societies employ social control means to respond to, prevent or reduce transgressive acts, to maintain social order and morality. The current study aimed to examine the perceived effects of self-control, job satisfaction, and life satisfaction, as social control means, on five types of interpersonal, educational, research, organizational, and sexual ATs among faculty members, and also to measure perceived prevalence of these transgressions in Iranian higher education.

A modified version of “perceived causal relations” methodology was adopted to study the perceived relations between reciprocal pairs of the variables. Network analysis was employed to analyze the data gathered from faculty members via an online questionnaire.

The results demonstrated that faculty member participants perceived high effects of their self-control, job satisfaction, and life satisfaction on decreasing ATs, particularly interpersonal, organizational, and educational ATs.

As faculty member participants perceived high prevalence of all types of ATs in Iranian academia, there is an urge to consider new policies to employ effective social control means suggested in this research, especially self-control, to reduce, and even restrain the perpetration of these transgressions. We also suggest perceived causal relations as a useful and strong methodology to conduct research on sensitive topics, especially, transgression and crime