Academic dishonesty

approach with Accounting Sciences course students

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the reasons that influence students of Accounting courses to be dishonest. A quantitative approach was used, which was developed from the application of a structured and validated questionnaire by Grimes and Rezek (2005) adapted by Moura (2018), divided into three dimensions. The questionnaire was applied in four public and private Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the city of Mossoró-RN, totaling 370 respondents. Data were processed using the SPSS statistical software version 23. The third dimension of the questionnaire was used as a parameter to classify the respondent as honest or dishonest, thus creating the dependent variable dishonesty. Given the context, two hypotheses were considered: H0: Academic dishonesty in Accounting courses is the same in public and private institutions. H1: Academic dishonesty in Accounting courses is higher in public institutions. In the analysis of the results, the simple frequency and the percentage of the first and second dimensions of the questionnaire were presented. An association of the dependent variable with the first and second dimensions was performed. Two tests, Person's Chi-Square and Fisher's Exact, were used to investigate the categorical variables. The findings showed that the reasons that influence Accounting students to be dishonest were: to be attending the seventh period in a public HEI and to develop a paid activity. Thus, H0 is rejected.