Influence of negative parental attachment styles, self-efficacy and moral competence on academic dishonesty among undergraduates in Selangor, Malaysia

Academic dishonesty is a rising trend in the current academic world, especially in tertiary education levels. Undergraduates will resort to cheating for the sake of their CGPA, to maintain their scholarship or to even secure their work opportunity upon graduation. The objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between negative parental attachment styles (anxiety and avoidant), self-efficacy, moral competence and academic dishonesty among undergraduates in Selangor, Malaysia. The respondents for the study were 244 undergraduate students recruited from two public universities in Selangor. The questionnaires that were distributed were the Perceptions and Attitudes towards Cheating among Engineering Student Survey 2 (PACES-2) to assess the academic dishonesty, the Experiences in Close Relationship- Revised (ECR-R) to assess for anxiety or avoidant attachment, General Self-Efficacy scale to assess self-efficacy and Moral Competence Test to assess moral competence. The data were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), version 24. Spearman’s correlation was performed to assess the relationship between the independent variables of negative parental attachment styles (anxiety and avoidant), self-efficacy and moral competence have any correlation with academic dishonesty. In addition, Mann-Whitney U test was performed to assess gender differences in academic dishonesty among the undergraduates. Kruskal-Wallis analysis was performed to investigate the differences on academic dishonesty based on year of study. Stepwise multiple regression analysis was then performed to determine the unique predictors of academic dishonesty. The present study found that there was a negative significant relationship between self- efficacy with academic dishonesty (r = -0.10; p ≤ 0.05). In addition, year of study was found to have a positive significant relationship with academic dishonesty (r = 0.11; p ≤ 0.05). However, gender (r = 0.04; p > 0.05), anxiety attachment (r = 0.03; p > 0.05), avoidant attachment (r = 0.02; p > 0.05) and moral competence (r = 0.02; p > 0.05) were not significant with academic dishonesty. Similarly, The Mann-Whitney U test revealed no gender differences (U = 3720, p = 0.49) between male and female in academic dishonesty. In addition, the Kruskal-Wallis analysis found no differences in year of study (H (2) = 4.96, p = 0.08) with regards to academic dishonesty. The stepwise regression analysis found that self-efficacy (β = -0.18, t = -2.82, p = 0.05) predicted academic dishonesty among respondents. In conclusion the study found that self-efficacy was a good predictor of academic dishonesty among the undergraduates in Selangor, Malaysia. Self-efficacy proves to reduce the unethical behaviour through the cognition of an individual by acting as a rational point for a behaviour.

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