The Perception and Reasons of Examination Malpractice among Students

Examinations are good for assessment, selection and placement but it gets nutty students and officials to not play their role in turning out credible results. This study therefore, seeks the intuition behind people, especially, students for indulging in various forms of examination malpractices. The study was based on the deficit model of examination anxiety whilst two research questions were posed to guide the study. All second year undergraduate students of the University of Cape Coast were the target population. The study revealed that  some of the perceptions students held about examination malpractices included “No matter how hard you read, if you don’t cheat you will fail” (83.96%) and “If I don’t cheat, those who do will have advantage over me” (95.28%). On reasons why students engage in examination malpractice, majority of them (91.51%) gave the reason “to maintain the trust and investment my parents have made in me” to be the causative agent for engaging in malpractice. Withdrawal, rustications and imprisonment of culprits were some of the recommendations put forward by policy makers.