Singapore — A new study suggests that students in Singapore are half as likely to cheat as those from the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia.
While almost fifty per cent of over 2,500 respondents from the study, which was conducted by OnlinePlagiarismChecker.net, acknowledged that they’ve cheated in their schoolwork at least once, a meagre 21 per cent or even less than half of that number of Singaporean students who took part in the study admitted to having cheated while taking a test.
At the opposite end are American students, 60 per cent of whom said that they’ve cheated in their studies at least once.
A Nov 14 article in timeshighereducation.com said that a survey based on self-reported information says that students in Singapore are less prone to choose dishonest ways in their studies than many of their western counterparts from Australia, Canada, Ireland, the UK and US.
Only students from English-speaking countries were included in the study, although both local and international students in Singapore took part in it.
Among the students surveyed, 49 per cent said they cheated in their studies at least one time. And from these students, 28 per cent said they cheated several times in the last school year.
The authors of the study noted that “Singapore showed a rather strong deviation,” whereas the differences between western nations was “not substantial.”
The chief marketing and communications officer at OnlinePlagiarismChecker.net, Mr Will Hjort, said that the results from the study findings are “very unexpected”.
And since Singapore is the only Asian country included in the study, Mr Hjort and his team could not verify whether Singaporean students are the exception in the region.
He added that there are a number of reasons why Singaporean students are more honest than their western counterparts.
“We know that Asian children in general are more pushed to perform better, not just to do well but simply be the best – so maybe those students have more pressure from parents and society [and] they just want to perform well,” said Mr Hjort, adding that fear of being discovered could be another reason why Singaporean students are honest.
“If someone notices, that’s a huge hit on their reputation,” he said.
He added that Singapore’s general intolerance for corruption may factor in as well.
“I think punishment for academic dishonesty is a bit [harsher] in Singapore versus places like the US,” he added, underlining that an offence such as cheating on a test could result in expulsion for Singaporean students, while American students may just be given a warning for the same offence. /TISG
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