Gender Aspects of Academic Dishonesty among University Students in Sweden

Abstract

The purpose of this investigation is to identify and discuss gender aspects on academic dishonesty.
We have based our study on statistics from the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education and on
information requested from the disciplinary boards of eight Swedish universities for the year 2010.
The information we achieved ranged from material covering only the numbers of male and female
students that were warned or suspended, to the protocols and decisions from the disciplinary
boards.
We are not aware of any previous investigation where aspects of academic dishonesty have been
studied based on statistics of convicted students and disciplinary board protocols. The advantage
with this approach is that we analyze real cases and that we can perform discourse analysis (although
rudimentary) of the protocols. The disadvantage is that we see only the top of the iceberg, since we
(by necessity) lack information of the probably vast amount of unrecorded and undiscovered cases of
cheating.