Research in Higher Education, Vol. 43, No.

3, June 2002 ( 2002)

HONOR CODES AND OTHER CONTEXTUAL

INFLUENCES ON ACADEMIC INTEGRITY:
A Replication and Extension to Modified Honor
Code Settings

Donald L. McCabe, Linda Klebe Treviño,

and Kenneth D. Butterfield

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Research has shown that traditional academic honor codes are generally associated
with lower levels of student academic dishonesty. Utilizing data obtained from stu-
dents at 21 colleges and universities, this study investigated the influence of modified
honor codes, an alternative to traditional honor codes, that is gaining popularity on
larger campuses. It also tested the model of student academic dishonesty previously
suggested by McCabe and Treviño in a more diverse sample of campuses. Results
suggest that modified honor codes are associated with lower levels of student dishon-
esty and that the McCabe and Treviño model appears to be reasonably robust.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
KEY WORDS: academic integrity; cheating; honor codes.

INTRODUCTION
In the fall of 1990, McCabe and Treviño (1993) conducted a study of aca-
demic dishonesty among undergraduate students at 31 institutions of higher edu-
cation across the country. That initial study has lead to a variety of outcomes:
increased media attention focused on the issue of student dishonesty, the forma-
tion of the Center for Academic Integrity (now based at Duke University with
an institutional membership of almost 300 schools), and several additional stu-
dent and faculty surveys. The original study, and a replication of that study
conducted in 1995 (McCabe and Treviño, 1997), examined the relationship be-
tween academic dishonesty and factors that comprise what may be labeled “the

Donald L. McCabe, Rutgers University–Newark. Linda Klebe Treviño, The Pennsylvania State
University. Kenneth D. Butterfield, Washington State University.
Address correspondence to: Donald L. McCabe, Faculty of Management, Rutgers University–
Newark, 111 Washington Street, Newark, NJ 07102-3027; dmccabe@andromeda.rutgers.edu.

357
0361-0365/02/0600-0357/0  2002 Human Sciences Press, Inc.
358 MCCABE, TREVIÑO, AND BUTTERFIELD

cheating culture” that develops on a campus (e.g., McCabe and Treviño, 1993).
These studies have largely focused on traditional academic honor codes as a pow-
erful influence in preventing academic dishonesty on college campuses. Other
contextual factors found to be important include student perceptions of peer behav-
ior, student perceptions of the faculty’s understanding and acceptance of the
academic integrity policies that exist on campus, student perceptions of the over-
all effectiveness of these policies, student perceptions of the certainty of being
reported for cheating, and student perceptions of the severity of campus penal-
ties for cheating. Of these, perception of peers’ behavior appears to be the single
most important contextual influence on academic dishonesty (McCabe and Tre-
viño, 1993).
Other than McCabe and Treviño, few studies have examined the issue of
academic integrity in multicampus designs. (Bowers, 1964, and Davis, Grover,
Becker, and McGregor, 1992, are two notable exceptions.) An important feature
of the present study, conducted in the fall of 1999 on 21 campuses, was the fact
that the schools participating in this study differed in substantive ways from the
campuses that participated in the McCabe and Treviño (1993, 1997) project. On
average, the schools in this current project were larger (a mean undergraduate
enrollment of 6,959 vs. 3,576), less selective (1145 mean SAT for admitted
students vs. 1301), and had a smaller percentage of students living on campus
(48% vs. 82%). In addition, 30 of the 31 schools in the McCabe and Treviño
project (97%) were private, compared to 13 of the 21 schools participating in
the present study (62%). Thus, the first objective of the current analysis was to
test the robustness of the McCabe and Treviño model in this new, substantively
different sample. Second, we introduce a new factor into this stream of re-
search—the concept of a modified honor code—and discuss its implications for
academic dishonesty. In particular, we examine the relationship between aca-
demic dishonesty and various contextual influences in three different academic
environments: traditional honor code environments, modified honor code envi-
ronments, and environments that do not have an honor code. To our knowledge,
this is the first quantitative examination of the modified honor code strategy.
Modified honor code strategies, as we discuss later, may have important impli-
cations for the higher education community. While traditional academic honor
codes have been shown to be effective in reducing student dishonesty, they are
generally found on smaller campuses. As noted by McCabe and Pavela (2000),
“[c]onventional wisdom suggests it is more difficult to develop and nurture a
strong sense of campus community at large universities—an important founda-
tion on which an honor code tradition can be built.” As we discuss, however,
the research examined here suggests modified codes may be an effective strat-
egy for bringing at least some of the benefits of traditional codes to these larger
campuses.
HONOR CODES 359

CONTEXTUAL INFLUENCES ON ACADEMIC DISHONESTY

The studies of Bowers (1964) and McCabe and Treviño (1993, 1997) have
demonstrated that significant relationships exist between academic dishonesty
and a variety of contextual variables. As noted earlier, these variables include
perception of peers’ behavior, student perceptions of the understanding and ac-
ceptance of academic integrity policies, the perceived certainty of being reported
for cheating, and the perceived severity of campus penalties for cheating, as well
as the presence or absence of an academic honor code. As McCabe and Treviño
(1993, p. 536) have suggested, understanding these relationships is important
since at least some of these variables “are open to administrative influence.”
Consistent with our first objective, we tested these relationships in the present
study using the same hypotheses discussed in McCabe and Treviño (1993, 1997).
Foremost among the contextual influences examined by McCabe and Treviño
was perception of peers’ behavior—a measure of how students perceive other
students are behaving with regard to academic dishonesty. Although this relation
can be explained in a number of ways, social learning theory (Bandura, 1977)
and the powerful influence of example (Rosenhan, Moore, and Underwood,
1976) seem to be among the most important. In the model proposed by McCabe
and Treviño:

the perception of peers’ behavior was the most influential contextual variable, suggest-
ing that social learning theory may be particularly useful for understanding academic
dishonesty behavior among college students. The strong influence of peers’ behavior
may suggest that academic dishonesty not only is learned from observing the behavior
of peers, but that peers’ behavior provides a kind of normative support for cheating.
. . . Thus, cheating may come to be viewed as an acceptable way of getting and staying
ahead. (1993, p. 533)

As McCabe (1992) suggests, neutralization strategies play a major role in this

relationship as students seem to find it rather easy to convince themselves that
if others are cheating and the institution or individual faculty members are not
doing anything about it, they have no choice but to do the same. They feel it is
not fair that their grades should suffer because others are being allowed to cheat.
Similar explanations have been discussed by Bowers (1964) and McCabe, Tre-
viño, and Butterfield (1999).
Support can also be found in the large body of research emanating from
Kohlberg’s (1969) work on moral development, in particular his research on
just communities (Power, Higgins, and Kohlberg, 1989). For example, Ignelzi
(1990, p. 197) discusses an application of Kohlberg’s just community approach to
a college residential setting, concluding that it “holds promise as a useful com-
panion to more traditional methods of ethical education in the formal curricu-
lum.” Ignelzi argues that student participation in a just community, and the
360 MCCABE, TREVIÑO, AND BUTTERFIELD

participatory role students play in the resolution of ethical dilemmas in such a

community, “is potentially a powerful intervention for addressing both the ethi-
cal and citizenship education of college undergraduates” (p. 197). Treviño and
McCabe (1994) have argued in a similar fashion that Kohlberg’s just community
approach should be an important element of a school’s “hidden curriculum,”
and, in their view, an academic honor code would be a key feature of such a just
community model. Strong honor codes not only give students the primary role in
the resolution of suspected transgressions of the community’s standards but, as
suggested by Ignelzi, in honor code environments, “[c]ommunity members share
responsibility for holding each other accountable to established community norms
and policies” (p. 195). Thus, peer perceptions concerning academic dishonesty can
be an important influence as students make individual decisions about cheating in
the classroom. Certainly, the perceptions of peers who will potentially sit in judg-
ment of their behavior are likely to be a significant influence for most students.
Rest (1993) also discusses noncurricular influences on moral development, and
Dalton (1985) suggests there is strong support for the view that the values which
are prized in the peer culture have a significant influence on the values developed
by college students. Students emulate the values of those they admire.

Hypothesis 1: Academic dishonesty will be positively related to perceptions of

peers’ academic dishonesty.

McCabe and Treviño (1993, 1997) also examined the relationship between
academic dishonesty and perceived understanding and acceptance of the aca-
demic integrity policies on campus. Perceived student understanding and accep-
tance of campus polices is important simply because it is unlikely that students
will follow a policy that they either do not understand or which they believe is
unfair or ineffective. McCabe and Treviño found a strong relationship between
academic dishonesty and perceived understanding/acceptance of policy. How-
ever, McCabe and Treviño (1993) have suggested that the extent to which an
institution’s policy is understood and accepted by faculty may also be an impor-
tant influence on student behavior. For example, one issue they identify is the
reluctance of many faculty “to follow institutional policies when they observe a
student cheating” (p. 536). Instead, as demonstrated by Jendrek (1989) and Nuss
(1984), some faculty prefer to deal with such issues one-on-one with students.
Anecdotal comments from students suggest such faculty generally tend to be
more lenient than the formal judicial policy on campus, and any penalty meted
out by such a faculty member generally does not appear on a student’s academic
record, an important consideration for most students. Thus, lack of acceptance
and adherence to the institution’s policy by faculty may lead to more cheating.
Dalton (1985) has also noted that research suggests moral example is a
HONOR CODES 361

powerful influence on the development of students. In the classroom, the faculty

member is clearly one of the most important role models, and the message he
or she communicates about acceptance of the institution’s norms concerning
academic integrity is likely to be a strong influence on student behavior.

Hypothesis 2: Academic dishonesty will be inversely related to perceived under-

standing and acceptance of academic integrity policies by both students and
faculty.

We would also expect McCabe and Treviño’s earlier findings on the relation-
ship between academic dishonesty and the enforcement of a campus’s judicial
policies or code to continue to be supported. Relying on the premise of deter-
rence theory (Gibbs, 1975) “that for misconduct to be inhibited, wrongdoers
must perceive, first, that they will be caught and second, that severe penalties
will be imposed for the misconduct” (McCabe and Treviño, 1993, p. 526), Mc-
Cabe and Treviño hypothesized the existence of an inverse relation between
academic dishonesty and the perceived certainty of being reported for cheating
by a peer. Tittle and Rowe (1973) had previously demonstrated that the threat
of being caught and punished deterred cheating among college students, and
McCabe and Treviño (1993, 1997) also reported support for this relation. In Kohl-
bergian terms, many students may simply be operating at a preconventional level
of moral development. They are obeying rules to avoid punishment, not out of
consideration of the rights of others or some higher level of thinking (Evans,
Forney, and Guido-DiBrito, 1998). Thus, their behavior is likely to be influ-
enced by how likely it is that inappropriate behaviors will be detected and pun-
ished. In the college setting, especially on campuses with strong academic honor
codes, being reported by a peer is one important way in which a student’s academic
dishonesty may be uncovered.

Hypothesis 3: Academic dishonesty will be inversely related to the perceived

certainty of being reported for cheating by a peer.

Zimring and Hawkins (1973) have used deterrence theory to argue that the
greater the severity of the penalties for a particular act the less likely individuals
will be to engage in that act—the potential consequences simply outweigh the
potential reward. Both McCabe and Treviño (1993, 1997) and Michaels and
Miethe (1989) have provided evidence that this relationship holds in the instance
of academic dishonesty—that is, student cheating is deterred by strong penal-
ties. Kohlberg’s arguments about behavior at the preconventional level also sug-
gest such a relationship.
362 MCCABE, TREVIÑO, AND BUTTERFIELD

Hypothesis 4: Academic dishonesty will be inversely related to the perceived

severity of penalties.

MODIFIED HONOR CODES

There is strong empirical support for a positive relationship between tradi-
tional honor codes and academic dishonesty among college students (Bowers,
1964; Canning, 1956; McCabe and Treviño 1993, 1997; McCabe, Treviño, and
Butterfield, 1999). As McCabe and Treviño (1993) have noted, there are a num-
ber of possible explanations for this relationship. First, honor codes more clearly
define the expectations placed on students with regard to academic dishonesty.
Second, traditional honor codes typically place responsibility for maintaining
academic honesty on students rather than on faculty and/or administrators, or at
least give students a significant share of that responsibility; many students respond
to this responsibility by not cheating. Third, students under traditional honor codes
are often given privileges such as unproctored exams, and the incentive to maintain
such privileges may lead to lower levels of academic dishonesty.
With the apparent success of traditional honor codes, one might wonder why
more schools have not adopted such codes. We believe that one of the most
important reasons is that few campuses have a culture in place that would sup-
port the primary provisions of such a code. As suggested by Melendez (1985),
traditional codes generally include one or more of the following elements: un-
proctored tests/exams, the use of some form of written pledge in which students
affirm they have not cheated on a particular exam or assignment, the existence
of a judicial or hearing body where students play a major role (e.g., a student
serves as chairperson, students comprise a majority of the panel, or student consent
is needed to change the constitution of this body), and students are expected to
report any violations of the code they may observe. Traditional academic honor
codes on most campuses contain at least two or three of these characteristics
(many contain all four). Thus, any strategy to move to an honor code is likely
to require years of preparation and hard work on most campuses. Although there
are some notable exceptions (e.g., the University of Virginia), these provisions
also help explain why traditional honor codes are generally found on campuses
that are small to medium in size and highly residential in character. On such
campuses, it may be easier to build a strong sense of campus community around
an issue such as academic integrity. In recent years, however, a number of large,
public universities have begun to consider and adopt modified honor codes (Mc-
Cabe and Pavela, 2000). Although there is no single definition of what consti-
tutes a modified honor code, the more typical examples seem to focus on two
strategies. First, the institution, through any number of mechanisms (e.g., integ-
rity rallies, presidential involvement, integrity seminars), clearly communicates
HONOR CODES 363

to its students that academic integrity is a major institutional priority. Second,

students are given a significant role both in the judicial or hearing body on
campus and in developing programs to inform other students about the purposes
of the code, its major components, enforcement strategies, and so forth. This
often includes programming to convince students that academic integrity is some-
thing to be valued. And, while we are not aware of any modified codes that
mandate them, several modified codes allow the possibility of unproctored ex-
ams or the use of a pledge at an instructor’s option. The single most important
thing modified codes may do, however, is focus a campus’s attention on the
issue of academic dishonesty and clearly communicate to students that integrity
is an institutional priority. Among the critical factors in value development dis-
cussed by Dalton (1985), social perspective taking, community, peer culture,
and role models would all seem to play some role in the possible success of a
modified honor code.
Missing from this movement to modified honor codes, however, is anything
more than anecdotal evidence that they have a positive impact. Research that
has examined the effectiveness of traditional honor codes (e.g., Bowers, 1964;
McCabe and Treviño, 1993, 1997), would suggest that modified honor codes would
be intermediate between a traditional code environment and no code environ-
ment in controlling academic dishonesty. While lacking elements of traditional
honor codes, as noted earlier, the one thing modified codes do emphasize is the
importance of student responsibility for academic dishonesty. As noted by Mc-
Cabe and Treviño (1993), “Research by Schwartz (1968) suggests that individu-
als must ascribe responsibility to self if moral norms are to be activated and to
influence behavior. Therefore, cheating may be lower under honor systems be-
cause students take responsibility for academic dishonesty” (p. 525). Since the
level of responsibility assigned to students in modified code environments is
typically less than that given to students under traditional codes, but usually
greater than that in no code environments, it again seems reasonable to offer
the exploratory hypothesis that the level of student dishonesty would be interme-
diate on modified code campuses. A similar argument might be made in light
of Kohlberg’s (1985) research on moral communities. As Power and associates
(1989) have suggested, the moral or just communities envisioned by Kohlberg
often provide conditions that are necessary to, and that encourage, moral behav-
ior—increased student participation in establishing school norms and values, in
particular. Modified honor codes strive for such involvement, although they
often fall somewhat short of the level of involvement available to students on
traditional code campuses, which are generally smaller in size and have long-
standing code traditions in which students have achieved greater levels of re-
sponsibility based on years of positive experience with such student involve-
ment.
364 MCCABE, TREVIÑO, AND BUTTERFIELD

Hypothesis 5a: Modified honor codes are associated with higher levels of aca-
demic dishonesty compared to schools with a traditional academic honor code.
Hypothesis 5b: Modified honor codes are associated with lower levels of aca-
demic dishonesty compared to schools with no academic honor code.

METHODOLOGY
As detailed earlier, the 1999 survey included 21 schools that spanned a spec-
trum of size, residential character, and admissions policies. All of these schools
were participating in the first phase of a project conducted by the Center for
Academic Integrity to help schools more effectively assess the state of academic
integrity on their campuses and develop programs to improve it. Schools self-
selected into this study and included eight private institutions with strong, tradi-
tional academic honor codes, three large public institutions and one private insti-
tution with modified honor codes, and nine schools with no honor code—four
private schools and five public, one of which is a 2-year community college.
The eight private schools with traditional honor codes had a mean enrollment
of 4,746 undergraduates, a mean SAT score for admitted applicants of 1181,
and a majority of students (56%) live on campus. The nine schools without
honor codes were comparable in size (5,523) but significantly less selective
(mean SAT of 1081), and a majority of students (59%) live off campus. The
one private and three public institutions with modified honor codes were dramat-
ically larger in size on average (14,620), had a mean SAT of 1210, and a major-
ity of students (58%) live off campus.
In all three surveys, a random sample of sophomores, juniors, and seniors
were mailed a questionnaire that asked a variety of questions about student
perceptions of academic integrity on their campuses, including their perceptions
about campus policies, faculty reactions to instances of suspected cheating, and
cheating among their peers. Students were also asked about their own instances
of academic dishonesty. While every effort was made to ensure complete ano-
nymity for participants in each of these surveys, self-report and social desirabil-
ity bias likely have influenced student responses to some degree. Student reluc-
tance to discuss their own behavior was also a likely contributor to the relatively
modest response rates obtained in these surveys—38% in 1990, 36% in 1995,
29% in 1999. The 1999 response may also have been influenced by the rela-
tively lower degree of researcher control in this self-selected sample of schools.
For example, three schools participating in the survey provided virtually no on-
campus follow-up, and two of these schools had response rates of less than
20%. The only other school with a response rate of less than 20% was one
where the survey distribution was initially mishandled, and a second survey was
conducted within a response rate of 24%.
In the 1990 and 1995 surveys there was a response bias in favor of women
HONOR CODES 365

vs. men and code vs. no code schools; this was again the case in 1999. Based
on enrollment data, we would have expected 60% of our respondents to be
female, while in reality 67% were. The response rate at schools with some form
of academic honor codes was 32% vs. 24% at schools with no code. As noted
by McCabe and Treviño (1993) in discussing this issue in their 1990 survey,
“(t)he primary effect of this bias toward honor code institutions and women is
to understate the actual level of cheating in the overall sample, because the
results indicate that cheating is less prevalent in each of these groups” (p. 529).

Measures
Honor Code
As in the 1990 and 1995 surveys, a simple dummy variable approach was used
to denote the presence or absence of an explicit honor code. The nine schools
in our sample not employing an academic honor code were assigned a value of
0 for the code variable. The three large public universities and one private uni-
versity employing modified academic honor codes were assigned a value of 1
and the eight private universities employing traditional academic honor codes
were assigned a value of 2. The decision on how to classify schools utilized the
definitions offered earlier. Traditional code schools were those displaying at
least two (and typically three) of the four characteristics delineated by Melendez
(1985): unproctored exams, the use of a pledge, a judiciary with a high level of
student involvement, and a nontoleration policy. The four schools classified as
modified code schools fell short of this definition but, as discussed earlier,
clearly had strong integrity policies in place and allowed for a high level of
student involvement. All 21 of the schools participating in this project agreed
with our classification of their policy.
Our assignment of an interval scale for code suggests that modified codes fall
midway between no code and traditional honor code environments. While we
have no research to support this conclusion, Kerlinger (1973) has suggested “we
can with considerable assurance often assume equality of interval” when dealing
with scales that are basically ordinal, as long as we are “constantly alert to the
possibility of gross inequality of intervals” (pp. 440–441). We will be alert to
this possibility by comparing all analyses that use this interval scale to identical
analyses that include only the traditional code and no code schools.
Of course, such an approach is not problem free. At least some campuses that
highlight academic integrity as a priority, and that provide students an opportu-
nity to participate in the judicial process, would not describe their efforts as a
modified code approach. In addition, while an institution may espouse values
centering on academic integrity and student involvement, it may be hard to
judge whether these values are actually enacted on that campus. In the research
366 MCCABE, TREVIÑO, AND BUTTERFIELD

described here, however, this is a minimal problem since we are very familiar
with the efforts to enhance academic integrity on the four campuses we have
described as modified code schools. Not only do these efforts clearly distinguish
these schools from the no code schools in our sample, all 21 schools in our
sample are in basic agreement with the coding of schools we have employed
here. Of course, arguing that a modified code approach on every campus will
be intermediate between a traditional code and no code campus is more prob-
lematic. However, as the modified code approach becomes more refined, a more
robust classification scheme is likely to emerge.

Perceived Severity of Penalties

Student perceptions of the severity of penalties for cheating, which has been
shown in previous work to vary inversely with the level of student academic
dishonesty, was measured by asking students to rate their perception of the
severity of penalties for cheating at their school using a 4-point Likert scale
item that ranged from very low to very high. A low rating would suggest that
the respondent believed that the penalties for cheating on his or her campus were
not very severe. As was also the case for perceived understanding/acceptance of
policy and the perceived certainty of being reported for cheating, this measure
was identical to that used in the 1990 and 1995 surveys discussed earlier (Mc-
Cabe and Treviño, 1993, 1997).

Perceived Certainty of Being Reported

Student perceptions of the certainty of being reported for cheating were also
measured using a 4-point Likert scale item (ranging from very unlikely to very
likely) that asked respondents how likely it is that the typical student at their
school would report such violations. A very unlikely rating would suggest that
a student believed the chances of being reported for cheating were very low.

Perceived Understanding/Acceptance of Policy

Perceived understanding/acceptance of a school’s academic integrity policies
has been measured in all three surveys using a combination of four items. These
include student ratings of the faculty’s understanding of these policies, the facul-
ty’s support of these policies, the average student’s understanding of these poli-
cies, and the effectiveness of these policies. Each of these items was measured
on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from very low to very high, and the perceived
understanding/acceptance variable could thus vary between 4 (a low level of
perceived understanding/acceptance) and 16 (a high level). The Cronbach’s alpha
for this scale was .804 in the 1999 survey, comparable to the level found in the
previous surveys.
HONOR CODES 367

Perception of Peers’ Behavior

The measure of perception of peers’ behavior used in the 1990 and 1995
surveys consisted of two components: students were asked how often they had
actually observed other students cheating and to rate their perception of how
much cheating occurs on campus in general. In the 1999 survey, however, the
perception of peers’ behavior consisted of a single yes or no response item item
that asked students whether they personally had ever seen another student cheat
on a test or exam at their school. In 1990 and 1995, if students had observed
cheating among other students they were asked to quantify how often they had
observed such behavior on a Likert scale consisting of items such as once, a
few times, or many times. By collapsing these responses into a single category
that noted whether a respondent had seen cheating one or more times, a measure
comparable to the simple yes/no response used in the 1999 survey was created
for the 1990 and 1995 surveys.

Academic Dishonesty
The dependent variable used in this analysis was a composite measure of self-
reported cheating containing eight different items concerned with cheating on
both tests/exams and written work. Four of these items relate to cheating on
tests/exams (copying from another student with their permission, copying from
another student without their permission, using unpermitted crib or cheat notes,
and helping someone else to cheat on a test/exam), while four items relate to
cheating on written work (copying material almost word for word from any
source and turning it in as your own work, fabricating or falsifying a bibliogra-
phy, turning in work done by someone else, and copying a few sentences with-
out footnoting them). For each item, a student was asked to record the number
of times he or she had engaged in that behavior. While the response scale varied
slightly across the different surveys, we were able to reduce all responses to the
1999 response categories of never, once, and more than once. This 8-item scale
had a Cronbach’s alpha of .750 in the 1999 survey. However, as McCabe and
Treviño (1993, 1997) have discussed, this composite measure of academic dis-
honesty is highly skewed and violates the assumptions of statistical normality.
To address this issue, a log transformation of the academic dishonesty variable
has been employed in previous surveys and was also used in this analysis.

RESULTS
As detailed in the top half of Table 1, at the 17 traditional code and no code
campuses participating in the 1999 survey, the relationships between academic
dishonesty and all five of the contextual variables examined were significant at
p < 0.001, and thus Hypotheses 1, 2, 3, and 4 were supported.
368 MCCABE, TREVIÑO, AND BUTTERFIELD

The second half of Table 1 details the same relationships for the entire sam-
ple, including the modified code schools. Once again, all of the relationships
between academic dishonesty and our contextual variables are significant at p <
0.001, and Hypotheses 1, 2, 3, and 4 continue to be supported.
Table 2 shows the results for the regression of the perceived certainty of
being reported, the perceived severity of penalties, perceived understanding/ac-
ceptance of polices, and perception of peers’ behavior on the academic dishon-
esty variable. Analyses were performed for each code condition as detailed in
Table 2, and the regression model is significant in each case (p < 0.001), ex-
plaining between 14% and 19.6% of the variance in academic dishonesty. Per-
ception of peers’ behavior makes the most significant contribution to the regres-
sion models, again suggesting the strong role the perception of peers’ behavior
plays in understanding student decisions concerning academic integrity. Per-
ceived certainty of being reported is also significant in the regression model
under all three code conditions. Perceived severity of penalties is not significant
in these analyses, and the perceived understanding/acceptance of policy is sig-
nificant only in the traditional code model (p < 0.05).
A regression of all five independent study variables on academic dishonesty
was performed for the 1990, 1995, and 1999 surveys, and the results are summa-
rized in Table 3. The last column in Table 3 is the regression model for all three
surveys combined. As discussed earlier, the 1999 data in these analyses includes
only the 17 traditional code and no code campuses to eliminate any concern
about our use of an interval scale for code. However, a comparable analysis
using the full 1999 sample provides essentially the same results.
Table 4 shows the means and standard deviations of all study variables for
each code condition. Of particular interest, it shows that that the level of aca-
demic dishonesty at schools with modified honor codes is intermediate in value
between schools with traditional honor codes and those with no code. As pre-
dicted in Hypothesis 5a, a simple t test shows that the level of academic dishon-
esty at modified code schools is significantly greater than that at schools with
traditional codes (t = 3.136, p < .01) and as predicted in Hypothesis 5b, a simple
t test shows academic dishonesty is significantly lower at modified code schools
than at schools with no honor code (t = 4.651, p < .001).

DISCUSSION
Key Findings
In this study, we found that the level of academic dishonesty is highest at
colleges that do not have honor codes, is moderate at modified code institutions,
and is lowest at schools with traditional honor codes. The 1999 regression mod-
 TABLE 1. Intercorrelations of Study Variables—1999 Survey
HONOR CODES

Intercorrelations
Variable N M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6
No Code and Traditional Code Schools
1. Existence of an honor code 1625 1.04 1.00 —
2. Perceived certainty of being caught 1602 2.13 0.74 .35 —
3. Perceived understanding of policy 1559 11.98 2.45 .22 .35 —
4. Perceived severity of penalties 1579 3.16 0.74 .21 .21 .59 —
5. Perception of peers’ behavior 1620 1.43 0.50 −.25 −.25 −.24 −.18 —
6. Log(academic dishonesty) 1587 0.99 0.10 −.22 −.24 −.15 −.12 .41 —
Including Modified Code Schools
1. Existence of an honor code 2248 1.03 0.85 —
2. Perceived certainty of being caught 2216 2.09 0.71 .31 —
3. Perceived understanding of policy 2152 11.69 2.52 .19 .27 —
4. Perceived severity of penalties 2176 3.03 0.82 .17 .19 .61 —
5. Perception of peers’ behavior 2241 1.42 0.49 −.22 −.27 −.16 −.09 —
6. Log(academic dishonesty) 2188 0.99 0.10 −.18 −.22 −.10 −.07* .42 —
*Significant at p < .01. All other correlations are significant at p < .001.
369
 370

TABLE 2. Regression of Perception of Peers’ Behavior, Perceived Certainty of Being Reported, Perceived Understanding
and Acceptance of Policy, and Perceived Severity of Penalties on Academic Dishonesty—by Existence of an Honor Code

Traditional Code Modified Code No Code

Variable b β p b β p b β p
Intercept 0.94 .0001 0.84 .0001 0.93 .0001
Perception of peers’ behavior 0.06 0.35 .0001 0.08 0.42 .0001 0.08 0.33 .0001
Perceived certainty of being reported −0.00 −0.08 .0272 −0.02 −0.11 .0059 −0.02 −0.12 .0008
Perceived understanding of policy −0.00 −0.09 .0269 0.00 0.02 .6833 0.00 0.05 .2781
Perceived severity of penalties 0.00 0.01 .7900 −0.00 −0.02 .7311 −0.01 0.03 .4320
F 41.645 35.522 29.135
Degrees of freedom 4, 797 4, 563 4, 686
Adjusted R2 0.1687 0.1960 0.1402
MCCABE, TREVIÑO, AND BUTTERFIELD
 HONOR CODES

TABLE 3. Regression of Perception of Peers? Behavior, Code, Perceived Certainty of Being Reported,
Perceived Understanding and Acceptance of Policy, Perceived Severity of Penalties, and Existence
of an Honor Code on Academic Dishonesty—1990, 1995, and 1999

Combined
1990 1995 1999 Surveys

Variable β p β p β p β p
Perception of peers’ behavior 0.32 .0001 0.32 .0001 0.35 .0001 0.32 .0001
Existence of an honor code −0.17 .0001 −0.09 .0001 −0.09 .0006 −0.14 .0001
Perceived certainty of being reported −0.07 .0001 −0.08 .0001 −0.11 .0001 −0.07 .0001
Perceived understanding of policy −0.06 .0001 −0.09 .0001 −0.02 .6124 −0.07 .0001
Perceived severity of penalties 0.05 .0003 0.02 .3194 −0.01 .8253 0.03 .0018
F 315.4 175.9 72.0 547.5
Degrees of freedom 5, 5562 5, 3720 5, 1488 5, 10789
Adjusted R2 0.2202 0.1901 0.1921 0.2020
371
372 MCCABE, TREVIÑO, AND BUTTERFIELD

TABLE 4. Means and Standard Deviations of Study Variables—by Code

Traditional Code Modified Code No Code

Variable N M SD N M SD N M SD

Existence of an honor code 849 2 — 623 1 — 776 0 —

Perceived certainty of being caught 836 2.37 0.73 614 2.00 0.63 766 1.86 0.65
Perceived understanding of policy 832 12.48 2.31 593 10.95 2.56 727 11.41 2.48
Perceived severity of penalties 833 3.31 0.72 597 2.69 0.92 746 3.00 0.73
Perception of peers’ behavior 846 1.31 0.46 621 1.39 0.49 774 1.56 0.50
Log(academic dishonesty) 832 0.97 0.08 601 0.98 0.10 755 1.01 0.11
Academic dishonesty 832 9.50 2.09 601 9.90 2.78 755 10.65 3.05

els show that perceptions of peers’ behavior had the most influence under all
three code conditions, and the perceived certainty of being reported was also a
significant influence in each condition. Perceived understanding/acceptance of
policy had a significant influence only in the traditional code model, and per-
ceived severity of penalties was not significant under any code condition. How-
ever, the combined results across all three studies (1990, 1995, 1999) revealed
significant relationships between academic dishonesty and all five of the contex-
tual variables tested (perceptions of peers’ behavior, existence of some form of
honor code, perceived certainty of being reported, perceived severity of penal-
ties, and perceived understanding/acceptance of policy).

Strengths and Limitations

This study allowed us to compare the validity of a previously tested model
in a new context (modified honor code environments) and to compare the model
across traditional honor code, modified honor code, and no code contexts. The
similarity of the measures to those used in previous studies also allowed for
comparisons across time.
Although we attempted to minimize its impact by providing complete ano-
nymity to respondents, one possible limitation of this study is social desirability
bias (Randall and Fernandes, 1991). Academic dishonesty is a sensitive topic,
and some respondents may have been reluctant to provide accurate information
about their own cheating behavior. Another limitation is the use of perceptual
measures for most of our constructs. As in previous studies, however, this was
largely unavoidable since most of the constructs of interest are perceptual in
nature. Also, our results are correlational in nature, and all causal inferences
should be interpreted with caution.
HONOR CODES 373

MODIFIED HONOR CODES AND ACADEMIC DISHONESTY

This study offers insight into the effectiveness of an emerging phenomenon
at many larger academic institutions: modified honor codes. As expected, the
results indicate that modified honor code contexts are associated with less cheat-
ing behavior than no code contexts, but more cheating behavior than traditional
honor code contexts.
The results may also provide some insight into factors that can further reduce
cheating within modified code environments. Although perception of peers’ be-
havior had the strongest influence on cheating behavior in all three code condi-
tions (Table 2), this relationship was particularly strong in the modified honor
code context. This could suggest that students in modified code contexts rely to
a greater relative degree than students at other institutions on their social envi-
ronment for guidance when they make decisions regarding academic dishonesty.
This finding makes sense in light of the results shown in Table 4, which indicate
that modified code schools rank lowest in terms of students’ perceived under-
standing of academic integrity policies and perceptions of the severity of penal-
ties. This may suggest that the traditional honor code institutions and no code
institutions in our survey have been more effective than the modified code insti-
tutions in ensuring that students understand campus academic integrity policies
and that cheating will be dealt with strongly. Considering the much larger size
of the modified code schools in our sample, it is certainly possible that these
schools would find it more challenging to communicate this information to stu-
dents. If this is true, students at modified code institutions may deal with this
relative uncertainty and ambiguity by looking to their peers for guidance. Prior
research on honor codes (e.g., McCabe and Treviño, 1993, 1997) certainly sup-
ports the view that getting students to understand that cheating is socially unac-
ceptable can be more powerful than greater student understanding of a campus’s
academic integrity policies.
From a social learning standpoint, this suggests that modified code schools,
indeed all schools, should do more to ensure that their students have suitable
peer role models. If students see their peers cheating, they will be more likely
to cheat. However, if students see their peers engaging in prosocial behaviors
such as designing and enforcing academic integrity policies, making pledges
regarding personal integrity, educating other students about the importance of
academic integrity, and behaving honestly, then cheating may be less likely.
This supports the conclusions of McCabe and Pavela (2000), who suggest that
significant student involvement may be the most important factor in developing
and implementing a successful modified honor code. Such thinking is also com-
patible with Dalton’s (1985) emphasis on the critical roles of community, peer
culture, and role models in value development and, as suggested by Ignelzi
(1990), it is also compatible with Kohlberg’s just community model.
374 MCCABE, TREVIÑO, AND BUTTERFIELD

Neither perceived understanding/acceptance of policies nor perceived severity

of penalties were significantly related to cheating behavior in the no code and
the modified code contexts. This was somewhat surprising given past research
that has shown significant relationships among these variables in both traditional
honor code and no code institutions (McCabe and Treviño, 1993, 1997). We
find it particularly interesting that both the perceived understanding/acceptance
of policies and the perceived severity of penalties were significantly lower in
the modified code vs. no code context. The introduction of a modified honor
code on campus may well increase student expectations that more information
will be forthcoming on these academy integrity policies, including more infor-
mation about penalties for violations of those policies. If such information is
not forthcoming, or salient in the environment, that could lead to the perception
that the policies are not really well understood and that the severity of penalties
is not very high since students have not heard much about them yet. This would
suggest that schools introducing modified honor codes have to do more to com-
municate information about the policy and its associated penalties than do tradi-
tional code schools where this information is usually deeply embedded into the
school’s culture. Each of the four modified code campuses studied in this project
has either adopted its modified code or substantially revised it within the last
decade. It will be instructive to see how student perceptions of the understand-
ing/acceptance of policy and the severity of penalties change as these modified
codes begin to mature.

CONTEXTUAL INFLUENCES ON ACADEMIC DISHONESTY

Another goal of this study was to reexamine the relationships between aca-
demic dishonesty and five contextual influences identified by previous re-
search using new data from a diverse set of academic institutions. As shown
in Table 1, the 1999 correlational results indicate that across the entire sample
of schools academic dishonesty is negatively associated with the existence of
an honor code, perceived certainty of being reported, perceived understanding
of policies, and perceived severity of penalties and positively associated with
perceptions of dishonest peers’ behavior. Of these, perception of peers’ behav-
ior is clearly the most influential factor, followed by the perceived certainty
of being reported, the existence of an honor code, perceived understanding/
acceptance of policies, and perceived severity of penalties. This is generally
consistent with correlational data from previous studies (McCabe and Treviño,
1993, 1997).
However, the multiple regression results for the three studies suggest that a
caveat is in order. Despite having significant intercorrelations, the regression
analyses reveal some nonsignificant relationships for perceived understanding/
acceptance of policies and perceived severity of penalties (see Table 3). Perceived
HONOR CODES 375

understanding/acceptance of policies had a significant impact in 1990 and 1995,

but not in 1999. Perceived severity of penalties had a significant impact in 1990,
but not in 1995 or 1999. This could suggest that these factors are becoming less
important over time. However, as previously discussed, the 1999 sample was
markedly different from the 1990 and 1995 samples in terms of size, residential
character, and admissions policies. Although this difference may be a more
likely explanation of these different results, future research is clearly needed to
shed additional light on these differences.
The last column of Table 3 shows the regression model for the 1990, 1995,
and 1999 surveys combined. All five independent variables make a significant
contribution in this model, providing general support for the model first pro-
posed by McCabe and Treviño (1993). These combined results show perceptions
of peers’ behavior to be the most influential variable, followed by the existence of
an honor code, the perceived certainty of being reported, perceived understand-
ing/acceptance of policies, and perceived severity of penalties. However, consis-
tent with the 1990 and 1995 surveys, we should note that the combined regres-
sion analysis revealed a small but significant positive relationship between
academic dishonesty and severity of penalties. We find this somewhat perplex-
ing, as it runs counter to our theory. The most logical explanation may be the
fact that perceived severity of penalties and perceived understanding/acceptance
of policy are highly correlated; the presence of perceived understanding/accep-
tance of policy in the model may simply be suppressing the true influence of
perceived severity of penalties (Cohen and Cohen, 1975).

CONCLUSION
This study offers empirical evidence that modified honor codes can effec-
tively reduce cheating behavior on college campuses—at least compared to no
code environments. Although not as effective as traditional honor codes, modi-
fied codes represent a viable alternative for large, public institutions where im-
plementing a traditional honor code may not be a realistic option.
The findings also indicate that the model first suggested by McCabe and
Treviño (1993) in their 1990 study seems to be relatively robust. The regression
results from all three surveys show relatively strong and consistent support for
the relationship between academic dishonesty and perception of peers’ behavior.
The existence of an honor code and perceived certainty of being reported also
make significant contributions to the total variance explained in all three studies.
Perceived understanding/acceptance of policies (p < .001) makes a small but
significant (p < 0.001) contribution to the overall regression model in the 1990
and 1995 surveys but not in 1999. Perceived severity of penalties of policies
makes a small but significant contribution in the 1990 survey but not in the
1995 or 1999 surveys. All five independent variables make a significant contri-
376 MCCABE, TREVIÑO, AND BUTTERFIELD

bution to the regression model in the combined analysis, although the perceived
severity of penalties contributions is quite small.
This research also suggests that college administrators, faculty, and students
in all three types of environments must do more to address the issue of academic
integrity. Institutional leaders need to highlight the issue of academic integrity
as an important institutional priority. In particular, this study suggests that initia-
tives should focus on training students to be role models of good behavior,
developing a strong environment of honor (supported by some form of code),
and to a lesser degree, demonstrating to students that cheating behavior will be
caught and reported. These variables were shown to be significantly related to
cheating behavior across three different studies and across three different honor
code contexts.
However, although these studies have increased understanding of the factors
that influence cheating behavior, they have accounted for only about 20% of
the total variance. Additional research is clearly needed to identify other influen-
tial factors. One area deserving further study, which has received only modest
attention here, is the role faculty play in a student’s decision to engage or not
to engage in academic dishonesty. McCabe (1993) has shown that faculty in
code and no code environments show significant variations in the way they
address the issue of academic dishonesty in their courses, and it is likely these
differences account for at least some of the variation in students’ attitudes about
academic integrity and their resulting behavior. McCabe and Pavela (1997) have
suggested a variety of ways in which faculty in any environment, code or no
code, can reduce both the motivation and opportunities that students might have
to engage in academic dishonesty—for example, clarifying more carefully their
expectations for individual assignments, challenging academic dishonesty when
it occurs, and fostering an environment of trust in the classroom. Cizek (1999)
suggests effective proctoring and careful seating of students during tests are
among the most important approaches to effective classroom management of
academic dishonesty. He has also distilled the suggestions of Jacobs and Chase
(1992), Kibler and Patterson (1988), and Moss (1984) into a “top ten” list of
other classroom strategies, including such initiatives as designing good tests,
using varied assessment formats, maintaining test security, and knowing the
test takers. Most of these suggestions are just good common sense, but student
comments suggest that many faculty do not employ these strategies in their
courses.
Although it does not help to explain the variations in behavior between code,
modified code, and no code environments, anecdotal comments offered by fac-
ulty suggest perhaps the most effective strategy for reducing academic dishon-
esty among college students is to address this issue with students long before
they get to college. While one might be tempted to suggest that faculty are
simply shifting the blame elsewhere, there is much empirical evidence to sup-
HONOR CODES 377

port their concern. In particular, surveys of high school students suggest a grow-
ing disenchantment with the academic process. For example, recent results from
the American Freshman Survey conducted by UCLA (Sax, Astin, Korn, and
Mahoney, 1999) show an increasing level of “academic disengagement” among
today’s entering college freshmen: “A record-high 39.9 percent of freshmen report
feeling frequently ‘bored in class,’ [and] . . . a record-low 31.5 percent of fresh-
men say they spent six or more hours a week studying or doing homework in
their last year of high school” (p. 3). In addition, one quarter of these freshmen
expect to work full time while in college and almost one third report feeling
“frequently overwhelmed by all I have to do.” In light of these findings, we
probably should not be surprised that four out of five top performing students
admit they have cheated on academic work while in high school and that almost
half of these students believe a decline in social and moral values is the biggest
problem facing their generation today (Who’s Who Among American High
School Students, 1998).

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Received September 11, 2000.