How does students’ academic self-concept influence deceptive behavior?

We conduct our current experiment through an online application embedded in a ca 30 minutes long questionnaire.

The questionnaire contains a grade-specific ca 15 minutes long math tests with 6 multiple choice questions

In the treatment phase, students are randomized into two groups that receive either positive (treated group) or no feedback (control group) about their performance on the math test. Positive feedbacks affirm students’ initial self-concept and might boost it.

Students participate in the experiment in their schools. The participating schools agreed that the homeroom teacher supervises all students in the classroom during a standard school day, providing controlled conditions for the experiment.

2020-11-22

2021-01-31

We measure students’ deceptive behavior or cheating with a binary variable = 1 if students fraudulently claimed to roll 6, and = 0 otherwise since students rolled with 5-sided dice, the variable measures willful deception.

Students are incentivized to cheat. They roll virtual dice in an external online application that is not connected to the survey program. After students have rolled the dice, they are asked to report the number they rolled. Students are prompted that if they rolled 6 they receive a more valuable gift than if they rolled 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. Researchers will not know the number that students rolled. However, students roll a 5-sided dice that never produces 6 –information that is communicated with students.

In the pre-treatment phase, students solve a grade-specific math test.

The treatment is receiving positive feedback. Students receive feedback concerning their performance, but they receive the feedback randomly, which is, therefore, not connected to their actual performance.

Students are incentivized to cheat in the post-treatment phase

The experiment has three phases: pre-treatment, treatment, and post-treatment phases.

The pre-treatment phase contains the following steps: i) Students answer a circa 10-minutes long questionnaire containing questions about self-concept, subject-like, delay of gratification altruism. This questionnaire includes the following baseline question about students’ assessment of their performance on the math test: “What do you think, how good are you at the math tests? Please use the scale below. 0 means ‘I am not good at all’, and 10 means ‘I am excellent’. You can choose any numbers between 0 and 10 to express your opinion more nuanced. ” To relate this question to standardly used questions of self-concept, we ask subject-specific questions about absolute academic self-concept without a reference point and comparative academic self-concept which evaluates students’ academic self-concept relative to their classmates for the following subjects: Hungarian grammar (writing class), Hungarian literature (reading class) and mathematics. ii) Students solve a grade-specific ca 15 minutes long math tests containing 6 multiple choice questions at each grade level. The test was developed for this study from the test bank of the National Assessment of Basic Competencies (NABC) by the Hungarian Educational Authority. We pre-tested the math test in grades 5-8 in one out-of-sample school in the same geographic area.

In the treatment phase, students are randomized into two groups that receive either positive (treated group) or no feedback (control group) about their performance on the math test. Thus students receive feedback concerning their performance, but they receive the feedback randomly, which is, therefore, not connected to their actual performance. Positive feedbacks affirm students’ initial self-concept and might boost it. The wording of the feedback is the following: “That’s great! You must be excellent in math tests! You can be proud of yourself because you have performed exceptionally! Thank you for completing the math test. Please continue with the next question! ” The no-feedback condition prompts students to continue with the next question: “Thank you for completing the math test. Please continue with the next question!”

The post-treatment phase contains the following steps: i.) Students answer the same self-concept question they answered before the treatment: “What do you think, how good are you at the math test? Please use the scale below. 0 means ‘I am not good at all’, and 10 means ‘I am excellent’. You can choose any numbers between 0 and 10 to express your opinion more nuanced.” ii.) Students answer the following questions respectively on a scale 0-10, 0 means ‘Not at all’, and 10 means ‘In a great extent: ‘How honest are you?’; ‘How much do you agree with the following statement: I like to win at all costs?’; ‘How happy are you?’; ‘How thrilled are you?’; ‘How much do you feel that others accept you as you are?’; ‘How much do you feel that others appreciate you?’; ‘How much do you feel that others respect you?’ . iii) Students are incentivized to cheat. The application prompts students in the following way: “Now we want to reward you for your performance on the math test. Please click on this link, which invites an external website that is not connected with this program. Please press the enter button once you opened the dice-roll app. You would receive shortly a random number similarly if you rolled with real dice. If you have the number, please insert this number here. If you rolled 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5, you will receive one of the bookmarks shown in the picture as a gift. If you rolled 6, you will receive one of the mugs shown in the picture as a gift. Please enter here the number you rolled: ___.”
Researchers will not know the number that students rolled correspondingly to the massage we gave to students. Students, however, roll a 5-sided dice that never produces 6 –information that we do not communicate with students.

Randomization was done by a computer

We randomize individual students

No

At the time of pre-registration, 102 classrooms from 20 schools agreed to participate in the experiment with approximately 1,900 students.

Approximately 1,900 students are in the participating school. We do not know the response rate yet, since the experiment is on the field.

At the time of pre-registration, 102 classrooms from 20 schools agreed to participate in the experiment.
We do not have treatment arms, since individual students (within the classroom) are randomized to treated/control groups at the time they log in to the application.